BOOK VI.

Perchance you say that gold's the arch-exceller,
And to be rich is sweet?—EURIP. /Ion./, line 641.

* * * 'Tis not to be endured,
To yield our trodden path and turn aside,
Giving our place to knaves.—/Ibid./, line 648

CHAPTER I.

"L'adresse et l'artifice out passe dans mon coeur;
Qu'ou a sous cet habit et d'esprit et de ruse."*—REGNARD.

* Subtility and craft have taken possession of my heart; but under this habit one exhibits both shrewdness and wit.

IT was a fine morning in July, when a gentleman who had arrived in town the night before—after an absence from England of several years—walked slowly and musingly up the superb thoroughfare which connects the Regent's park with St. James's.

He was a man, who, with great powers of mind, had wasted his youth in a wandering vagabond kind of life, but who had worn away the love of pleasure, and began to awaken to a sense of ambition.