ng a deep
impression, almost physical,--in fact, a man essentially made for
love,--such was the vicomte. In Athens, no doubt, he would have been
admired, exalted, deified, as was Alcibiades; in our days, and at the
period of which we write, the vicomte was nothing more than a base
forger, a contemptible swindler.

The first story of M. de Saint-Remy's house was exceedingly masculine in
its whole appearance. It was there he received his many friends, all of
whom were of the very highest society. There was nothing effeminate,
nothing coquettish. The furniture was plain, but elegant, the ornaments
being first-rate weapons of all sorts, pictures of race-horses, who had
won for the vicomte a great number of magnificent gold and silver vases,
which were placed on the tables and sideboards.

The smoking-room and play-room were closed by a cheerful dining-room,
where eight persons (the number to which the guests were rigidly
confined when there was a first-class dinner) had often appreciated the
excellence of the cook, and the no less high merit of the wine of the
vicomte, before they faced him at some high game of whist for five or
six hundred louis, or shook the noisy dice-box at infernal hazard or
roulette.

These two widely opposite shades of M. de Saint-Remy disclosed, the
reader will follow us into the regions below, to the very comfortable
apartment of Edwards Patterson, the master of the horse of M. de
Saint-Remy, who had invited M. Boyer to breakfast. A very pretty English
maid-servant having withdrawn after she had brought in the silver
teapot, these two worthies remained alone.

Edwards was about forty years of age, and never did more skilful or
stouter coachman make a seat groan under his most imposing rotundity;
never did powdered wig enclose a more rubicund visage; and never did a
more knowing and competent driver hold in his four fingers and thumb the
reins of a four-in-hand. As good a judge of a horse as Tattersal (and in
his youth he had been as good a trainer as the old and celebrated
Chiffney), Edwards had been to the vicomte a most excellent coachman,
and a man perfectly capable of superintending the training of
race-horses on which he had betted heavily.

When he did not assume his sumptuous brown and silver livery on the
emblazoned hammercloth of his box, Edwards very much resembled an honest
English farmer; and it is under this aspect that we shall present him to
the reader, adding, at the same time