Every thing around bore some testimony of the spirit of low debauchery;
and the man himself, with his flushed and sensual countenance, his
unwashed hands, and the slovenly rakishness of his whole appearance, made
no unfitting representation of the Genius Loci.

All that I have described, together with a flitting shadow of feminine
appearance, escaping through another door, my quick eye discovered in the
same instant that I made my salutation.

Thornton rose, with an air half careless and half abashed, and expressed,
in more appropriate terms than his appearance warranted, his pleasurable
surprise at seeing me at last. There was, however, a singularity in his
conversation, which gave it an air both of shrewdness and vulgarity. This
was, as may before have been noted, a profuse intermixture of proverbs,
some stale, some new, some sensible enough, and all savouring of a
vocabulary carefully eschewed by every man of ordinary refinement in
conversation.

"I have but a small tenement," said he, smiling; "but, thank Heaven, at
Paris a man is not made by his lodgings. Small house, small care. Few
garcons have indeed a more sumptuous apartment than myself."

"True," said I; "and if I may judge by the bottles on the opposite table,
and the bonnet beneath it, you find that no abode is too humble or too
exalted for the solace of the senses."

"'Fore Gad, you are in the right, Mr. Pelham," replied Thornton, with a
loud, coarse, chuckling laugh, which, more than a year's conversation
could have done, let me into the secrets of his character. "I care not a
rush for the decorations of the table, so that the cheer be good; nor for