the refusal of all such requests on
the part of his scapegrace offspring. Haubitz junior took patience for
another year, and then, in a moment of extreme disgust and ennui, threw
up his commission and returned to Europe, trusting, he told me, that
after five years' absence, the governor's bowels would yearn towards his
youngest-born. In this he was entirely mistaken; he greatly underrated
the toughness of paternal viscera. Far from killing the fatted calf on
the prodigal's return, the incensed old Hollander refused him the
smallest cutlet, and shutting the door in his face, consigned him, with
more energy than affection, to the custody of the evil one. Van Haubitz
found himself in an awkward fix. Credit was dead, none of his relatives
would notice or assist him; his whole fortune consisted of a dozen gold
Wilhelms. At this critical moment an eccentric maiden aunt, to whom, a
year or two previously, he had sent a propitiatory offering of a
ring-tailed monkey and a leash of pea-green parrots, and who had never
condescended even to acknowledge the present, departed this life,
bequeathing him ten thousand florins as a return for the addition to her
menagerie. A man of common prudence, and who had seen himself so near
destitution, would have endeavoured to employ this sum, moderate as it
was, in some trade or business, or, at any rate, would have lived
sparingly till he found other resources. But Haubitz had not yet sown
all his wild-oats; he had a soul above barter, a glorious disregard of
the future, the present being provided for. He left Holland, shaking the
dust from his boots, dashed across Belgium, and was soon plunged in the
gaieties of a Paris carnival. Breakfasts at the Rocher, dinners at the
Cafe, balls at the opera, and the concomitant _petits soupers_ and
ecarte parties with the fair denizens of the Quartier Lorette, soon
operated a prodigious chasm in the monkey-money, as Van Haubitz
irreverently styled his venerable aunt's bequest. Spring having arrived,
he beat a retreat from Paris, and established himself at Homburg, where
he was quietly completing the consumption of the ten thousand florins,
at rather a slower pace than he would have done at that head-quarters of
pleasant iniquity, the capital of France. From hints he had let fall, I
suspected a short time would suffice to see the last of the legacy. On
this head, however, he had been less confidential than on most other
matters, and certainly his manner of l