ven there, while one of the officers
will engage to get back the goods, upon paying the thieves a certain sum
in exchange: if this is refused, your effects are gone forever! A pretty
state of internal government!

It was about a year after the murder that my mother informed me of an
event which tore from my heart its last private tie; namely, the death
of Aubrey. The last letter I had received from him has been placed
before the reader; it was written at Devereux Court, just before he left
it forever. Montreuil had been with him during the illness which proved
fatal, and which occurred in Ireland. He died of consumption; and when
I heard from my mother that Montreuil dwelt most glowingly upon the
devotion he had manifested during the last months of his life, I could
not help fearing that the morbidity of his superstition had done the
work of physical disease. On this fatal news, my mother retired
from Devereux Court to a company of ladies of our faith, who resided
together, and practised the most ascetic rules of a nunnery, though they
gave not to their house that ecclesiastical name. My mother had long
meditated this project, and it was now a melancholy pleasure to put it
into execution. From that period I rarely heard from her, and by little
and little she so shrank from all worldly objects that my visits, and I
believe even those of Gerald, became unwelcome and distasteful.

As to my lawsuit, it went on gloriously, according to the assertions of
my brisk little lawyer, who had declared so emphatically that he liked
making quick work of a suit. And, at last, what with bribery and feeing
and pushing, a day was fixed for the final adjustment of my claim. It
came--the cause was heard and lost! I should have been ruined, but for
one circumstance; the old lady, my father's godmother, who had witnessed
my first and concealed marriage, left me a pretty estate near Epsom.
I turned it into gold, and it was fortunate that I did so soon, as the
reader is about to see.

The queen died; and a cloud already began to look menacing to the
eyes of the Viscount Bolingbroke, and therefore to those of the Count
Devereux. "We will weather out the shower," said Bolingbroke.

"Could not you," said I, "make our friend Oxford the Talapat?"* and
Bolingbroke laughed. All men find wit in the jests broken on their
enemies!

* A thing used by the Siamese for the same purpose as we now use the
umbrella. A work descriptive of Siam, by M. de l