out any obvious source of income; enjoying every luxury, and
indulging every taste that costs dearly, without any difficulty in the
payment, their intimacy with known gamblers and blacklegs exposes them
at once to the inevitable charge of confederacy. Rarely or never playing
themselves, however, they reply to such calumnies by referring to their
habits; their daily life would indeed seem little liable to reproval. If
married, they are the most exemplary of husbands. If they have children,
they are models for fathers. Where can you see such little ones, so
well-mannered, so well-dressed, with such beautifully curled hair,
and such perfectly good-breeding--or, to use the proper phrase, 'so
admirably taken care of'? They are liberal to all public charities; they
are occasionally intimate with the chaplain of the Embassy too--of whom,
a word hereafter; and, in fact, it would be difficult to find fault with
any circumstance in their bearing before the world. Their connection
by family with persons of rank and condition is a kind of life-buoy
of which no shipwreck of fortune deprives them, and long after less
well-known people have sunk to the bottom, they are to be found floating
on the surface of society. In this way they form a kind of 'Pont du
Diable' between persons of character and persons of none--they are
the narrow isthmus, connecting the mainland with the low reef of rocks
beyond it.

These men are the tame elephants of the swindling world, who provide
the game, though they never seem to care for the sport. Too cautious of
reputation to become active agents in these transactions, they introduce
the unsuspecting traveller into those haunts and among those where ruin
is rife; and as the sheriff consigns the criminal to the attentions of
the hangman, so these worthies halt at the 'drop,' and would scorn with
indignation the idea of exercising the last office of the law.

Far from this, they are eloquent in their denunciations of play. Such
sound morality as theirs cannot be purchased at any price; the dangers
that beset young men coming abroad--the risk of chance acquaintance, the
folly of associating with persons not known--form the staple of their
talk--which, lest it should seem too cynical in its attack on pleasure,
is relieved by that admirable statement so popular in certain circles.
'You know a man of the world must see everything for himself, so that
though I say don't gamble, I never said don't frequent the Cu