De L'Orme. / The Works of G. P. R. James, Esq., Vol. XVI.

by G. P. R. James

"I' faith," answered the host, calmly, "I am afraid that the worshipful gentleman of whom you speak will find but poor accommodation at my house; and therefore, feeling myself incompetent to entertain him as he deserves, I would fain decline the honour of his company."

After having paid my reckoning, I betook myself to the shop of the honest grocer, who heard my story without surprise; and in answer to my inquiry for a lodging, he replied that he knew of one nearly opposite to his own house, but that he doubted whether it would suit a person of my condition, for it was small, and kept by an old widow, who, though very respectable, was anything but rich.

I need not say this was the very sort of situation I desired; for after having paid mine host of the Rue des Prouvaires, my purse offered nothing but a long and lamentable vacuity, with three louis d'ors at the bottom, looking as lank and empty, when I drew it out of my pocket, as an eel-skin just stripped off one of those luckless aquatic St. Bartholomews. I was soon, then, installed in my new apartment; and being left to myself, gazed upon my scanty stock of riches, as many an unfortunate wretch has doubtless often gazed before me, calculating how long each several piece would keep life and soul together. And when they were expended, what then? I asked myself. Must I then write to my parents--confess my attachment to Helen--own that I murdered her brother--take from her mind any blessed doubt that might still remain upon it--snap each lingering affection that might still bind her to me in twain at once, and at the same time encounter the angry expostulation of my father for loving below my degree; as well as the calm reproaches of my mother, for having blinded her to that love--expostulations and reproaches which for Helen's sake I could have encountered, while there remained a chance of her being mine, but which now I felt no strength to bear, no motive to call upon my head? Oh! no, no! I could not write--poverty, beggary, wretchedness, anything sooner than that; and starting up, I proceeded into the street, hoping to drive away thought amongst all the gay sights I had heard of in Paris.

As I passed along the Rue St. Jacques, a beggar asked me for charity; and instinctively I put my hand in my pocket, when suddenly the thought of my own beggary came upon my mind, and with a sickness of heart impossible to describe, I drew my hand back, saying I had nothing for him. "Do! my good lord, do!" cried the mendicant; "may you never suffer such poverty as mine; and if you should--for who can tell in this uncertain life--and if you should, may you never be refused by those you beg of!"

I could refuse no longer. It came so painfully home to my own bosom, that I gave him a small piece which I had received in change, and then walked on, feeling as if I had just cast away a fortune, instead of giving a piece of a few sols to a beggar. Oh, circumstance! circumstance! thou art like a juggler at a fair, making us see the same object with a thousand different hues as thou offerest thy many-coloured glasses to our eyes.

Passing on, I found my way to the Palais Cardinal, where, after having gazed for a moment or two at the enormous pile of building before me, the thousand minute beauties of which the darkness had hidden from me the night before, I mounted the steps to leave my address, as I had been commanded. The doors of the palace, far from being guarded as I had previously found them, now seemed open to every one. Crowds of people of all classes were going in and coming out; and every sort of dress was there, from the princely justaucorps, whose arabesqued embroidery left scarcely an inch of the original stuff visible, to the threadbare pourpoint, whose long experience in the ways of the world had rendered it as polished and as smooth as the tongue of an old courtier. All was whisper, and smiles, and hurry, and bustle; and though every here and there an anxious face might be seen, giving shade to the picture, no one would have imagined that through those gates issued forth each day a thousand orders of death, of misery, and of despair.

I entered with the rest; and as the way seemed open to every one, was walking on, when I soon found that all who passed were known; for hardly had I taken two steps across the vestibule, when an attendant placed himself in my way, asking my business. It was easily explained; and leading me into a small cabinet adjoining the hall, he took down a ponderous folio, and desired me to write my address. When I opened it I found it quite full; and the page took down another, wherein, at the end of many thousands of names, I wrote my own, with ink that I doubted not would prove true Lethe, and turned away even more hopeless than I came.

Spare time now became my curse, and, joining with a restless and excited spirit, drove me through everything that was to be seen in Paris with an eagerness which soon exhausted its object. Day passed by after day, and the minister took no notice of me. I spun out my meagre funds, like the thread of a spider; but still every hour I saw them diminish. Twice each day I sent to the auberge where I had lodged, to inquire whether little Achilles had yet arrived; and still my disappointment was renewed. Nor was this disappointment one of the least painful of my feelings, for in the solitariness of my being in that great city I would have given worlds for his company, even although I could neither respect nor esteem him. And yet let me not do him injustice; mean qualities were so mingled in him with great ones--his folly was so strangely mixed with shrewdness, and his love of himself so singularly contrasted with the generous attachment which he had conceived towards me, that I hardly knew whether to look upon him with regard or contempt. Yet certainly I longed for his coming; and as the days went by and he came not, even while I smiled at remembering his poltroonery, I could not help hoping that the little coward had met with no obstruction in the road.

In the meanwhile, my frugality served to prolong the sojourn of my three louis in my purse far longer than I could have expected, and perhaps my pain with it, at seeing them daily decrease. It was like the handfuls of couscousou that they give in Morocco to persons dying of impalement, the means only of extending moments of misery. One day, however, in passing along the Rue St. Jacques, I saw lying on a book-stall two treatises upon very different subjects; one relating to military tactics, and the other entitled "The Sure Way of Winning; or, Hazard not Chance." The price of each was but a trifle, and in a fit of extravagance I bought them both. I had now wherewithal to employ my time, and I studied each of these two books with an ardour which, had it been employed continuously on any great or important subject, might have changed the face of my fortune for ever. The treatise on strategy, though perhaps not the best that ever was written, was, at all events, no detrimental employment; and on it I bestowed one half of my time. The other half was given to "The Sure Way of Winning," which was neither more nor less than an elaborate treatise upon gaming; with all the profound calculations of chances necessary to qualify a complete gambler. Thank God, I was not by nature a lover of play, or by such a study I should have been irretrievably lost. As it was, I soon began to look upon the gaming-table as the only resource which fortune held out to me; and with indescribable assiduity and application, I went through every calculation in the book, working them out in my mind hundreds and hundreds of times, till their results became no longer matters of arithmetic, but of memory.

Three weeks elapsed before I deemed myself qualified to encounter the well-experienced Parisians; and by this time I had but one louis remaining. This I changed into crowns, and with an anxious heart proceeded as soon as it was dark to a house, where I was informed that the minor sort of gambling, in which alone I could indulge, was carried on every night.