With these laconic words he turned on his heel, and regained without interruption the portal by which he had entered. So suddenly had all this passed, so paralysed and panic-stricken were the spectators and audience of this scene, that they could scarcely believe it to be other than a dream, till they saw the bride extended without sense or motion on the steps. Thus was she borne, the service being unconcluded, to her chamber. The ceremony was privately completed the ensuing day.
No domestic felicity attended this ill-fated union. It was poisoned by doubts and suspicions, and embittered by the memory of Mascalbruni's words. "Mine she has been" continually rang in the husband's ears; and on the anniversary of that eventful day, after a lingering illness of many months, a martyr to disappointment and chagrin, she sunk into an untimely grave.
The next we hear of Mascalbruni was his being at Cheltenham. There he frequented the rooms under very different auspices, and had to compete with another order of players than those he had been in the habit of duping. He was narrowly watched, and detected in the act of pocketing a queen from an écarté pack. The consequence was his expulsion from the club with ignominy. His name was placarded, and his fame, or rather infamy, noised with a winged speed all over the United Kingdom.
It was no longer a place for him. In the course of the ensuing week the following announcement was made in a well-known and widely-circulated weekly paper. It was headed—
"An Italian black sheep.
"We hope in a short time to present our readers with the exploits of a new Count Fathom, a soi disant marchese, better known than trusted, the two first syllables of whose name more than rhyme with rascal. And as it is our duty to un-mask all such, we shall confine ourselves at present to saying that he has been weighed at a fashionable watering-place in Gloucestershire, and found wanting, or rather practising certain sleights of hand for which the charlatans of his own country are notorious. He had better sing small here!"
Mascalbruni took the vulgar hint. His funds were nearly exhausted, and with but a few louis in his pocket he embarked at Dover, and once more repaired to Paris.
His prospects were widely different from those with which he had left it. To play the game I have described at rouge et noir, requires a capital. Every respectable house was closed against him. He now disguised his appearance, so that his former acquaintance should not be able to recognise him, and frequented the lowest hells—those cloacæ, the resort of all the vilains and chenapans, the lowest dregs of the metropolis. By what practices this mauvais sujet contrived to support life here for some years is best known to the police, where his name stands chronicled pretty legibly; it is probable that he passed much of that time in one of the prisons, or on the roads.
Eighteen months had now elapsed, and the Honourable Mr. M. with his bride, to whom he had been a short time married, took an apartment in the Rue d'Artois. A man in a cloak—an embocado,—which means one who enwraps his face in his mantle so that only his eyes are visible,—was observed from the windows often passing and repassing the hotel. The novelty of the costume attracted the attention of Mrs. M.; and the blackness of his eyes, and their peculiarly gloomy expression, made her take him for a Spaniard. She more than once pointed him out to her husband, and said one day, "Look, William, there stands that man again. He answers your description of a bandit, and makes me shudder to look at him."
"Don't be alarmed, dear," replied Mr. M. smilingly; "we are not at Terracina. It will be time enough to be frightened then."