a fool.  For whom, for what should he dress and polish his boots at such a quiet place as Caen?  Yet he continued to do so, and to run into debt for the polish.  When he confessed to having, ‘so help him Heaven,’ not four francs in the world, he was ordering this vernis de Guiton, at five francs a bottle, from Paris, and calling the provider of it a ‘scoundrel,’ because he ventured to ask for his money.  What foppery, what folly was all this!  How truly worthy of the man who built his fame on the reputation of a coat!  Terrible indeed was the hardship that followed his extravagance; he was actually compelled to exchange his white for a black cravat.  Poor martyr! after such a trial it is impossible to be hard upon him.  So, too, the man who sent repeated begging-letters to the English grocer, Armstrong, threw out of window a new dressing-gown because it was not of the pattern he wished to have.

Retribution for all this folly came in time.  His mind went even before his health.  Though only some sixty years of age, almost the bloom of some men’s life, he lost his memory and his powers of attention, His old ill-manners became positively bad manners.  When feasted and feted, he could find nothing better to say than ‘What a half-starved turkey.’  At last the Beau was reduced to the level of that slovenliness which he had considered as the next step to perdition.  Reduced to one pair of trousers, he had to remain in bed till they were mended.  He grew indifferent to his personal appearance, the surest sign of decay.  Drivelling, wretched, in debt, an object of contempt to all honest men, he dragged on a miserable existence.  Still with his boots in holes, and all the honour of beau-dom gone for ever, he clung to the last to his Eau de Cologne, and some few other luxuries, and went down, a fool and a fop, to the grave.  To indulge his silly tastes he had to part with one piece of property after another; and at length he was left with little else than the locks of hair of which he had once boasted.

I remember a story of a labourer and his dying wife.  The poor woman was breathing her last wishes.  ’And, I say, William, you’ll see the old sow don’t kill her young uns?’—­’Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.’  ’And, I say, William, you’ll see Lizzy goes to schule reg’lar?’—­’Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.’  ’And, I say, William, you’ll see Tommy’s breeches is mended against he goes to schule again?’—­’Ay, ay, wife, set thee good.’—­’And, I say, William, you’ll see I’m laid proper in the yard?’ William grew impatient.  ’Now never thee mind them things, wife, I’ll see to ’em all, you just go on with your dying.’  No doubt Brummell’s friends heartily wished that he would go on with his dying, for he had already lived too long; but he would live on.  He is described in his last days as a miserable, slovenly, half-witted old creature, creeping about to the houses of a few friends he retained or who were kind enough to notice him still, jeered at by the gamins, and remarkable now, not for the cleanliness, but the filthiness and raggedness of his attire.