‘Mr. Raily was born at Bath, that city enjoying the foremost reputation among our celebrities of fashion. Having started life with small means, he modelled himself upon a certain Mr. Nash, his predecessor in that career. That personage, who was called Beau Nash, was for forty years the arbiter of all that was elegant at Bath. His authority in that respect was boundless, and his verdicts without appeal. They finally gave him the sobriquet of ‘the King of Bath.’ In imitation of his master, Mr. Raily posed as the prince of the drawing-rooms and boudoirs. He, however, soon grew weary of more or less romantic love-adventures, and began to cast about for something more profitable. From his native city, he went to the capitals of the United Kingdom and then to those of Europe. He exploited them very cleverly and very luckily. At present, he has just returned from St. Petersburg. He has brought back from it all the gold plate you saw, the profusion of pearls and diamonds which convey the impression of his being a jeweller, and in addition to all this, it is said, a credit of a million of florins at the banker Arnstein’s. All this seems, indeed, most fabulous. Let us trust that there will not be a verification of the old proverb: “He who wants to make a fortune in a month is generally hanged during the first week.”’ Mr. Raily had a somewhat longer shrift than that, because it was fully three years before I met with him again, and then it was in Paris. But all his wealth was gone, and all the brilliant illusions, if ever he fostered any, were replaced by the most sombre reality. When he called upon me, there was no longer the confidence resulting from well-filled pockets, but the saddening humility of an empty stomach. I had scarcely time to question him; he forestalled my queries by telling me that everything was gone. ‘Furniture, plate, diamonds, your infernal “Salon des Étrangers” has swallowed every bit of them,’ he said, and then he gave me a description of the quickly following phases of the life of a gambler. ‘I have exhausted everything,’ he wound up; ‘look at that bracelet, it is made of the hair of my wife; it would have gone the road of the rest, if your pawnbrokers would have condescended to lend me a crown on it.’ ‘But, Mr. Raily, why did you not apply to all those celebrities you entertained so right royally at Vienna?’ ‘I have written to all; I have not had an answer from any.’ I offered him some pecuniary assistance, and a few years later I learnt that this man whose lavishness had astonished Vienna itself at the period of the Congress, and at whose board royalty had sat, had died of starvation. * * * * *