to discover whether I was really in earnest, and he then suddenly turned away and left me to myself.

He had scarcely quitted my side, when a short thick man, with a large head and a brown wig, took his place, and, addressing me abruptly in a broad Scotch accent, said

“ That's a rum fellow, a’n’t he?” “ Perhaps he is,” said I.

“Be on your guard, Sir; all isn't gold that glitters. He is a humbug."

* A doctor you mean."

“Captain is a good travelling name for a swindler, a fortune-hunter, a gambler: so is doctor for a charlatan.” “ You would say a diplomatist." Sir, you use synonymes," drily replied my informant.

“ But if you had said a spy, you had been still nearer the mark; so be on your guard.”

With these words the little man with a brown wig and large head left me to my reflections. The next day he sat opposite to me at the hospitable dinner-table of the American Bobadil.

And very often did my hero and myself interchange civilities of the kind. He kept a pleasant house, saw much good company, and entertained handsomely. It is odd to say it, but he won a good deal of my confidence in some small but trilling transactions : whether I had reason to be glad or sorry is now of no matter. That secret is buried in poor Bobadil's grave! He had many good qualities, many more than I have found in some men of better reputation and greater respectability. What a number of plausible, church-going, smooth-talking, respectable scoundrels have I met with among my travelling acquaintance !

I will now shortly sketch the circumstances of my hero's death, those which led to it I mean : and never did consumption (though I know not if that was the strictly technical name of his complaint) gallop so rapidly over the constitution of one of “ Nature's masterpieces.” It was cowardice that killed him after all : not a sudden explosion of terror, such as breaks the heart like the bursting of a bombshell, but that sapping and mining of the mind and body which is the consequence of an act of supereminent poltroonery. My Bobadil was, like his notorious prototype, an arrant lâche. He generally carried pistols in his pockets, and travelled with a blunderbuss peeping out of his carriage window, but would have no more dared to use one or the other than the original Bobadil his Toledo. Like him, he was fond of “ dainty oaths, and swore the legiblest of any man christened ;" but if a quarrel came of his swaggering, he was sure to be “ planet-struck -fascinated by Jupiter !” One of the chief causes of his aversion to lords was one of the most celebrated gourmands of “ the order ” having published a rigmarole sort of book, in which " the Doctor” was fairly (or unfairly) accused of being a police spy. This he considered a most unkind cut in return for the sundry entertainments he had given the ungrateful peer. The jokes and sarcasms to which he was subjected in consequence led to various disputes, and, on one occasion, being grossly insulted, he was absolutely obliged to come to“ the scratch," to send a message, and (like the original Bobadil)“ out with his tools,” and put himself on his "sweet, comely, gentleman-like guard.”

The adversary of my Bobadil on this occasion was a fiery little Gascon wine-merchant, “ excellent at his weapon, e and thoroughly resolved to thrust it “ home to the bosom and business ” of poor Bobadil, to whom he owed a deep grudge, for domestic reasons of no import here or there. I had consented to be one of the officiating friends to my travelling acquaintance. The other témoin was a tall mustachioed cuirassier of the garrison, a great favourite of Bobadil's wife. The ground chosen for the rencontre was the glacis of an old fort on the skirts of the town, the ditch of which was full ten feet deep of stagnant water, with slimy banks and a muddy bed. Not far from the edge of this the combatants took their stand, on an autumnal morning, no matter how few or how many years ago. My hero looked, like Bobadil's favourite oath," the very heart of valour." He threw off his coat, and tucked up his shirt sleeves, and“ hollowed his body," and “ twined it more about,” and measured his enemy with his eye, and rehearsed his punto, his reverso, his stocatto, imbroccata, and passado, really as if he had read the directions to Master Mathew that

very morning. One of them, however, he paid not the least attention to—“ Stand fast o'

your left leg,” was a word of command he had no notion of obeying, though often and with terrible emphasis was it roared out to him at the top of the Gascon's voice, with other similar invitations, if heard not heeded.

" Sacré tonnêre! Pied ferme, que Je t'attrape, coquin ! Pied ferme, scelerat! En garde, poltron! Ha! ha! ça !” cried the Gascon, with a thrust as quick as lightning, and of force sufficient to have pierced a rhinoceros.

" Allons! viens donc, petit !" (I cannot give the epithet) responded Bobadil, springing back three paces for every forward bound of his adversary, and eluding each lunge and plunge, which it would have taken Briærius's hundred arms joined one to another to have made effective, nothing short of that could have reached him.

I have rarely witnessed a scene more risible. My brother témoin, as well as those of the little Gascon, joined me at length in those hearty bursts of laughter which brought the soldiers out on the walls of the fort, and crowds of ragged and squalid-looking creatures from the huts of the Faubourg, to witness and enjoy the sport. The contortions of the Gascon, his fury, his imprecations, his gestures, his reproaches, his exhortations to his foe to come to close quarters, are not to be written. The intrepid poltroonery of Bobadil baffling all the furious ardour of the assault was equally indescribable. Nothing was ever like the scene since the day that Friday kept the bear a-dancing on the branch of the cork-tree in the Pyrenees.

During the whole of this acted charade, the mot of which seemed never to be forthcoming, the great point of Bobadil's tactics was to keep the Gascon between him and the ditch. At length, however, pressed harder and harder, out of breath, and, as I clearly perceived, panic-struck by the ferocious bearing of his half-maddened enemy, he lost his self-command, and suffered himself to be placed in that position from which there was no retreat. During the combat (so to call it) he had never made a single lunge nor attempted to parry one; scarcely did he allow the points of the fleurets to come in contact together. But now the change was frightful. The infuriated Gascon closed upon him,

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panting, foaming, breathless, but still in the full vigour of his vengeance and his skill. The blades crossed and clashed; the whisk of the thin steel told that the desperate thrust was made and parried. No one laughed now! I felt that cramped spasmodic anxiety with which one waits the shot or the lunge which carries life or death on its results. My eye was fixed on my man. The other officiating " friend”

” gazed and gaped as I did. Another instant! It came. The Gascon, perfect master of his game, now seemed to concentrate all his nerve for the fatal coup de grace. He struck down the feeble and insufficient blade thut scarce offered resistance. The unguarded body of the subdued Doctor was close before him-a broad and comely mark. The final thrust was sped, with a hoarse yet loud exclamation of fierce triumphbut not sent home. For, lo! the apparently doomed carcase of Bobadil had disappeared. With monstrous presence of mind he waited just till the very nick of time, and, in the last critical moment of his threatened fate, he touched the edge of the ditch, then flung a backward summerset, and a loud splash in the water told the rest.

The Gascon, following the impulse of his lunge, had fallen headlong after him had not one of his friends caught him in his arms. quired the united efforts of both to prevent him jumping into the fosse, (as Hamlet sprang into Ophelia's grave,) and doing instant execution on the half-drowned coward who had thus escaped him.

And well had it been for poor Bobadil that he had died in the ditch, either by cold water or cold iron! Some shadow of doubt might in that case have hung on the event. It might have been thought that he slipped in by accident—that he had waited so long to exhaust his impetuous foe and make him a surer prey-at any rate, he would have gone out of life with a joke, not a dry one neither, attached to his memory. But by ill-luck he contrived to keep himself afloat, to scramble up the side of the fosse, and to make his way home, dripping and mudcovered, followed by a mob of hooting ragamuffins. It may be easily believed I had no great wish to see my

“ friend” after this catastrophe. A smart fever, the effect of his ducking, confined him to his bed and house for some weeks. I was not sorry that circumstances called me far from the neighbourhood before his recovery. My departure must have been a relief to him; but a still greater was the apropos removal to country quarters of his other second, the mustachioed cuirassier, who swore that he felt his disgraceful conduct in the duel as a personal affront, and that he would inflict a most terrific horsewhipping on him when he became sufficiently convalescent to endure the lash.

I learned that Bobadil blustered away for a short time in spite this affair. He vaunted loudly his courage and coolness throughout, cursed the unlucky faux pas which plunged him into the ditch, and saved the little wine-merchant from otherwise inevitable death ; and appealed loudly to the testimony of the absent cuirassier and to myself. But still a canker-worm seemed to prey on him, and he was preparing to dispose of his property and quit the country under various pretences, when he one day met in the streets a man whose apparition was a hundred times worse to him than the united return of all the witnesses to the exploit I have recorded. This was a British officer whom he had

once long before denounced to the French government, when the latter was a prisoner of war on his parole. The consequence of which was the officer's being put in prison, loaded with indignities—among which was a most abusive letter from Bobadil—and being finally marched to a distant town, ironed like a common felon, before he obtained his exchange. On meeting Bobadil there was but one course for him to follow. He called him out, intimating that the case was one which required that one of the parties should fall on the field. What cared Bobadil? not a sous ! “ The heart of valour" was up-till the morning came, when his chief second, a fine-spirited Frenchman, an old neighbour of his, went to him by appointment to bring him to the ground. He found him locked in the arms of his wifc-in tears— ruined- lost for ever!

“ Gentlemen,” said the second, when he arrived at the ground alone, and found the English captain and his two témoins waiting,

6 Gentlemen, I am guilty of having a coward for my friend. I am responsible for his fault and my own : the only atonement I can make is to fight ye all one after the other. Gentlemen, I am ready! Begin which ever chooses !"

I need not add that the brave Frenchman found no antagonist among the Englishmen; but I must record that three Americans, hearing of the circumstance, immediately came forward and offered to stand in the place of their hapless countrymana unique specimen of his nation, certainly, as far as pluck was in question. This offer had of course the same result as the former—that is to say, several pure friendships arose out of one dirty quarrel.

In about a year afterwards—how rapid time few, and what havoc he made !—I was sitting in my drawing-room near five hundred miles distant from the scene of these adventures. It was one of those meditative evenings towards the end of the year, when the mind insensibly turns back, and the whole tide of thought and fecling is refluent. In the spring of the year, as in that of life, we look forward and abroad; but autumn is the season of reflection and home. I was absorbed and listless; I heard no foot on the stairs-no announcement by the servant-no opening of the door even : but a hasty stride across the floor caused me to raise my eyes. I thought a spectre stood before me.

“ You don't know me? No wonder. I am a dead man!” said a sepulchral voice. “Good Heaven, is it possible ?” exclaimed I, starting up.

“ Is this Doctor—"

Don't pronounce my name,” said he, with a thrilling tone of despair.

He threw himself on a sofa and panted from exhaustion. I offered him everything-he refused to take any.

“ I have but five minutes to stay with you," said he, still in tones hollow and broken. “ You have, no doubt, heard all that has passed since we parted. You have, perhaps, like the rest of the world, misjudged me, unheard and unappreciated. Ah, Sir! this same world is a vile world of prejudice and injustice—and I am its victim. Courage ! Do I not possess it now—moral courage at least? Can they deny me that? How many of your heroes would have died shivering in their

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beds with such an accumulation of ills as press me down, while I have boldly confronted fatigue, suffering, and death itself in seeking all resources against danger ? Here I have been to Paris to try one last desperate remedy. I was two days back tapped for a dropsy, yet I am now en route again, able for any effort-defying every peril to myself, though I had not the courage wantonly to leave my wife a widow and my child an orphan. You remember our first conversation ? Be satisfied, then, that I am Doctor enough to know that my

whole system is broken up-and so little of a diplomatist as to confess that my heart is broken. I see you are sorry for me. Well, that's some comfort. I am now going as fast as I can travel to catch a last glimpse of the only object dear to me in life;—Heaven grant me strength !" Tears rolled down his livid and hollowed cheeks.

“ Heaven bless you !" murmured he, grasping my hand in his bony one. “ We shall never meet again! I am dying fast-oh, how fast ! I must go

on-I must go on!" He raised himself up, tottered quickly across the room, then stopped short, turned round, and said hurriedly

“You will receive a cask of first-rate wine in a day or two. You know what sort my best Bordeaux was of. Drink it to my memory. Farewell !"

His last thought was one of generosity-perhaps of justice. No matter; it was a virtue in either case: and these were the last words I heard from my unfortunate visitor. He rushed feebly down stairs and out of the door, and scrambled without any aid into his carriage, an open calêche. A young gentleman of pleasing appearance waited for him. I was delighted to see that he was not alone, and that he had such a companion to take care of him. A bow and a glance were exchanged between the stranger and myself: we seemed to understand each other. The postillion dashed on; I returned into the house. For two nights and a day it seemed haunted by the gaunt and haggard figure of the once handsome and portly subject of this sketch, and I have no feeling for his memory but one of kindness and compassion.

The second morning after this visit the cask of genuine Lafitte arrived at my door. In an hour afterwards a letter was put into my hands from the amiable young stranger, an Englishman, to tell me that his friend -yes, after all that had passed, he had the manliness to record and stand by the word--that his friend had died, almost suddenly, on the very night he paid me his never-to-be-forgotten visit.