-hearted persons would have mourned a much greater offence; for,
in the majority of cases, conscience is an elastic and very flexible
article, which will bear a deal of stretching and adapt itself to a
great variety of circumstances. Some people by prudent management and
leaving it off piece by piece like a flannel waistcoat in warm weather,
even contrive, in time, to dispense with it altogether; but there be
others who can assume the garment and throw it off at pleasure; and
this, being the greatest and most convenient improvement, is the one
most in vogue.

CHAPTER 7

'Fred,' said Mr Swiveller, 'remember the once popular melody of Begone
dull care; fan the sinking flame of hilarity with the wing of
friendship; and pass the rosy wine.'

Mr Richard Swiveller's apartments were in the neighbourhood of Drury
Lane, and in addition to this convenience of situation had the
advantage of being over a tobacconist's shop, so that he was enabled to
procure a refreshing sneeze at any time by merely stepping out upon the
staircase, and was saved the trouble and expense of maintaining a
snuff-box. It was in these apartments that Mr Swiveller made use of the
expressions above recorded for the consolation and encouragement of his
desponding friend; and it may not be uninteresting or improper to
remark that even these brief observations partook in a double sense of
the figurative and poetical character of Mr Swiveller's mind, as the
rosy wine was in fact represented by one glass of cold gin-and-water,
which was replenished as occasion required from a bottle and jug upon
the table, and was passed from one to another, in a scarcity of
tumblers which, as Mr Swiveller's was a bachelor's establishment, may
be acknowledged without a blush. By a like pleasant fiction his single
chamber was always mentioned in a plural number. In its disengaged
times, the tobacconist had announced it in his window as 'apartments'
for a single gentleman, and Mr Swiveller, following up the hint, never
failed to speak of it as his rooms, his lodgings, or his chambers,
conveying to his hearers a notion of indefinite space, and leaving
their imaginations to wander through long suites of lofty halls, at
pleasure.

In this flight of fancy, Mr Swiveller was assisted by a deceptive piece
of furniture, in reality a bedstead, but in semblance a bookcase, which
occupied a prominent situation in his chamber and seemed to defy
suspicion and challenge inquiry. Ther