tch, and Cowry, fateful three of their period, avenged and scourged
both innocence and naughtiness; innocence, on the whole, the least, when
their withering suspicion of it had hunted the unhappy thing to the
bank of Ophelia's ditch. Mallard and Chumley Potts, Captain Abrane, Sir
Meeson Corby, Lord Brailstone, were plucked at and rattled, put to the
blush, by a pursuit of inquiries conducted with beaks. High-nosed dames
will surpass eminent judges in their temerity on the border-line where
Ahem sounds the warning note to curtained decency. The courtly M. de
St. Ombre had to stand confused. He, however, gave another version of
Captain Abrane's 'fiddler,' and precipitated the great ladies into
the reflection, that French gentlemen, since the execrable French
Revolution, have lost their proper sense of the distinctions of Class.
Homme d'esprit, applied to a roving adventurer, a scarce other than
vagabond, was either an undiscriminating epithet or else a further
example of the French deficiency in humour.

Dexterous contriver, he undoubtedly is. Lady Cowry has it from Sir
Meeson Corby, who had it from the poor dowager, that Lord Fleetwood
has installed the man in his house and sits at the opposite end of
his table; fished him up from Whitechapel, where the countess is left
serving oranges at a small fruit-shop. With her own eyes, Lady Arpington
saw her there; and she can't be got to leave the place unless her
husband drives his coach down to fetch her. That he declines to do; so
she remains the Whitechapel Countess, all on her hind heels against the
offer of a shilling of her husband's money, if she 's not to bring him
to his knees; and goes about at night with a low Methodist singing
hymns along those dreadful streets, while Lord Fleetwood gives gorgeous
entertainments. One signal from the man he has hired, and he stops
drinking--he will stop speaking as soon as the man's mouth is open. He
is under a complete fascination, attributable, some say, to passes
of the hands, which the man won't wash lest he should weaken their
influence.

For it cannot be simply his violin playing. They say he was a pupil of
a master of the dark art in Germany, and can practise on us to make us
think his commonest utterances extraordinarily acute and precious. Lord
Fleetwood runs round quoting him to everybody, quite ridiculously. But
the man's influence is sufficient to induce his patron to drive down and
fetch the Whitechapel Countess home in