popular--very popular, and with plenty of witnesses, not over-scrupulous,
I got off! When I was released, I would not go to see them, for my
clothes were ragged: the police still watched me, and I would not do them
harm in the world! Ay, poor wretches! they struggled so hard: he could
got very little by his art, though, I believe, he was a cleverish fellow
at it, and the money I had given them could not last for ever. They
lived near the Champs Elysees, and at night I used to steal out and look
at them through the window. They seemed so happy, and so handsome, and
so good; but he looked sickly, and I saw that, like all Italians, he
languished for his own warm climate. But man is born to act as well as
to contemplate," pursued Gawtrey, changing his tone into the allegro;
"and I was soon driven into my old ways, though in a lower line. I went
to London, just to give my reputation an airing, and when I returned,
pretty flush again, the poor Italian was dead, and Fanny was a widow,
with one boy, and enceinte with a second child. So then I sought her
again, for her mother had found her out, and was at her with her devilish
kindness; but Heaven was merciful, and took her away from both of us: she
died in giving birth to a girl, and her last words were uttered to me,
imploring me--the adventurer--the charlatan--the good-for-nothing--to
keep her child from the clutches of her own mother. Well, sir, I did
what I could for both the children; but the boy was consumptive, like his
father, and sleeps at Pere-la-Chaise. The girl is here--you shall see
her some day. Poor Fanny! if ever the devil will let me, I shall reform
for her sake. Meanwhile, for her sake I must get grist for the mill. My
story is concluded, for I need not tell you all of my pranks--of all the
parts I have played in life. I have never been a murderer, or a burglar,
or a highway robber, or what the law calls a thief. I can only say, as I
said before, I have lived upon my wits, and they have been a tolerable
capital on the whole. I have been an actor, a money-lender, a physician,
a professor of animal magnetism (that was lucrative till it went out of