ad no luck since you left us. It
was doubtless yours that sustained me so long, and when
_you_ withdrew from the firm, I became bankrupt, and yet,
this is pretty much what we used once, in merry mood, to
predict for each other, 'the loop and the leap.'

"How shall I tell you so briefly as neither to weary you to
read, nor myself to write it, my last sad misfortune? I say
the last, because the bad luck took a run against me. First,
I lost everything I possessed at play,--the very pistols you
sent me, I staked and lost. Worse still, Roland,--and faith
I don't think I could make the confession, if a few hours,
or a few days more, were not to hide my shame in a felon's
grave,--I played the jewels you sent here for Maritana. She
refused them with words of bitterness and anger. Partly from
the irritated feeling of the moment, partly from the curse
of a gambler's spirit,--the hope to weary out the malice of
fortune,--I threw them on the monte-table. Of course I lost.
It was soon after this Barcelonetta was laid in ruin by a
shock of earthquake, the greatest ever experienced here. The
'Quadro' is a mere mass of chaotic rubbish. The 'Puerta
Mayor,' with all its statues, is ingulfed, and an arm of the
sea now washes up and over the beautiful gardens where the
Governor gave his _fete_. The villa, too, rent from roof to
basement, is a ruin; vast yawning gulfs intersect the
parterres everywhere; the fountains are dried up; the
trees blasted by lightning; and a red-brown surface of
ashes strewn over the beauteous turf where we used to stroll
by moonlight. The old tree that sheltered our monte-table
stands uninjured, as if in mockery over our disasters!
Maritana's hammock was slung beneath the branches, and there
she lay, careless of--nay, I could almost say, if the words
did not seem too strange for truth, actually pleased by--the
dreadful event. I went to take leave of her; it was the last
night we were to spend on shore. I little knew it was to be
the last time we should ever meet. Pedro passed the night
among the ruins of the villa, endeavoring to recover papers
and valuables amid that disastrous mass. Geizheimer was
always with him, and as Noronja and the rest soon fell off
to sleep, wearied by a day of great fatigue, I sat alone
besid