ieme, de la cour," LEGRAND, TAILLEUR.
Horror of horrors! 'twas our own man! we had not paid him for two years:
we gave _conge_ that evening, and were off to the Antipodes.

"ROGUES IN OUTLINE."

BIRBONE I.

SIGNOR RUSCA.

"Rusca the lawyer, an exceeding knave."--POPE.

"Currunt verba licet, manus est velocior illis
Nondum lingua sua, dextra peregit opus."--MARTIAL.

A more knowing man in his way than Signor Avocato Rusca R---- it would
not be easy to find; so first-rate is he in his style, though his style
may not be quite first-rate! His father intended him for a lawyer,
whilst nature qualified him for a cheat; and, as there seemed to be
nothing absolutely incompatible in the prosecution of these two
professions,

"He sought, without offence to either,
How he might deal in both together;"

in doing which for a season, he accumulated much useful knowledge,
besides laying the foundation of his future fortune. Whether in his
earlier career he followed the practice of his learned predecessor,
Paulus, and sought, like him, to augment his fees by pleading in a hired
Sardonyx,[74] we have not heard; but his passion for jewels, none who
have seen him without his gloves (and we never saw him otherwise) can
for a moment doubt.

"Tight girt with gems, in massive mountings set,
Beneath their weight his tumid fingers sweat."

When he had come to find that his dealings as _dealer_ better repaid the
cost of his earlier education than the teasing uncertainties of the law,
a sense of filial duty perhaps, and of inclination certainly, led him
ultimately to give up all his time and talents, together with whatever
little money he had accumulated, _legally_ or _otherwise_, to the
acquisition of practical archaeology. He had seen enough of antiquarian
transactions already, to convince him of the unlimited credulity of a
certain class of connoisseurs--this knowledge was important, and he
began to apply it presently. Having made himself a competent scholar,
(he could quote Horace, and had Seneca's[75] moral precepts at his
_finger-ends_;) being plausible in speech, and knowing the market-price
of every ancient relic by rote, he could not but succeed; he succeeded
accordingly--and is now considered throughout Italy as a _mezzo
galant'uomo_ of first-rate abilities and tact!

By putting himself early under efficient tutelage at _Rome_, and doing
as they did _there_, he soon outstripped most of his masters in