écarté tables, and the women at a little distance, you might fancy yourself for a while in good society, and that madame was a real countess. Many people did so fancy: and Becky was for a while one of the most dashing ladies of the countess's salons.

But it is probable that her old creditors of 1815 found her out, and caused her to leave Paris, for the poor little woman was forced to fly from the city rather suddenly; and went thence to Brussels.

the cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de Raff.

When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is, that she owed three months' pension to Madame de Borodino, of which fact, and of the gambling, and of the drinking, and of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr. Muff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him, and of her coaxing and flirting with Milor Noodle, son of Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev. Mr. Muff, whom she How well she remembered the place! She used to take into her private room, and of grinned as she looked up at the little entresol whom she won large sums at écarté-of which she had occupied, and thought of the which fact, I say, and of a hundred of her Bareacres family, bawling for horses and other knaveries, the Countess de Borodino flight, as their carriage stood in the porte-informs every English person who stops cochère of the hotel. She went to Waterloo at her establishment, and announces that and to Lacken, where George Osborne's Madame Rawdon was nothing better than à monument much struck her. She made a little sketch of it. 64 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.”

vipère,

So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent in various cities of Europe, as restless as Ulysses or Bampfylde Moore Carew. Her taste for disrespectability grew more and more remarkable. became a perfect Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would make your hair stand on end to meet.

She

At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame de Saint Amour to her friend, There is no town of any mark in Europe Madame la Comtesse de Borodino, widow but it has its little colony of English raffs— of Napoleon's general, the famous Count de men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer Borodino, who was left with no resource by reads out periodically at the Sheriffs' Court the deceased hero but that of a table-d'-young gentlemen of very good family hote and an écarté table. Second-rate dandies and roués, 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. At the table d'hôte the gallant young fellows treated the company round to champagne, rode out with the women, or hired horses on country excursons, clubbed money to take boxes at the play or the opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the écarté tables, and wrote home to their parents in Devonshire, about their felicitous introduction to foreign society.

often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters of billiard-rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and gaming-tables. They people the debtors' prisons-they drink and swagger-they fight and brawlthey run away without paying-they have duels with French and German officersthey cheat Mr. Spooney at écarté-they get the money, and drive off to Baden in magnificent britzkas-they try their infallible martingale, and lurk about the tables with empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless bucks, until they can swindle a Jew banker with a sham bill of exchange, or find another Mr. Spooney to rob. The alternations of splendor and misery which these people Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding- undergo are very queer to view. Their house queen and ruled in select pensions. life must be one of great excitement. She never refused the champagne, or the Becky-must it be owned?-took to this bouquets, or the drives into the country, or life, and took to it not unkindly. She went the private boxes; but what she preferred about from town to town among these Bowas the écarté at night-and she played au-hemians. The lucky Mrs. Rawdon was daciously. 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

known at every play-table in Germany. She and Madame de Cruchecasseé kept house at Florence together. It is said she was ordered out of Munich; and my friend Mr. Frederic Pigeon avers that it was at her house at Lausanne that he was hocussed at supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder and the Honorable Mr. Deuceace. We are bound, you see, to give some account of Becky's biography; but of this part, the less, perhaps, that is said the better.

pictures) and dubious antiques; and the enormous gilt crown and arms of the princely owner, a gold mushroom on a crimson field (the color of the pocket-handkerchiefs which he sold), and the silver fountain of the Pompili family shone all over the roof, doors, and panels of the house, and over the grand velvet baldaquins prepared to receive popes and emperors.

They say that when Mrs. Crawley was | resplendent with gilt frames, (containing particularly down on her luck, she gave concerts and lessons in music here and there. There was a Madame de Raudon, who certainly had a matinée musicale at Wildbad, accompanied by Herr Spoff, premier pianist to the Hospodar of Wallachia, and my little friend Mr. Eaves, who knew every body, and had traveled every where, always used to declare that he was at Strasburg in the year 1830, when a certain Mad- So Becky, who had arrived in the dilame Rebecque made her appearance in the igence from Florence, and was lodged at an opera of the Dame Blanche, giving occasion inn in a very modest way, got a card for to a furious row in the theater there. She Prince Polonia's entertainment, and her was hissed off the stage by the audience, maid dressed her with unusual care, and partly from her own incompetency, but she went to this fine ball leaning on the arm chiefly from the ill-advised sympathy of of Major Loder, with whom she happened some persons in the parquet, (where the to be traveling at the time; (the same man officers of the garrison had their admissions); who shot Prince Ravioli at Naples the next and Eaves was certain that the unfortunate year, and was caned by Sir John Buckskin débutante in question was no other than for carrying four kings in his hat besides Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. those which he used in playing at écarté,)—— and this pair went into the rooms together, and Becky saw a number of old faces which she remembered in happier days, when she was not innocent, but not found out. Major Loder knew a great number of foreigners, keeu-looking whiskered men with dirty striped ribbons in their button-holes, and a very small display of linen; but his own countrymen, it might be remarked, eschewed the major. Becky, too, knew some ladies here and there-French widows, dubious Italian countesses, whose husbands had treated them ill-faugh-what shall we say, we who have moved among some of the finest company of Vanity Fair, of this refuse and sediment of rascals? If we play, let it be with clean cards, and not with this dirty pack. But every man who has formed one of the innumerable army of travelers has seen these marauding irregulars hanging on, like Nym and Pistol, to the main force; wearing the king's colors, and boasting of his commission, but pillaging for themselves, and occasionally gibbeted by the road-side.

She was, in fact no better than a vagabond upon this earth. When she got her money she gambled; when she had gambled it she was put to shifts to live; who knows how or by what means she succeeded? It is said that she was once seen at St. Petersburg, but was summarily dismissed from that capital by the police, so that there can not be any possibility of truth in the report that she was a Russian spy at Töplitz and Vienna afterward. I have even been informed that at Paris she discovered a relation of her own, no less a person than her maternal grandmother, who was not by any means a Montmorenci, but a hideous old box-opener at a theater on the Boulevards. The meeting between them, of which other persons as it is hinted elsewhere, seem to have been acquainted, must have been a very affecting interview. The present historian can give no certain details regarding

the event.

It happened at Rome once, that Mrs. de Raudon's half-year's salary had just been paid into the principal banker's there, and, as every body who had a balance of above five hundred scudi was invited to the balls which this prince of merchants gave during the winter, Becky had the honor of a card, and appeared at one of the Prince and Princess Polonia's splendid evening entertainments. The princess was of the family of Pompili, lineally descended from the second king of Rome, and Egeria of the house of Olympus, while the prince's grandfather, Alessandro Polonia, sold wash-balls, essences, tobacco, and pocket-handkerchiefs, ran errands for gentlemen, and lent money in a small way. All the great company in Rome thronged to his saloons-princes, dukes, embassadors, artists, fiddlers, monsignori, young bears with their leadersevery rank and condition of men. His halls blazed with light and magnificence; were

Well, she was hanging on the arm of Major Loder, and they went through the rooms together, and drank a great quantity of champagne at the buffet, where the poople, and especially the major's irregular corps, struggled furiously for refreshments, of which when the pair had had enough, they pushed on until they reached the duchess's own pink velvet saloon, at the end of the suite of apartments (where the statue of the Venus is, and the great Venice looking-glasses, framed in silver), and where the princely family were entertaining their most distinguished guests at a round table at supper. It was just such a little select banquet as that of which Becky recollected that she had partaken at Lord Steyne's-and there he sat at Polonia's table, and she saw him.

The scar cut by the diamond on his

white, bald, shining forehead, made a burn- | Fenouil, his lordship's confidential man, who ing red mark; his red whiskers were dyed came up nodding to her rather familiarly, of a purple hue, which made his pale face and putting a finger to his hat. "I knew look still paler. He wore his collar and that madame was here," he said; "I folorders, his blue ribbon and garter. He was lowed her from her hotel. I have some ada greater prince than any there, though vice to give madame." there was a reigning duke and a royal highness, with their princesses, and at his lordship's side was seated the beautiful Countess of Belladonna, née de Glandier, whose husband (the Count Paolo della Belladonna) so well known for his brilliant entomological collections, had been long absent on a mission to the Emperor of Morocco.

her side with a livid face and ghastly eyes. ments, and England one of her loftiest paHate, or anger, or desire, caused them to triots and statesmen," &c., &c. brighten now and then still; but ordinarily, His will was a good deal disputed, and an they gave no light, and seemned tired of look-attempt was made to force from Madame ing out on a world of which almost all the de Belladonna the celebrated jewel called pleasure and all the best beauty had palled the "Jew's-eye" diamond, which his lordupon the worn out, wicked old man. ship always wore on his forefinger, and which Monseigueur has never recovered the it was said that she removed from it after shock of that night, never," Monsieur Fen- his lamented demise. But his confidential ouil whispered to Mrs. Crawley as the car-friend and attendant, Monsieur Fenouil, riage flashed by, and she peeped out at it proved that the ring had been presented to from behind the shrubs that hid her. "That the said Madame de Belladonna two days was a consolation at any rate," Becky before the marquis's death; as were the thought. bank notes, jewels, Neapolitan and French bonds, &c., found in his lordship's secretaire, and claimed by his heirs, from that injured woman.

Whether my lord really had murderous intentions toward Mrs. Becky, as Monsieur Fenouil said (since Monseigneur's death he has returned to his native country, where he lives much respected, and has purchased from his prince the title of Baron Finelli)— and the factotum objected to have to do with assassination; or whether he simply had a commission to frighten Mrs. Crawley out of a city where his lordship proposed to pass the winter, and the sight of her would be eminently disagreeable to the great nobleman, is a point which has never been ascertained but the threat had its effect upon the little woman, and she sought no more to intrude herself upon the presence of her old patron.

Every body knows the melancholy end of that nobleman, which befel at Naples two months after the French Revolution of 1830; when the most Honorable George Gustavus, Marquis of Steyne, Earl of Gaunt and of Gaunt Castle, in the Peerage of Ireland, Viscount Hellborough, Baron Pitchley and Grillsby, a Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, of the Golden Fleece of Spain, of the Russian Order of Saint Nicholas of the First Class, of the Turkish Order of the Crescent, First Lord of the Powder Closet and Groom of the Back Stairs, Colonel of the Gaunt or Regent's Own Regiment of Militia, a Trustee of the British Museum, an elder Brother of the Trinity House, a Governor of the Grey Friars, and D.C.L., died, after a series of fits, brought on, as the papers said, by the shock occasioned to his lordship's sensibilities by the downfall of the ancient French monarchy.

CHAPTER LXV.

FULL OF BUSINESS AND PLEASURE.

THE day after the meeting at the playtable, Jos had himself arrayed with unusual care and splendor, and without thinking it necessary to say a word to any member of his family regarding the occurrences of the previous night, or asking for their company in his walk, he sallied forth at an early hour, and was presently seen making inquiries at the door of the Elephant Hotel. In consequence of the fetes the house was full of company, the tables in the streets were already surrounded by persons smoking and drinking the national small-beer, the public rooms were in a cloud of smoke, and Mr. Jos having, in his pompous way, and with his clumsy German, made inquiries for the person of whom he was in search, was directed to the very top of the house, above the first-floor rooms where some traveling peddlers had lived, and were exhibiting their jewelry and brocades; above the second-floor apartments occupied by the état major of the gambling firm; above the third-floor rooms, tenanted by the band of renowned Bohemian vaulters and tumblers; and so on to the little cabins of the roof, where, among students, bag-men, small tradesmen, and country-folks, come in for the festival, Becky had found a little nest; as dirty a little refuge as ever beauty lay hid in.

An eloquent catalogue appeared in a weekly print, describing his virtues, his mag- Becky liked the life. She was at home nificence, his talents, and his good actions. with every body in the place-peddlers, His sensibility, his attachment to the illustri- punters, tumblers, students, and all. She ous House of Bourbon, with which he claim- was of a wild, roving nature, inherited from ed an alliance, were such that he could not father and mother, who were both Bobesurvive the misfortunes of his august kins- mians, by taste and circumstance; if a lord His body was buried at Naples, and was not by, she would talk to his courier his heart-that heart which always beat with the greatest pleasure; the din, the with every generous and noble emotion-stir, the drink, the smoke, the tattle of the was brought back to Castle Gaunt in a silver Hebrew peddlers, the solemn, braggart ways “In him,” Mr. Wagg said, "the poor of the poor tumblers, the sonorous talk of the and the fine arts have lost a beneficent pa-gambling-table officials, the songs and swagtron, society one of its most brilliant orna-ger of the students, and the general buzz

men.

urn.

and hum of the place had pleased and tick- | yonder on the chair;" and she gave the led the little woman, even when her luck civilian's hand a little squeeze, and laughwas down, and she had not wherewithal to ingly placed him upon it. As for herself, pay her bill. How pleasant was all this bus-she placed herself on the bed-not on the tle to her now that her purse was full of bottle and plate, you may be sure-on which money, which little Georgy had won for her Jos might have reposed, had he chosen that the night before! seat; and so there she sate and talked with her old admirer.

"How little years have changed you," she said, with a look of tender interest. "I should have known you any where ; what a comfort it is among strangers to see once more the frank, honest face of an old

As Jos came creaking and puffing up the final stairs, and was speechless when he got to the landing, and began to wipe his face and then to look for No. 92, the room where he was directed to seek for the person he wanted, the door of the opposite chamber, No. 94, was open, and a student, in jack-friend!" boots and a dirty schlafrock, was lying on the bed smoking a long pipe; while another student, in long yellow hair and a braided coat, exceeding smart and dirty too, was actually on his knees at No. 92, bawling through the keyhole supplications to the person within.

"Go away," said a well-known voice, which made Jos thrill, "I expect somebody; I expect my grandpapa. He mustn't see you there."

"Angel Engländerinn!" bellowed the kneeling student with the whity-brown ringlets and large finger-ring, "do take compassion upon us. Make an appointment. Dine with me and Fitz at the inn in the park. We will have roast pheasants and porter, plum-pudding and French wine. We shall die if you don't."

The frank, honest face, to tell the truth, at this moment bore any expression but one of openness and honesty; it was, on the contrary, much perturbed and puzzled in look. Jos was surveying the queer little apartment in which he found his old flame. One of her gowns hung over the bed, another depending from a hook of the door: her bonnet obscured half the looking-glass, on which, too, lay the prettiest little pair of bronze boots; a French novel was on the table by the bedside, with a candle, not of wax. Becky had thought of popping that into the bed too, but she only put in the little paper nightcap, with which she had put the candle out on going to sleep.

"I should have known you any where," she continued; a woman never forgets some things. And you were the first man I ever

"That we will," said the young nobleman on the bed-and this colloquy Jos over--I ever saw." heard, though he did not comprehend it, for the reason that he had never studied the language in which it was carried on.

The gentleman from Bengal was standing disconcerted by this incident when the door of the 92 opened of itself, and Becky's little head peeped out full of archness and mischief. She lighted on Jos. It's you," she said, coming out. "How I have been waiting for you! Stop! not yet-in one minute you shall come in." In that instant she put a rouge-pot, a brandy-bottle, and a plate of broken meat into the bed, gave one smooth to her hair, and finally let in her visitor.

"Was I, really?" said Jos. "God bless my soul-you-you don't say so."

Oh,

"When I came with your sister from Chiswick, I was scarcely more than a child," Becky said. "How is that dear love? her husband was a sad, wicked man; and of course, it was of me that the poor dear was jealous. As if I cared about him, heigho: when there was somebody--but no-don't let us talk of old times ;" and she passed her handkerchief with the tattered lace across her eyelids.

66

"Is not this a strange place," she continued, for a woman who has lived in a very different world, too, to be found in? I have had so many griefs and wrongs, Joseph Sedley, I have been made to suffer so cruelly, that I am almost made mad sometimes. I can't stay still in any place, but wander about always restless and unhappy. All my friends have been false to me-all. There is no such thing as an honest man in the world. I was the truest wife that ever She had, by way of morning robe, a pink lived, though I married my husband out of domino, a trifle faded and soiled, and mark- pique, because somebody else—but never ed here and there with pomatum; but her mind that. I was true, and he trampled arms shone out from the loose sleeves of the upon me, and deserted me. I was the dress very white and fair, and it was tied fondest mother. I had but one child, one round her little waist, so as not ill to set off darling, one hope, one joy, which I held to the trim little figure of the wearer. She my heart with a mother's affection, which led Jos by the haud into her garret. Come was my life, my prayer, my-my blessing; in," she said. "Come, and talk to me. Sit and they-they tore it from me-tore it