as.

At first the Minister and the gentlemen at the English hotel used to be
rather shy of us two Irish noblemen, and questioned our pretensions to
rank. The Minister was a lord's son, it is true, but he was likewise a
grocer's grandson; and so I told him at Count Lobkowitz's masquerade.
My uncle, like a noble gentleman as he was, knew the pedigree of
every considerable family in Europe. He said it was the only knowledge
befitting a gentleman; and when we were not at cards, we would pass
hours over Gwillim or D'Hozier, reading the genealogies, learning the
blazons, and making ourselves acquainted with the relationships of
our class. Alas! the noble science is going into disrepute now: so are
cards, without which studies and pastimes I can hardly conceive how a
man of honour can exist.

My first affair of honour with a man of undoubted fashion was on the
score of my nobility, with young Sir Rumford Bumford of the English
embassy; my uncle at the same time sending a cartel to the Minister, who
declined to come. I shot Sir Rumford in the leg, amidst the tears of joy
of my uncle, who accompanied me to the ground; and I promise you that
none of the young gentlemen questioned the authenticity of my pedigree,
or laughed at my Irish crown again.

What a delightful life did we now lead! I knew I was born a gentleman,
from the kindly way in which I took to the business: as business
it certainly is. For though it SEEMS all pleasure, yet I assure any
low-bred persons who may chance to read this, that we, their betters,
have to work as well as they: though I did not rise until noon, yet had
I not been up at play until long past midnight? Many a time have we come
home to bed as the troops were marching out to early parade; and oh!
it did my heart good to hear the bugles blowing the reveille before
daybreak, or to see the regiments marching out to exercise, and think
that I was no longer bound to that disgusting discipline, but restored
to my natural station.

I came into it at once, and as if I had never done anything else all my
life. I had a gentleman to wait upon me, a French friseur to dress my
hair of a morning; I knew the taste of chocolate as by intuition almost,
and could distinguish between the right Spanish and the French before
I had been a week in my new position; I had rings on all my fingers,
watches in both my fobs, canes, trinkets, and snuffboxes of all sorts,
and each outvying the other in elegance. I had the fin