person could be sunk. For the Barnacles,
as a group of themselves in creation, had an idea that such distinctions
belonged to them; and that when a soldier, sailor, or lawyer became
ennobled, they let him in, as it were, by an act of condescension, at
the family door, and immediately shut it again. Not only (said Rumour)
had the troubled Decimus his own hereditary part in this impression, but
he also knew of several Barnacle claims already on the file, which came
into collision with that of the master spirit.

Right or wrong, Rumour was very busy; and Lord Decimus, while he was, or
was supposed to be, in stately excogitation of the difficulty, lent her
some countenance by taking, on several public occasions, one of those
elephantine trots of his through a jungle of overgrown sentences, waving
Mr Merdle about on his trunk as Gigantic Enterprise, The Wealth of
England, Elasticity, Credit, Capital, Prosperity, and all manner of
blessings.

So quietly did the mowing of the old scythe go on, that fully three
months had passed unnoticed since the two English brothers had been laid
in one tomb in the strangers' cemetery at Rome. Mr and Mrs Sparkler were
established in their own house: a little mansion, rather of the Tite
Barnacle class, quite a triumph of inconvenience, with a perpetual smell
in it of the day before yesterday's soup and coach-horses, but extremely
dear, as being exactly in the centre of the habitable globe. In this
enviable abode (and envied it really was by many people), Mrs Sparkler
had intended to proceed at once to the demolition of the Bosom, when
active hostilities had been suspended by the arrival of the Courier with
his tidings of death. Mrs Sparkler, who was not unfeeling, had received
them with a violent burst of grief, which had lasted twelve hours;
after which, she had arisen to see about her mourning, and to take every
precaution that could ensure its being as becoming as Mrs Merdle's. A
gloom was then cast over more than one distinguished family (according
to the politest sources of intelligence), and the Courier went back
again.

Mr and Mrs Sparkler had been dining alone, with their gloom cast over
them, and Mrs Sparkler reclined on a drawing-room sofa. It was a hot
summer Sunday evening. The residence in the centre of the habitable
globe, at all times stuffed and close as if it had an incurable cold in
its head, was that evening particularly stifling.

The bells of the churches had done th