ed spirit; and even him I suppose it rendered reckless; for he
took flight to London, and there, in a fast club, disposed of the bulk
of his considerable patrimony in the space of one winter. For years
thereafter he lived I know not how; always well dressed, always in good
hotels and good society, always with empty pockets. The charm of his
manner may have stood him in good stead; but though my own manners are
very agreeable, I have never found in them a source of livelihood; and
to explain the miracle of his continued existence, I must fall back upon
the theory of the philosopher, that in his case, as in all of the same
kind, "there was a suffering relative in the background." From this
genteel eclipse he reappeared upon the scene, and presently sought me
out in the character of a generous editor. It is in this part that I
best remember him; tall, slender, with a not ungraceful stoop; looking
quite like a refined gentleman, and quite like an urbane adventurer;
smiling with an engaging ambiguity; cocking at you one peaked eyebrow
with a great appearance of finesse; speaking low and sweet and thick,
with a touch of burr; telling strange tales with singular deliberation
and, to a patient listener, excellent effect. After all these ups and
downs, he seemed still, like the rich student that he was of yore, to
breathe of money; seemed still perfectly sure of himself and certain of
his end. Yet he was then upon the brink of his last overthrow. He had
set himself to found the strangest thing in our society: one of those
periodical sheets from which men suppose themselves to learn opinions;
in which young gentlemen from the Universities are encouraged, at so
much a line, to garble facts, insult foreign nations, and calumniate
private individuals; and which are now the source of glory, so that if a
man's name be often enough printed there, he becomes a kind of demigod;
and people will pardon him when he talks back and forth, as they do for
Mr. Gladstone; and crowd him to suffocation on railway platforms, as
they did the other day to General Boulanger; and buy his literary works,
as I hope you have just done for me. Our fathers, when they were upon
some great enterprise, would sacrifice a life; building, it may be, a
favourite slave into the foundations of their palace. It was with his
own life that my companion disarmed the envy of the gods. He fought his
paper single-handed; trusting no one, for he was something of a cynic;
up ea