Paris, for the poor little woman was forced to fly
from the city rather suddenly, and went thence to Brussels.

How well she remembered the place! She grinned as she looked up at the
little entresol which she had occupied, and thought of the Bareacres
family, bawling for horses and flight, as their carriage stood in the
porte-cochere of the hotel. She went to Waterloo and to Laeken, where
George Osborne's monument much struck her. She made a little sketch of
it. "That poor Cupid!" she said; "how dreadfully he was in love with
me, and what a fool he was! I wonder whether little Emmy is alive. It
was a good little creature; and that fat brother of hers. I have his
funny fat picture still among my papers. They were kind simple people."

At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame de Saint Amour to her
friend, Madame la Comtesse de Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General,
the famous Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by the
deceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte table.
Second-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who always have a lawsuit,
and very simple English folks, who fancy they see "Continental society"
at these houses, put down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame de
Borodino's tables. The gallant young fellows treated the company round
to champagne at the table d'hote, rode out with the women, or hired
horses on country excursions, clubbed money to take boxes at the play
or the opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the
ecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in Devonshire about
their felicitous introduction to foreign society.

Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen, and ruled in
select pensions. She never refused the champagne, or the bouquets, or
the drives into the country, or the private boxes; but what she
preferred was the ecarte at night,--and she played audaciously. First
she played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then for
Napoleons, then for notes: then she would not be able to pay her
month's pension: then she borrowed from the young gentlemen: then she
got into cash again and bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxed
and wheedled before: then she was playing for ten sous at a time, and
in a dire state of poverty: then her quarter's allowance would come
in, and she would pay off Madame de Borodino's score and would once
more take the cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de
Raff.