of what befell
me at home. Suffice it to say that there is not a capital in Europe,
except the beggarly one of Berlin, where the young Chevalier de Balibari
was not known and admired; and where he has not made the brave, the
high-born, and the beautiful talk of him. I won 80,000 roubles from
Potemkin at the Winter Palace at Petersburg, which the scoundrelly
favourite never paid me; I have had the honour of seeing his Royal
Highness the Chevalier Charles Edward as drunk as any porter at Rome;
my uncle played several matches at billiards against the celebrated Lord
C----at Spa, and I promise you did not come off a loser. In fact, by a
neat stratagem of ours, we raised the laugh against his Lordship, and
something a great deal more substantial. My Lord did not know that the
Chevalier Barry had a useless eye; and when, one day, my uncle playfully
bet him odds at billiards that he would play him with a patch over
one eye, the noble lord, thinking to bite us (he was one of the most
desperate gamblers that ever lived), accepted the bet, and we won a very
considerable amount of him.

Nor need I mention my successes among the fairer portion of the
creation. One of the most accomplished, the tallest, the most athletic,
and the handsomest gentlemen of Europe, as I was then, a young fellow
of my figure could not fail of having advantages, which a person of my
spirit knew very well how to use. But upon these subjects I am dumb.
Charming Schuvaloff, black-eyed Sczotarska, dark Valdez, tender
Hegenheim, brilliant Langeac!--ye gentle hearts that knew how to beat in
old times for the warm young Irish gentleman, where are you now? Though
my hair has grown grey now, and my sight dim, and my heart cold with
years, and ennui, and disappointment, and the treachery of friends,
yet I have but to lean back in my arm-chair and think, and those sweet
figures come rising up before me out of the past, with their smiles, and
their kindnesses, and their bright tender eyes! There are no women like
them now--no manners like theirs! Look you at a bevy of women at the
Prince's, stitched up in tight white satin sacks, with their waists
under their arms, and compare them to the graceful figures of the old
time! Why, when I danced with Coralie de Langeac at the fetes on the
birth of the first Dauphin at Versailles, her hoop was eighteen feet
in circumference, and the heels of her lovely little mules were three
inches from the ground; the lace of my jabot w