`Oh, leave a kiss within the cup, And I’ll not ask for wine.’
And ‘t is no use asking for wine, or for gin either,—not a drop in the noggin!”
All this while Gabriel, disdaining the recommendations held forth to him, was employed in brushing his jacket with a very mangy-looking brush; and when he had completed that operation he approached his uncle, and coolly thrust his hands into that gentleman’s waistcoat-pockets.
“Uncle, what have you done with those seven shillings? I am going out to spend the day.”
“If you give them to him, Tom, I’ll scratch your eyes out,” cried the model; “and then we’ll see how you’ll sing. Whip him, I say, whip him!”
But, strange to say, this liberty of the boy quite reopened the heart of his uncle,—it was a pleasure to him, who put his hands so habitually into other people’s pockets, to be invested with the novel grandeur of the man sponged upon. “That’s right, Cupid, son of Cytherea; all’s common property amongst friends. Seven shillings, I have ‘em not. ‘They now are five who once were seven;’ but such as they are, we’ll share.
‘Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown.’”
“Crowns bear no division, my uncle,” said Gabriel, dryly; and he pocketed the five shillings. Then, having first secured his escape by gaining the threshold, he suddenly seized one of the rickety chairs by its leg, and regardless of the gallantries due to the sex, sent it right against the model, who was shaking her fist at him. A scream and a fall and a sharp twit from the cage, which was hurled nearly into the fireplace, told that the missive had taken effect. Gabriel did not wait for the probable reaction; he was in the streets in an instant. “This won’t do,” he muttered to himself; “there is no getting on here. Foolish drunken vagabond! no good to be got from him. My father is terrible, but he will make his way in the world. Umph! if I were but his match,—and why not? I am brave, and he is not. There’s fun, too, in danger.”
Thus musing, he took his way to Dalibard’s lodgings. His father was at home. Now, though they were but lodgings, and the street not in fashion, Olivier Dalibard’s apartments had an air of refinement, and even elegance, that contrasted both the wretched squalor of the abode Gabriel had just left and the meanness of Dalibard’s former quarters in London, The change seemed to imply that the Provencal had already made some way in the world. And, truth to say, at all times, even in the lowest ebb of his fortunes, there was that indescribable neatness and formality of precision about all the exterior seemings of the ci-devant friend of the prim Robespierre which belong to those in whom order and method are strongly developed,—qualities which give even to neediness a certain dignity. As the room and its owner met the eye of Gabriel, on whose senses all externals had considerable influence, the ungrateful young ruffian recalled the kind, tattered, slovenly uncle, whose purse he had just emptied, without one feeling milder than disgust. Olivier Dalibard, always careful, if simple, in his dress, with his brow of grave intellectual power, and his mien imposing, not only from its calm, but from that nameless refinement which rarely fails to give to the student the air of a gentleman,—Olivier Dalibard he might dread, he might even detest; but he was not ashamed of him.
“I said I would visit you, sir, if you would permit me,” said Gabriel, in a tone of respect, not unmingled with some defiance, as if in doubt of his reception.