of his considerable patrimony in the space of one winter. For
years thereafter he lived I know not how; always well dressed,
always in good hotels and good society, always with empty pockets.
The charm of his manner may have stood him in good stead; but
though my own manners are very agreeable, I have never found in
them a source of livelihood; and to explain the miracle of his
continued existence, I must fall back upon the theory of the
philosopher, that in his case, as in all of the same kind, "there
was a suffering relative in the background." From this genteel
eclipse he reappeared upon the scene, and presently sought me out
in the character of a generous editor. It is in this part that I
best remember him; tall, slender, with a not ungraceful stoop;
looking quite like a refined gentleman, and quite like an urbane
adventurer; smiling with an engaging ambiguity; cocking at you one
peaked eyebrow with a great appearance of finesse; speaking low and
sweet and thick, with a touch of burr; telling strange tales with
singular deliberation and, to a patient listener, excellent effect.
After all these ups and downs, he seemed still, like the rich
student that he was of yore, to breathe of money; seemed still
perfectly sure of himself and certain of his end. Yet he was then
upon the brink of his last overthrow. He had set himself to found
the strangest thing in our society: one of those periodical sheets
from which men suppose themselves to learn opinions; in which young
gentlemen from the universities are encouraged, at so much a line,
to garble facts, insult foreign nations and calumniate private
individuals; and which are now the source of glory, so that if a
man's name be often enough printed there, he becomes a kind of
demigod; and people will pardon him when he talks back and forth,
as they do for Mr. Gladstone; and crowd him to suffocation on
railway platforms, as they did the other day to General Boulanger;