than Gil Blas de Santillane.  He sat down at the escritoire, and, taking up a gilt pen with a ridiculous silk tassel, began a letter to the same person to whom that day he had already dispatched a missive; but this time it was not so brief:  the day of brilliant dies and illuminated addresses had not as yet set in, so he wrote at the top of the little scented sheet, in a bold free hand, the word Crompton! and put a note of admiration after it.  Had you seen his face as he did so, you would have said it was a note of triumph.

“My DEAR MOTHER,—­Veni, vidi, vici—­I have come, I have seen him, and I am at all events tolerated.  The perilous moment was when I told him who I was.  He said he was half disposed to set his bull-dog at me, but he didn’t; on the contrary, he at once bid me exchange my bachelor’s quarters for the two chambers I at present occupy, and which remind me of the Arabian Nights.  I have never seen any thing like them; the furniture of both is of ebony; but the most curious part of the affair is, that they are evidently designed for a lady.  Imagine your Richard sleeping under a coverlet of real Brussels lace!  Every thing in the house, however, is magnificent, or was so once, before it was damaged by barbarous revel.  Such orgies as I have witnessed to-night would seem incredible, if I wrote them; the Modern Midnight Entertainment of old Hogarth will supply you with the dramatis personae; but the splendor of the surroundings immensely heightened the effect of it all.  Carew and his friends might have sat for Alaric and his Goths carousing amidst the wreck of the art treasures of Rome.  Nothing that he has affords him any satisfaction; though, if it is of great cost, Chaplain Whymper tells me that he derives a momentary pleasure from its willful damage.  This man and one other are the only persons of intelligence about Carew; but even they have no influence with him that can be depended on.  If madness were always hereditary indeed, I might consider myself doomed.  You were right there, I own; but you must needs allow that in undertaking this adventure contrary to your advice I have effected something.  The chaplain is already speculating upon my future fortunes, and he knows his patron better than any body; at all events, if I am turned out of doors to-morrow (which I am aware is quite on the cards), I shall have three hundred pounds in my pocket, which Carew, with a ‘Catch that,’ threw me in notes, exactly as you throw a chicken-bone to Dandy as he sits on his hind-legs, though I did not ‘beg’ for them, I do assure you.  The immediate cause of my being invited hither was as follows [here the writer described his exploit with the stags].  This, with our match at fisticuffs by moonlight, had greatly inclined Carew to favor me; yet, when the disclosure of my identity was made, I thought for a moment all my pains were lost.  He resented the intrusion exceedingly; but then he had himself invited me to be his guest; and he holds his word as good as his bond.  Indeed, by what the chaplain tells me, it will soon be held something better, for even his vast estate is crumbling away, acre by acre, beneath the load of lavish expenditure it has to bear.  There must be much, however, at the worst, to be picked up among the debris of such a fortune.”