a Russian
Prince had had before him, with all the serenity of a millionaire, as
far as memory of money went; with much more than the serenity in other
matters of most millionaires, who, finding themselves uncommonly ill
at ease in the pot-pourri of monarchs and ministers, of beau-monde and
demi-monde, would have given half their newly turned thousands to get
rid of the odor of Capel Court and the Bourse, and to attain the calm,
negligent assurance, the easy, tranquil insolence, the nonchalance with
Princes, and the supremacy among the Free Lances, which they saw and
coveted in the indolent Guardsman.

Bertie amused himself. He might be within a day of his ruin, but that
was no reason why he should not sip his iced sherbet and laugh with a
pretty French actress to-night. His epicurean formulary was the same as
old Herrick's, and he would have paraphrased this poet's famous quatrain
into

Drink a pure claret while you may,
Your "stiff" is still a-flying;
And he who dines so well to-day
To-morrow may be lying,
Pounced down upon by Jews _tout net_,
Or outlawed in a French _guinguette!_

Bertie was a great believer--if the words are not too sonorous and
too earnest to be applied to his very inconsequent views upon any and
everything--in the philosophy of happy accident. Far as it was in him to
have a conviction at all,--which was a thorough-going, serious sort
of thing not by any means his "form,"--he had a conviction that
the doctrine of "Eat, drink, and enjoy, for to-morrow we die" was
a universal panacea. He was reckless to the uttermost stretch of
recklessness, all serene and quiet though his pococurantism and his
daily manner were; and while subdued to the undeviating monotone and
languor of his peculiar set in all his temper and habits, the natural
dare-devil in him took out its inborn instincts in a wildly careless and
gamester-like imprudence with that most touchy tempered and inconsistent
of all coquettes--Fortune.

Things, he thought, could not well be worse with him than they were now.
So he piled all on one coup, and stood to be sunk or saved by the
Prix de Dames. Meanwhile, all the same, he murmured Mussetism to the
Guenevere under the ruins of the Alte Schloss, lost or won a rouleau at
the roulette-wheel, gave a banknote to the famous Isabel for a tea-rose,
drove the Zu-Zu four in hand to see the Flat races, took his guinea
tickets for the Concerts, dined with Princes, loung