Grainger was delighted. I don't set up
to be a Puritan, as you know, Dora, and I
always think of that saint with admiration,
who used to play cards with a swearing
and abandoned crew, and thus gradually
acquired an influence over them. There
again the complacency peeps out—an almost
sacerdotal complacency. Precisely like a
saint, am I not? But, again and again I
repeat, this is all for your pretty eyes and
my own ugly ones.

I went with them. I often say to myself,
"On this day or on this night, let us have
a little festival," when I have been good
and deserve it; when I have been otherwise,
I assure you I can be very stern
and severe to myself. So we sat down
and counted the gold, which was close on
nine hundred napoleons. I own to a
certain wrench and a yearning as I looked
at it, and I think the amount of unconscious
greediness—for we are all animals—in
the three faces must have been overpowering.
Two waiters afar off heard the chink—
every ear learns that. They sniffed the dear
metal as a vulture does carrion. Hungry
gamblers looked up from their drink with
ferocious envy. The owner alone was
unconcerned.

"Confound the beggars! if I didn't
think they'd swindle me, I'd have been as
glad to have bank notes."

Here was the supper. D'Eyncourt—
who to his other vices added that of
gourmandise—spoke little and eat heartily.
I confess to doing the same, and most
gratefully do I owe my thanks to the
Providence who has so restored me as to
give me the power of enjoying moderately
such things. What have I done to deserve
these mercies, and not become like one of
the worn-out beings who come here and
drink with a faint hope of miraculously
recovering their lost stomachs? We were
very merry, Grainger specially so, and I
suspected that the honest lad had helped
his friend with a handful of what he had
carried off. But D'Eyncourt's cat-like
eyes fell on me several times, as if he was
about to say something. He began, in his
drawl:

"The more I see of you, Mr. Austen, the
more you become a mystery to me."

I have put down some people before
now, so I thought I would settle him
before he went further.

"Curious," I said, " the more I see of
you, the less you are a mystery; in fact,
the first day I read you like a book."

Pollock laughed loud. " Hit you on the
sternum, my boy, and right, too, though
not flattering."

"Austen's mauleys come down hard
when they do come down," said Grainger.

"What I was saying," said D'Eyncourt,
in his slow impressive way (which I do
envy him), as though he had not heard, as
if he had stopped speaking to light his
cigar, which was now all right—" what I
say is, I don't quite understand your rôle—
I mean the attitude you have to this bank.
If you disapprove it, I should keep away—
turn my back on Jericho—let the fiery
sword do its work; but I certainly wouldn't
shelter myself under their gorgeous roof,
sit on their luxurious sofas, read their
English newspapers, with such strong
convictions. I'd be almost inclined to go to
M. Blanc, the head of the thing, and tell
him so boldly."

I was not sorry that he had begun in
this fashion, and really wished to "tackle"
him before them.

"I think," said I, smiling, "we can all
imagine M. Blanc's polite and pleasant
repartee, if any such well-meaning
remonstrant were to present himself. But the
fact is, I do not use their Times or their
luxurious sofas and chairs; and as for their
roof—well, I own to taking that barren
advantage of them."

"Had you again—on the nob this time,
D'Eyncourt," said the youth, who had
already taken more wine than fitted him to
be a nice judge of such effects.

"Do leave those low boxing metaphors
aside, Mr. Pollock—at least among gentlemen.
You mayn't be in such spirits
tomorrow night. But"—turning to me—
"you are not quixotic enough to expect
that a still small voice like yours—I mean
your conscience's—could make itself heard
in this Babel? Have you such a sense of
comical self-delusion that you can place
yourself at that large doorway and turn
back the mob of scoundrels, blackguards,
roughs, cheats, jailbirds, lorettes—aye,
and even decent men and women—with
your faint expostulation? Do you tell us
that?"

"No," I said, firmly; and then, as
politely as I could, " but, first of all, suppose
it was my whim; I am as much entitled to
have that as any one here."

"Scarcely," he said. " As a rule, the
gamblers never make themselves ridiculous."

"That's like having you, my friend,"
said the boy to me.

"But, apart from mere verbal