"Crowns bear no division, my uncle," said Gabriel, dryly; and he pocketed
the five shillings. Then, having first secured his escape by gaining the
threshold, he suddenly seized one of the rickety chairs by its leg, and
regardless of the gallantries due to the sex, sent it right against the
model, who was shaking her fist at him. A scream and a fall and a sharp
twit from the cage, which was hurled nearly into the fireplace, told that
the missive had taken effect. Gabriel did not wait for the probable
reaction; he was in the streets in an instant. "This won't do," he
muttered to himself; "there is no getting on here. Foolish drunken
vagabond! no good to be got from him. My father is terrible, but he will
make his way in the world. Umph! if I were but his match,--and why not?
I am brave, and he is not. There's fun, too, in danger."

Thus musing, he took his way to Dalibard's lodgings. His father was at
home. Now, though they were but lodgings, and the street not in fashion,
Olivier Dalibard's apartments had an air of refinement, and even
elegance, that contrasted both the wretched squalor of the abode Gabriel
had just left and the meanness of Dalibard's former quarters in London,
The change seemed to imply that the Provencal had already made some way
in the world. And, truth to say, at all times, even in the lowest ebb of
his fortunes, there was that indescribable neatness and formality of
precision about all the exterior seemings of the ci-devant friend of the
prim Robespierre which belong to those in whom order and method are
strongly developed,--qualities which give even to neediness a certain
dignity. As the room and its owner met the eye of Gabriel, on whose
senses all externals had considerable influence, the ungrateful young
ruffian recalled the kind, tattered, slovenly uncle, whose purse he had
just emptied, without one feeling milder than disgust. Olivier Dalibard,
always careful, if simple, in his dress, with his brow of grave