nstein's time of life dragons are not so fierce and alert.
They cannot turn so readily, some of their old teeth have dropped out,
and their eyes require more sleep than they needed in days when they
were more active, venomous, and dangerous. I, for my part, know a few
female dragons, de par le monde, and, as I watch them and remember what
they were, admire the softening influence of years upon these whilom
destroyers of man- and woman-kind. Their scales are so soft that any
knight with a moderate power of thrust can strike them: their claws,
once strong enough to tear out a thousand eyes, only fall with a feeble
pat that scarce raises the skin: their tongues, from their toothless old
gums, dart a venom which is rather disagreeable than deadly. See them
trailing their languid tails, and crawling home to their caverns
at roosting-time! How weak are their powers of doing injury! their
maleficence how feeble! How changed are they since the brisk days when
their eyes shot wicked fire; their tongue spat poison; their breath
blasted reputation; and they gobbled up a daily victim at least!

If the good folks at Oakhurst could not resist the testimony which
was brought to them regarding Harry's ill-doings, why should Madame
Bernstein, who in the course of her long days had had more experience of
evil than all the Oakhurst family put together, be less credulous
than they? Of course every single old woman of her ladyship's society
believed every story that was told about Mr. Harry Warrington's
dissipated habits, and was ready to believe as much more ill of him as
you please. When the little dancer went back to London, as she did,
it was because that heartless Harry deserted her. He deserted her for
somebody else, whose name was confidently given,--whose name?--whose
half-dozen names the society at Tunbridge Wells would whisper about;
where there congregated people of all ranks and degrees, women of
fashion, women of reputation, of demi-reputation, of virtue, of no
virtue,--all mingling in the same rooms, dancing to the same fiddles,
drinking out of the same glasses at the Wells, and alike in search of
health, or society, or pleasure. A century ago, and our ancestors, the
most free or the most straitlaced, met together at a score of such merry
places as that where our present scene lies, and danced, and frisked,
and gamed, and drank at Epsom, Bath, Tunbridge, Harrogate, as they do at
Homburg and Baden now.

Harry's bad reputation,