viski nee Gutzaff.'

'And is she gone?' said I, starting up in a state of frenzy.

'Yes, sir; she started at ten o'clock.'

'By what road?' cried I, determined to follow her on the instant.

'Louvain was the first stage.'

In an instant I was up, and dressed; in ten minutes more I was rattling
over the stones to my banker's.

'I want three hundred napoleons at once,' said I to the clerk.

'Examine Mr. O'Leary's account,' was the dry reply of the functionary.

'Overdrawn by fifteen hundred francs,' said the other.

'Overdrawn? Impossible!' cried I, thunderstruck. 'I had a credit for six
hundred pounds.'

'Which you drew out by cheque this morning,' said the clerk. 'Is not
that your handwriting?'

'It is,' said I faintly, as I recognised my own scrawl, dated the
evening before.

I had lost above seven hundred, and had not a sou left to pay
post-horses.

I sauntered back sadly to the 'France,' a sadder man than ever in my
life before. A thousand tormenting thoughts were in my brain; and a
feeling of contempt for myself, somehow, occupied a very prominent
place. Well, well; it's all past and gone now, and I must not awaken
buried griefs.

I never saw the count and countess again; and though I have since
that been in St. Petersburg, the grand-duke seems to have forgotten my
services, and a very pompous-looking porter in a bear-skin did not
look exactly the kind of person to whom I should wish to communicate my
impression about 'Count Potoski's house being my own.'

CHAPTER XI, A FRAGMENT OF FOREST LIFE

I am half sorry already that I have told that little story of myself.
Somehow the recollection is painful. And now I would rather hasten away
from Brussels, and wander on to other scenes; and yet there are many
things I fain would speak of, and some people, too, worth a mention in
passing. I should like to have taken you a moonlight walk through the
Grande Place, and after tracing against the clear sky the delicate
outline of the beautiful spire, whose gilded point seemed stretching
away towards the bright star above it, to have shown you the interior
of a Flemish club in the old Salle de Loyaute. Primitive, quaint fellows
they are, these Flemings; consequential, sedate, self-satisfied, simple
creatures; credulous to any extent of their own importance, but kindly
withal; not hospitable themselves, but admirers of the virtue in others;
easily pleased, when the amusement costs little; and, in a word,