I saw at once the exterminating cloud of ridicule that was bursting over me.  My crest fell.  The flame of love went suddenly out in my bosom; or was extinguished by overwhelming shame.  How I got down the room I know not; I fancied every one tittering at me.  Just as I reached the door, I caught a glance of my mistress and her aunt, listening to the whispers of my poetic rival; the old lady raising her hands and eyes, and the face of the young one lighted up with scorn ineffable.  I paused to see no more; but made two steps from the top of the stairs to the bottom.  The next morning, before sunrise, I beat a retreat; and did not feel the blushes cool from my tingling cheeks until I had lost sight of the old towers of the cathedral.

I now returned to town thoughtful and crestfallen.  My money was nearly spent, for I had lived freely and without calculation.  The dream of love was over, and the reign of pleasure at an end.  I determined to retrench while I had yet a trifle left; so selling my equipage and horses for half their value, I quietly put the money in my pocket and turned pedestrian.  I had not a doubt that, with my great expectations, I could at any time raise funds, either on usury or by borrowing; but I was principled against both one and the other; and resolved, by strict economy, to make my slender purse hold out, until my uncle should give up the ghost; or rather, the estate.

I stayed at home, therefore, and read, and would have written; but I had already suffered too much from my poetical productions, which had generally involved me in some ridiculous scrape.  I gradually acquired a rusty look, and had a straightened, money-borrowing air, upon which the world began to shy me.  I have never felt disposed to quarrel with the world for its conduct.  It has always used me well.  When I have been flush, and gay, and disposed for society, it has caressed me; and when I have been pinched, and reduced, and wished to be alone, why, it has left me alone, and what more could a man desire?—­Take my word for it, this world is a more obliging world than people generally represent it.

Well, sir, in the midst of my retrenchment, my retirement, and my studiousness, I received news that my uncle was dangerously ill.  I hastened on the wings of an heir’s affection to receive his dying breath and his last testament.  I found him attended by his faithful valet, old Iron John; by the woman who occasionally worked about the house; and by the foxy-headed boy, young Orson, whom I had occasionally hunted about the park.

Iron John gasped a kind of asthmatical salutation as I entered the room, and received me with something almost like a smile of welcome.  The woman sat blubbering at the foot of the bed; and the foxy-headed Orson, who had now grown to be a lubberly lout, stood gazing in stupid vacancy at a distance.