"by abstaining from the stimulants to which his constitution had been so
long accustomed;" and Gabriel Varney was summoned to the reading of the
will. To his inconceivable disappointment, instead of bequeathing to his
nephew the free disposal of his 6,000 pounds, that sum was assigned to
trustees for the benefit of Gabriel and his children yet unborn,--"An
inducement," said the poor testator, tenderly, "for the boy to marry and
reform!" So that the nephew could only enjoy the interest, and had no
control over the capital. The interest of 6,000 pounds invested in the
Bank of England was flocci nauci to the voluptuous spendthrift, Gabriel
Varney.

Now, these trustees were selected from the painter's earlier and more
respectable associates, who had dropped him, it is true, in his days of
beggary and disrepute, but whom the fortune that made him respectable had
again conciliated. One of these trustees had lately retired to pass the
remainder of his days at Boulogne; the other was a hypochondriacal
valetudinarian,--neither of them, in short, a man of business. Gabriel
was left to draw out the interest of the money as it became periodically
due at the Bank of England. In a few months the trustee settled at
Boulogne died; the trust, of course, lapsed to Mr. Stubmore, the
valetudinarian survivor. Soon pinched by extravagances, and emboldened
by the character and helpless state of the surviving trustee, Varney
forged Mr. Stubmore's signature to an order on the bank to sell out such
portion of the capital as his wants required. The impunity of one
offence begot courage for others, till the whole was well-nigh expended.
Upon these sums Varney had lived very pleasantly, and he saw with a deep
sigh the approaching failure of so facile a resource.

In one of the melancholy moods engendered by this reflection, Varney
happened to be in the very town in France in which the Mainwarings, in