are attending service at the Chapelle Anglicaine. As for the elder brothers, they are in the hands of the Lombards and the Jews by this time; all the jewellery, with which they can conveniently dispense without fear of its being missed, is safely housed at the Mont de Piété, in the Haingasse; and many a snug little bill has been done, without paterfamilias's knowledge, at the Commercial Bank, or at one of the establishments of the numerous Hebrew money-changers of Hombourg. The only lucky individual of this party of now desperate gamblers a week ago so tranquil, so contented, so virtuous-is little Master Jacky. That young rogue wins continually, and his pockets are full of napoleons, which his elder relatives, from materfamilias downwards, are not ashamed to borrow from him, threatening to box his ears soundly if he winces at the imposition of these "forced loans."

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CHAPTER VIII.

IN WHICH THE THREE PILGRIMS FIND THE DESCENT OF AVERNUS AS EASY AS LYING.

THE three travellers whom I have left in the lurch for such an unconscionable period, while endeavouring to explain to you the mysteries of roulette, &c., according to the Cocker of the Kursaal, and while expatiating on the humours of that delightful establishment these three individuals were but mortal men. If you pinched them, they squeaked; if you tickled them, they laughed; if you angered them, they bellowed; if you insulted them, they struck and kicked. They were, in fact, flesh and blood: nothing more. So, as has been elsewhere dimly hinted, being thus mortal, and having come to Hombourg for the express purpose of disporting themselves among the humours thereof, the stout gentleman, the slim gentleman, and the man with the iron chest, all began to play; and when they had once begun, they went on. The man with the iron chest remarked, after the first day's punting, that he had not risen so early, lived so temperately, or worked so hard for years; and that if he only continued the numerical combinations in which he was engaged, the infallible result must be his acquirement of some knowledge of long division and the rule of three, arithmetical problems of which he had been hitherto entirely ignorant. Unhappily, it was only to the extent of the rule of "Reduction" that this iron-chested person was fated to pursue his researches into the recondite mysteries of the Tutor's Assistant. The stout gentleman proclaimed that play

ing at roulette, as a manly and invigorating exercise, beat billiards, quoits, pulling against tide, and jumping in sacks; and quite threw partridge-shooting and the dumb-bells into the shade. The slim gentleman said nothing, but his looks were oracular, and his brow was 66 sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." The principal nourishment he took between breakfast and dinner-time appeared to consist of the small limp cards on which the odds at the game are pricked down, and which he tore into small pieces, and masticated with great apparent relish. He was evidently much pre-occupied, and his companions whispered that his hair was coming off. Of course our Three all played, or said at least that they played, according to the dictates of some "infallible systems" known to them, and to them alone. They were not so communicative now, as of yore, and saw very little of each other out of business (play) hours, nay, rather prepared to separate in the Kursaal itself, and make their game in different saloons; but as I am merely the Editor of these papers, and happened to turn up" promiscuous" at Hombourg while my three heroes were there, I am enabled to describe to you their several acts and deeds. And, to tell the truth, that which I didn't see (for I wasn't ubiquitous) was narrated to me by the three men in their subsequent moments of penitence. It was for a considerable period that they dwelt in sackcloth and ashes. They howled and grovelled a good deal before they left the Landgravate of Hesse. What yelpings and whinings there have been in secret cupboards of, and recesses of, that joyous little carnival town, to be sure.

Now, first of the "infallible system" of the man with the iron chest. He had learnt it, he said, of a Polish Jew, who had it from a Russian Chamberlain, who had extracted it by torture from a Tartar horsedealer, who had brought it from the Great Wall of China, where it was the means of replenishing the

coffers of the Mandarins with many millions' worth of sycee silver per mensem. The red-nosed man played this system with prodigious assiduity. To myself and the bystanders, it appeared chiefly to consist in accesses of raging madness, accompanied by extreme ferocity and hoarse mutterings in an unknown tongue, which he afterwards stated to be Romaic or Modern Greek, a dialect in which (although I have only his personal statement to prove it) he had been an adept in the sunny days of youth. I will say little of this strange man tearing his hair, clenching and unclenching his fists, beating diabolical tattoos with his feet, viciously rubbing that empurpled proboscis of his, and squinting horribly, because these were physical and facial peculiarities germane to him in his normal morose-imbecile state. One part of the "infallible system" he pursued, was to change English bank-notes into florins, to tear those fat white coins from the blue cylindrical envelopes in which they were confined, and to stuff with them the many pockets at the hips, breast, and flanks of his stableman's-looking coat. I have never known so short a coat to have so many pockets. Being thus well-ballasted with silver dross, he continuously flung florins from his pockets on to the table, and, with amazing frequency (in the beginning), drew back heaps of argentiferous coinage, sometimes intermingled with single, and even double, Frédérics d'or-large, dull, corpulent, orange-tawnycoloured pieces of money, these latter, and somewhat resembling Spanish doubloons. The man used to lose now and then (in the beginning), whereat he would mutter more hoarsely than ever in the unintelligible jargon he affected; but he must have won constantly and considerably, for I used to see the skirts of the stableman's coat positively and visibly swelling with dollars before my eyes, even as swole that young

woman whom the elder Mr. Weller watched as she drank seventeen cups of green tea at the Anniversary

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Festival of the Brick-Lane Branch Temperance Association. When he had won an uncommonly good coup, the red-nosed man was accustomed to mutter Julia! Julia!" in a tone of striden texultation; and, for the moment, stuffing his latest winnings into his cap, he would rush out on to the terrace, meet, as if by preconcerted signal, the stout gentleman, exchange some telegraphic signals with him, relating apparently to numerical computations; smoke, in rapid puffs, the largest regalia (or the nearest Frankfort imitation of one) that could be procured; swallow a tankard full of Bavarian beer, or a half flask of Rhenish, and rush back to the table, where he would continue playing more desperately than ever. Thus for many days did the man with the iron chest make his game. By dinner time his hands were black as negro's by continually fingering of dross, and greasy notes of the Landgravate or de Banque de France, which to his great distaste he was sometimes compelled to take when the tables had been hit unusually hard. His hair, never very elegantly disposed, became hideously dishevelled; his eyes glared; hectic spots appeared on his dun cheeks; his tongue lapped thirstily from his mouth; and the regular habitués of the gamingtable, who were ruined or enriched every day in the week, always with the same imperturbable quietude and nonchalance, looked with amazement, not unmingled with alarm, upon this wild man of the Kursaal, who played so fiercely, and gave utterance to such strange noises. When the bell rang for the table d'hôtesand when six o'clock strikes in Hombourg, every house seems to have set up a table d'hôte and a bell as sonorous as Great Tom of Lincoln, which dingdongs astoundingly the man would retire and reappear, washed and kempt. He devoured large quantities of food at dinner, brandished his knife and fork to the alarm of decorous maiden ladies-to all of whom, however, he was scrupulously polite-sitting