in an audible mutter,
rejoined,

"C--o--u (cou) n--t (unt) Count, D--e--v. Och, by my shoul, and it's
Count Devereux after all I'm thinking?"

"You think with equal profundity and truth."

"You may well say that, your honour. Stip in a bit: I'll tell my master;
it is himself that will see you in a twinkling!"

"But you forget that your master is ill?" said I.

"Sorrow a bit for the matter o' that: my master is never ill to a
jontleman."

And with this assurance "the Beau's keeper" ushered me up a splendid
staircase into a large, dreary, faded apartment, and left me to amuse
myself with the curiosities within, while he went to perform a cure
upon his master's "megrims." The chamber, suiting with the house and
the owner, looked like a place in the other world set apart for the
reception of the ghosts of departed furniture. The hangings were wan and
colourless; the chairs and sofas were most spiritually unsubstantial;
the mirrors reflected all things in a sepulchral sea-green; even a huge
picture of Mr. Fielding himself, placed over the chimney-piece, seemed
like the apparition of a portrait, so dim, watery, and indistinct had
it been rendered by neglect and damp. On a huge tomb-like table in
the middle of the room, lay two pencilled profiles of Mr. Fielding, a
pawnbroker's ticket, a pair of ruffles, a very little muff, an immense
broadsword, a Wycherley comb, a jackboot, and an old plumed hat; to
these were added a cracked pomatum-pot containing ink, and a scrap of
paper, ornamented with sundry paintings of hearts and torches, on which
were scrawled several lines in a hand so large and round that I could
not avoid seeing the first verse, though I turned away my eyes as
quickly as possible; that verse, to the best of my memory, ran thus:
"Say, lovely Lesbia, when thy swain." Upon the ground lay a box of
patches, a periwig, and two or three well thumbed books of songs.
Such was the reception-room of Beau Fielding, one indifferently well
calculated to exhibit the propensities of a man, half bully, half
fribble; a poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, a walking museum of all odd
humours, and a living shadow of a past renown. "There are changes in wit
as in fashion," said Sir William Temple, and he proceeds to instance a
nobleman who was the greatest wit of the court of Charles I., and the
greatest dullard in that of Charles II.* But Heavens! how awful are the
revolutions of coxcombry! what a change from Beau Fielding the B