and a
sap, and received severe buffetings from his junior at football; and
now, being much the more conventional and unimpeachable of the two, took
his revenge by carrying many tales to the old Count of his wilder
son--tales to which Falkenstein gave strong foundation. For he was
restless and reckless, strikingly original, and, above the common herd,
too impatient to take any meddling with his affairs, and too proud to
explain where he was misjudged; and, though he held a crack government
place, good pay, and all but a sinecure, he often spent more than he
had, for economy was a dead-letter to him, and if any man asked him a
loan, he was too generous to say "No." Life in all its phases he had
seen from the time he left school, and you know, mon ami, we cannot see
life on a groat--at least, through the bouquet of the wines at Vefours,
and the brilliance of the gas-light in Casinos and Redoutes. The
fascinations of play were over him--the iron hand of debt pressed upon
him; altogether, as he sat through the first hours of the New Year,
smoking, and gazing on the flickering fire gleams, there was not much
light either in his past or future!

Keenly imaginative and susceptible, blase and skeptical though he was,
the weight of the Old Year and of many gone before it, weighed heavily
on his thoughts. Scenes and deeds of his life, that he would willingly
have blotted out, rose before him; vague regrets, unformed desires,
floated to him on the midnight chimes.

The Old Year was drifting away on the dark clouds floating on to the
sea, the New Year was dawning on the vast human life swarming in the
costly palaces and crowded dens around him. The past was past,
ineffaceable, and relentless; the future lay hid in the unborn days, and
Falkenstein, his pipe out, his fire cold and black, took a sedative, and
threw himself on his bed, to sleep heavily and restlessly through the
struggling morning light of the New Year.

James Cashranger, Esq., of 133, Lowndes Square, was a millionnaire, and
the million owed its being to the sale of his entire, which was of high
celebrity, being patronised by all the messes and clubs, shipped to all
the colonies, blessed by all the H. E. I. C.s, shouted by all the potmen
as "Beer-r-r-how," and consumed by all England generally. But
Cashranger's soul soared above the snobisms of malt and jack, and a la
Jourdain, of bourgeois celebrity, he would have let any Dorante of the
beau monde fleece him throug