madam, you and your daughters have no right to
admire and sympathise with any such persons, fictitious or real:
you ought to be made cordially to detest, scorn, loathe, abhor, and
abominate all people of this kidney. Men of genius like those whose
works we have above alluded to, have no business to make these
characters interesting or agreeable; to be feeding your morbid fancies,
or indulging their own, with such monstrous food. For our parts, young
ladies, we beg you to bottle up your tears, and not waste a single drop
of them on any one of the heroes or heroines in this history: they
are all rascals, every soul of them, and behave "as sich." Keep your
sympathy for those who deserve it: don't carry it, for preference, to
the Old Bailey, and grow maudlin over the company assembled there.

* Anglicised version of the author's original Greek text.

Just, then, have the kindness to fancy that the conversation which took
place over the bowls of punch which Mrs. Catherine prepared, was such
as might be expected to take place where the host was a dissolute,
dare-devil, libertine captain of dragoons, the guests for the most
part of the same class, and the hostess a young woman originally from a
country alehouse, and for the present mistress to the entertainer of
the society. They talked, and they drank, and they grew tipsy; and very
little worth hearing occurred during the course of the whole evening.
Mr. Brock officiated, half as the servant, half as the companion of the
society. Mr. Thomas Trippet made violent love to Mrs. Catherine, while
her lord and master was playing at dice with the other gentlemen: and on
this night, strange to say, the Captain's fortune seemed to desert him.
The Warwickshire Squire, from whom he had won so much, had an amazing
run of good luck. The Captain called perpetually for more drink, and
higher stakes, and lost almost every throw. Three hundred, four hundred,
six hundred--all his winnings of the previous months were swallowed up
in the course of a few hours. The Corporal looked on; and, to do him
justice, seemed very grave as, sum by sum, the Squire scored down the
Count's losses on the paper before him.

Most of the company had taken their hats and staggered off. The Squire
and Mr. Trippet were the only two that remained, the latter still
lingering by Mrs. Catherine's sofa and table; and as she, as we have
stated, had been employed all the evening in mixing the liquor for
the gamesters