trace
of good or honest or truthful that was in me.

The house in which I was living was a finishing school for every sort
of dissipation, and all who frequented it were people who only lived for
pleasure. Play of the highest kind went on unceasingly, and large sums
were bandied about from hand to hand as carelessly as if all were men of
fortune and indifferent to heavy losses.

A splendid mode of living, sumptuous dinners, a great retinue, and
perfect liberty to the guests, drew around us that class who, knowing
well that they have no other occupation than self-indulgence, throw an
air of languid elegance over vice, which your vulgar sinner, who has
only intervals of wickedness, knows nothing of; and this, be it said
passingly, is, of all sections of society, the most seductive and
dangerous to the young: for there are no outrages to taste amongst these
people, they violate no decencies, they shock no principles. If they
smash the tables of the law, it is in kid-gloves, and with a delicious
odor of Ess bouquet about them. The Cleremonts lived at the Villa.
Cleremont managed the household, and gave the orders for everything.
Madame received the company, and did the honors; my father lounging
about like an unoccupied guest, and actually amused, as it seemed, by
his own unimportance. Hotham had gone to sea; but Eccles remained, in
name, as my tutor; but we rarely met, save at meal-times, and his manner
to me was almost slavish in subserviency, and with a habit of flattery
that, even young as I was, revolted me.

"Isn't that your charge, Eccles?" I once heard an old gentleman ask him;
and he replied, "Yes, my Lord; but Madame Cleremont has succeeded me. It
is _she_ is finishing him."

And they both laughed heartily at the joke. There was, however, this
much of truth in the speech, that I lived almost entirely in her
society. We sang together; she called me Cherubino, and taught me all
the page's songs in Mozart or Rossini; and we rode out together, or
read or walked in company. Nor was her influence over me such as might
effeminate me. On the contrary, it was ever her aim to give me manly
tastes and ambitions. She laid great stress on my being a perfect
swordsman and a pistol-shot, over and over telling me that a conscious
skill in arms gives a man immense coolness in every question of
difference with other men; and she would add, "Don't fall into that John
Bull blunder of believing that duelling is gone out because t