nd enfeebled in person, was still indefatigable in
the pursuit of enjoyment, and it was the venerable Viscount's boast
that he could drink as much claret as the youngest member of the society
which he frequented. He lived with the youth about town: he gave them
countless dinners at Richmond and Greenwich: an enlightened patron of
the drama in all languages and of the Terpsichorean art, he received
dramatic professors of all nations at his banquets--English from the
Covent Garden and Strand houses, Italians from the Haymarket, French
from their own pretty little theatre, or the boards of the Opera where
they danced. And at his villa on the Thames, this pillar of the State
gave sumptuous entertainments to scores of young men of fashion,
who very affably consorted with the ladies and gentlemen of the
greenroom--with the former chiefly, for Viscount Colchicum preferred
their society as more polished and gay than that of their male brethren.

Pen went the next day and paid his entrance-money at the Club, which
operation carried off exactly one-third of his hundred pounds; and
took possession of the edifice, and ate his luncheon there with immense
satisfaction. He plunged into an easy-chair in the library, and tried to
read all the magazines. He wondered whether the members were looking at
him, and that they could dare to keep on their hats in such fine rooms.
He sate down and wrote a letter to Fairoaks on the Club paper, and said,
what a comfort this place would be to him after his day's work was
over. He went over to his uncle's lodgings in Bury Street with some
considerable tremor, and in compliance with his mother's earnest desire,
that he should instantly call on Major Pendennis; and was not a little
relieved to find that the Major had not yet returned to town. His
apartments were blank. Brown hollands covered his library-table, and
bills and letters lay on the mantelpiece, grimly awaiting the return of
their owner. The Major was on the Continent, the landlady of the house
said, at Badnbadn, with the Marcus of Steyne. Pen left his card upon the
shelf with the rest. Fairoaks was written on it still.

When the Major returned to London, which he did in time for the fogs of
November, after enjoying which he proposed to spend Christmas with some
friends in the country, he found another card of Arthur's, on which Lamb
Court, Temple, was engraved, and a note from that young gentleman and
from his mother, stating that he was com