we is not quite the same thing as to pay; and from the day of his
winning the money until the day of his death the Warwickshire Squire
did never, by any chance, touch a single bob, tizzy, tester, moidore,
maravedi, doubloon, tomaun, or rupee, of the sum which Monsieur de
Galgenstein had lost to him.

That young nobleman was, as Mr. Brock hinted in the little
autobiographical sketch which we gave in a former chapter, incarcerated
for a certain period, and for certain other debts, in the donjons
of Shrewsbury; but he released himself from them by that noble and
consolatory method of whitewashing which the law has provided for
gentlemen in his oppressed condition; and he had not been a week in
London, when he fell in with, and overcame, or put to flight, Captain
Wood, alias Brock, and immediately seized upon the remainder of his
property. After receiving this, the Count, with commendable discretion,
disappeared from England altogether for a while; nor are we at all
authorised to state that any of his debts to his tradesmen were
discharged, any more than his debts of honour, as they are pleasantly
called.

Having thus settled with his creditors, the gallant Count had interest
enough with some of the great folk to procure for himself a post abroad,
and was absent in Holland for some time. It was here that he became
acquainted with the lovely Madam Silverkoop, the widow of a deceased
gentleman of Leyden; and although the lady was not at that age at which
tender passions are usually inspired--being sixty--and though she could
not, like Mademoiselle Ninon de l'Enclos, then at Paris, boast of charms
which defied the progress of time,--for Mrs. Silverkoop was as red as a
boiled lobster, and as unwieldy as a porpoise; and although her mental
attractions did by no means make up for her personal deficiencies,--for
she was jealous, violent, vulgar, drunken, and stingy to a miracle:
yet her charms had an immediate effect on Monsieur de Galgenstein; and
hence, perhaps, the reader (the rogue! how well he knows the world!)
will be led to conclude that the honest widow was RICH.

Such, indeed, she was; and Count Gustavus, despising the difference
between his twenty quarterings and her twenty thousand pounds, laid the
most desperate siege to her, and finished by causing her to capitulate;
as I do believe, after a reasonable degree of pressing, any woman will
do to any man: such, at least, has been MY experience in the matter.

The Coun