ed it highly. It formed part of what he used boastfully to call his
"Philosophy," and he contrasted it proudly with the condition of those
fellows, who instead of rebounding under pressure, collapsed, and sunk
never to rise more. The vanity with which he regarded himself supplied
him with a vindictive dislike to the world, who could suffer a fellow
endowed and gifted as he was to be always in straits and difficulties.
He mistook--a very common mistake by-the-way--a capacity to enjoy, for a
nature deservant of enjoyment, and he thought it the greatest injustice
to see scores of well-off people who possessed neither his own good
constitution nor his capacity to endure dissipation uninjured. "Wretches
not fit to live," as he said, and assuredly most unfit to live the life
which he alone prized or cared for. He dined somewhat sumptuously at one
of the great restaurants. "He owed it to himself," he said, after all
that dreary cookery of the villa, to refresh his memory of the pleasures
of the table, and he ordered a flask of Marco-brunner that cost a
Napoleon. He was the caressed of the waiters, and escorted to the door
by the host There is no supremacy so soon recognised as that of wealth,
and Calvert, for a few hours, gave himself up to the illusion that
he was rich. As the opera was closed, he went to one of the smaller
theatres, and sat out for a while one of those dreariest of all dreary
things, a comedy by the "immortal Goidoni!"

Immortal indeed, so long as sleep remains an endowment of humanity!
He tried to interest himself in a plot wherein the indecency was only
veiled by the dulness, and where the language of the drawing-room
never rose above the tone of the servants'-hall, and left the place in
disgust, to seek anywhere, or anyhow, something more, amusing than this.

Without well knowing how, he found himself at the door of the Gettone,
the hell he had visited when he was last at Milan.

"They shall sup me, at all events," said he, as he deposited his hat and
cane in the ante-chamber. The rooms were crowded and it was some time
before Calvert could approach the play-table, and gain a view of the
company. He recognised many of the former visitors. There sat the pretty
woman with the blonde ringlets, her diamond-studded fingers carelessly
playing with the gold pieces before her; there was the pale student-like
boy--he seemed a mere boy--with his dress-cravat disordered, and his
hair dishevelled, just as he had see