but added
to those of his youth the bloodless craft of the veteran knave;--here
is this man, flattered, courted, great, marching through lanes of bowing
parasites to an illustrious epitaph and a marble tomb, and I, a rogue
too, if you will, but rogue for my bread, dating from him my errors
and my ruin! I--vagabond--outcast--skulking through tricks to avoid
crime--why the difference? Because one is born rich and the other
poor--because he has no excuse for crime, and therefore no one suspects
him!"

The wretched man (for at that moment he was wretched) paused breathless
from his passionate and rapid burst, and before him rose in its marble
majesty, with the moon full upon its shining spires--the wonder of
Gothic Italy--the Cathedral Church of Milan.

"Chafe not yourself at the universal fate," said the young man, with
a bitter smile on his lips and pointing to the cathedral; "I have not
lived long, but I have learned already enough to know this? he who could
raise a pile like that, dedicated to Heaven, would be honoured as a
saint; he who knelt to God by the roadside under a hedge would be sent
to the house of correction as a vagabond. The difference between man
and man is money, and will be, when you, the despised charlatan, and
Lilburne, the honoured cheat, have not left as much dust behind you as
will fill a snuff-box. Comfort yourself, you are in the majority."

CHAPTER VII.

"A desert wild
Before them stretched bare, comfortless, and vast,
With gibbets, bones, and carcasses defiled."
THOMPSON'S Castle of Indolenece.

Mr. Gawtrey did not wish to give his foe the triumph of thinking he had
driven him from Milan; he resolved to stay and brave it out; but when
he appeared in public, he found the acquaintances he had formed bow
politely, but cross to the other side of the way. No more invitations
to tea and cards showered in upon the jolly parson. He was puzzled, for
people, while they shunned him, did not appear uncivil. He found out at
last that a report was circulated that he was deranged; though he could
not trace this rumour to Lord Lilburne, he was at no loss to guess from
whom it had emanated. His own eccentricities, especially his recent
manner at Mr. Macgregor's, gave confirmation to the charge. Again the
funds began to sink low in the canvas bags, and at length, in despair,
Mr. Gawtrey was obliged to quit the field. They returned to France
through Switzerland