for my uncle and I both slept till very late the next morning, and woke
with violent headaches and fever: we did not quit our beds till noon. He
had been gone twelve hours, leaving our treasury empty; and behind him
a sort of calculation, by which he strove to make out that this was his
share of the profits, and that all the losses had been incurred without
his consent.

Thus, after eighteen months, we had to begin the world again. But was I
cast down? No. Our wardrobes still were worth a very large sum of money;
for gentlemen did not dress like parish-clerks in those days, and
a person of fashion would often wear a suit of clothes and a set of
ornaments that would be a shop-boy's fortune; so, without repining for
one single minute, or saying a single angry word (my uncle's temper in
this respect was admirable), or allowing the secret of our loss to
be known to a mortal soul, we pawned three-fourths of our jewels and
clothes to Moses Lowe the banker, and with the produce of the sale, and
our private pocket-money, amounting in all to something less than 800
louis, we took the field again.

CHAPTER X. MORE RUNS OF LUCK

I am not going to entertain my readers with an account of my
professional career as a gamester, any more than I did with anecdotes of
my life as a military man. I might fill volumes with tales of this kind
were I so minded; but at this rate, my recital would not be brought to
a conclusion for years, and who knows how soon I may be called upon to
stop? I have gout, rheumatism, gravel, and a disordered liver. I have
two or three wounds in my body, which break out every now and then, and
give me intolerable pain, and a hundred more signs of breaking up.
Such are the effects of time, illness, and free-living, upon one of
the strongest constitutions and finest forms the world ever saw. Ah! I
suffered from none of these ills in the year '66, when there was no
man in Europe more gay in spirits, more splendid in personal
accomplishments, than young Redmond Barry.

Before the treachery of the scoundrel Pippi, I had visited many of
the best Courts of Europe; especially the smaller ones, where play was
patronised, and the professors of that science always welcome. Among
the ecclesiastical principalities of the Rhine we were particularly well
received. I never knew finer or gayer Courts than those of the Electors
of Treves and Cologne, where there was more splendour and gaiety than at
Vienna; far more than