Nor was this the only defeat.  When our poor conquerors had gone off, bewildered with the treasure which fortune had flung in their way (one of these students was called the Baron de Clootz, perhaps he who afterwards lost his head at Paris), Pippi resumed the quarrel of the morning, and some exceedingly high words passed between us.  Among other things I recollect I knocked him down with a stool, and was for flinging him out of the window; but my uncle, who was cool, and had been keeping Lent with his usual solemnity, interposed between us, and a reconciliation took place, Pippi apologising and confessing he had been wrong.

I ought to have doubted, however, the sincerity of the treacherous Italian; indeed, as I never before believed a word that he said in his life, I know not why I was so foolish as to credit him now, and go to bed, leaving the keys of our cash-box with him.  It contained, after our loss to the cuirassiers, in bills and money, near upon L8000 sterling.  Pippi insisted that our reconciliation should be ratified over a bowl of hot wine, and I have no doubt put some soporific drug into the liquor; for my uncle and I both slept till very late the next morning, and woke with violent headaches and fever:  we did not quit our beds till noon.  He had been gone twelve hours, leaving our treasury empty; and behind him a sort of calculation, by which he strove to make out that this was his share of the profits, and that all the losses had been incurred without his consent.

Thus, after eighteen months, we had to begin the world again.  But was I cast down?  No.  Our wardrobes still were worth a very large sum of money; for gentlemen did not dress like parish-clerks in those days, and a person of fashion would often wear a suit of clothes and a set of ornaments that would be a shop-boy’s fortune; so, without repining for one single minute, or saying a single angry word (my uncle’s temper in this respect was admirable), or allowing the secret of our loss to be known to a mortal soul, we pawned three-fourths of our jewels and clothes to Moses Lowe the banker, and with the produce of the sale, and our private pocket-money, amounting in all to something less than 800 louis, we took the field again.

CHAPTER X

MORE RUNS OF LUCK

I am not going to entertain my readers with an account of my professional career as a gamester, any more than I did with anecdotes of my life as a military man.  I might fill volumes with tales of this kind were I so minded; but at this rate, my recital would not be brought to a conclusion for years, and who knows how soon I may be called upon to stop?  I have gout, rheumatism, gravel, and a disordered liver.  I have two or three wounds in my body, which break out every now and then, and give me intolerable pain, and a hundred more signs of breaking up.  Such are the effects of time, illness, and free-living, upon one of the strongest constitutions and finest forms the world ever saw.  Ah!  I suffered from none of these ills in the year ’66, when there was no man in Europe more gay in spirits, more splendid in personal accomplishments, than young Redmond Barry.