. But I know
how to make falsehood impossible. Add I ORDERED HER TO GO TO SLEEP."

At this moment the clock (after its previous convulsions) sounded
TWELVE. And as the new Editor* of the Cornhill Magazine--and HE, I
promise you, won't stand any nonsense--will only allow seven pages, I am
obliged to leave off at THE VERY MOST INTERESTING POINT OF THE STORY.

* Mr. Thackeray retired from the Editorship of the Cornhill
Magazine in March, 1862.

PART III.

"Are you of our fraternity? I see you are not. The secret which
Mademoiselle de Bechamel confided to me in her mad triumph and wild
hoyden spirits--she was but a child, poor thing, poor thing, scarce
fifteen--but I love them young--a folly not unusual with the old!" (Here
Mr. Pinto thrust his knuckles into his hollow eyes; and, I am sorry to
say, so little regardful was he of personal cleanliness, that his tears
made streaks of white over his gnarled dark hands.) "Ah, at fifteen,
poor child, thy fate was terrible! Go to! It is not good to love me,
friend. They prosper not who do. I divine you. You need not say what you
are thinking--"

In truth, I was thinking, if girls fall in love with this sallow
hook-nosed, glass-eyed, wooden-legged, dirty, hideous old man, with the
sham teeth, they have a queer taste. THAT is what I was thinking.

"Jack Wilkes said the handsomest man in London had but half an hour's
start of him. And without vanity, I am scarcely uglier than Jack Wilkes.
We were members of the same club at Medenham Abbey, Jack and I, and had
many a merry night together. Well, sir, I--Mary of Scotland knew me but
as a little hunchbacked music-master; and yet, and yet, I think SHE was
not indifferent to her David Riz--and SHE came to misfortune. They all
do--they all do!"

"Sir, you are wandering from your point!" I said, with some severity.
For, really, for this old humbug to hint that he had been the baboon who
frightened the club at Medenham, that he had been in the Inquisition at
Valladolid--that under the name of D. Riz, as he called it, he had known
the lovely Queen of Scots--was a LITTLE too much. "Sir," then I said,
"you were speaking about a Miss de Bechamel. I really have not time to
hear all your biography."

"Faith, the good wine gets into my head." (I should think so, the old
toper! Four bottles all but two glasses.) "To return to poor Blanche.
As I sat laughing, joking with her, she let slip a word, a little
word, which filled me w