as worth a thousand
crowns, and the buttons of my amaranth velvet coat alone cost eighty
thousand livres. Look at the difference now! The gentlemen are dressed
like boxers, Quakers, or hackney-coachmen; and the ladies are not
dressed at all. There is no elegance, no refinement; none of the
chivalry of the old world, of which I form a portion. Think of the
fashion of London being led by a Br-mm-l! [Footnote: This manuscript
must have been written at the time when Mr. Brummel was the leader of
the London fashion.] a nobody's son: a low creature, who can no more
dance a minuet than I can talk Cherokee; who cannot even crack a bottle
like a gentleman; who never showed himself to be a man with his sword in
his hand: as we used to approve ourselves in the good old times, before
that vulgar Corsican upset the gentry of the world! Oh, to see the
Valdez once again, as on that day I met her first driving in state,
with her eight mules and her retinue of gentlemen, by the side of yellow
Mancanares! Oh, for another drive with Hegenheim, in the gilded sledge,
over the Saxon snow! False as Schuvaloff was, 'twas better to be jilted
by her than to be adored by any other woman. I can't think of any one
of them without tenderness. I have ringlets of all their hair in my poor
little museum of recollections. Do you keep mine, you dear souls that
survive the turmoils and troubles of near half a hundred years? How
changed its colour is now, since the day Sczotarska wore it round her
neck, after my duel with Count Bjernaski, at Warsaw.

I never kept any beggarly books of accounts in those days. I had no
debts. I paid royally for everything I took; and I took everything
I wanted. My income must have been very large. My entertainments and
equipages were those of a gentleman of the highest distinction; nor let
any scoundrel presume to sneer because I carried off and married my Lady
Lyndon (as you shall presently hear), and call me an adventurer, or say
I was penniless, or the match unequal. Penniless! I had the wealth
of Europe at my command. Adventurer! So is a meritorious lawyer or
a gallant soldier; so is every man who makes his own fortune an
adventurer. My profession was play: in which I was then unrivalled. No
man could play with me through Europe, on the square; and my income was
just as certain (during health and the exercise of my profession) as
that of a man who draws on his Three-per-cents., or any fat squire whose
acres bring him rev