the host that "though very different from what his
Excellency was used to, it was exactly to the taste of the late
'Gobernador.'"

I felt all the swelling importance of wealth within me as I beheld the
cringing lacqueys and the obsequious host, who never dared to carry
himself erect in my presence; the very meats seemed to send up an
incense to my nostrils. The gentle wind that shook the orange-blossoms
seemed made to bear its odors to my senses; all Nature appeared
tributary to my enjoyment. And only to think of it! all this adulation
was for poor Con Cregan, the convict's son; the houseless street-runner
of Dublin; the cabin-boy of the yacht; the flunkey at Quebec; the
penniless wanderer in Texas; the wag of the "Noria," in Mexico. What a
revulsion, and how sudden and unexpected!

It now became a matter of deep consideration within me how I should
support this unlooked-for change of condition, without betraying
too palpably what the French would call my "antecedents." As to my
"relatives,"--forgive the poor pun,--they gave me little trouble. I had
often remarked in life that vulgar wealth never exhibits itself in a
more absurd and odious light than when indulging in pleasures of which
the sole enjoyment is the amount of the cost. The upstart rich man may
sit in a gallery of pictures where Titian, Velasquez, and Vandyck have
given him a company whose very countenances seem to despise him, while
he thinks of nothing save the price. If he listen to Malibran, the only
sense awakened is the cost of her engagement; and hence that stolid
apathy, the lustreless gaze, the unrelieved weariness, he exhibits in
society, where it is the metal of the "mind" is clinking, and not the
metal of the "mint." To a certain extent I did not incur great danger
on this head: Nature had done me some kind services, the chief of which
was, she had made me an Irishman!

There may seem--alas! there is too great cause that there should
seem--something paradoxical in this boast, now, when sorrow and
suffering are so much our portion; but I speak only of the individuality
which, above every other I have seen or heard of, invests a man with a
spirit to enjoy whatever is agreeable in life. Now, this same gift is a
great safeguard against the vulgarity of purse-pride, since the man
who launches forth upon the open sea of pleasure is rarely occupied by
thoughts of self.

As for me, I felt a kind of gluttony for every delight that gold can
purchase.