These men--and who that knows anything of the Continent has not met such everywhere--are the great riddles of our century; and I ‘d rather give a reward for their secret than all the discoveries about perpetual motion, or longitude, or North-west Passages, that ever were heard of. And strange it is, too, no one has ever blabbed. Some have emerged from this misty state to inherit large fortunes and live in the best style; yet I have never heard of a single man having turned king’s evidence on his fellows. And yet what a talent theirs must be, let any man confess who has waited three posts for a remittance without any tidings of its arrival! Think of the hundred-and-one petty annoyances and ironies to which he is subject! He fancies that the very waiters know he is _à sec_; that the landlord looks sour, and the landlady austere; the very clerk in the post-office appears to say, ‘No letter for you, sir,’ with a jibing and impertinent tone. From that moment, too, a dozen expensive tastes that he never dreamed of before enter his head: he wants to purchase a hack or give a dinner-party or bet at a racecourse, principally because he has not got a sou in his pocket, and he is afraid it may be guessed by others--such is the fatal tendency to strive or pretend to something which has no other value in our eyes than the effect it may have on our acquaintances, regardless of what sacrifices it may demand. Forgive, I pray, this long digression, which although I hope not without its advantages would scarcely have been entered into were it not _à propos_ to myself. And to go back--I began to feel excessively uncomfortable at the delay of my money. My first care every morning was to repair to the post-office; sometimes I arrived before it was open, and had to promenade up and down the gloomy Rue de l’Evecque till the clock struck; sometimes the mail would be late (a foreign mail is generally late when the weather is peculiarly fine and the roads good!); but always the same answer came, ‘Rien pour vous, Monsieur O’Leary’; and at last I imagined from the way the fellow spoke that he had set the response to a tune, and sang it. Béranger has celebrated in one of his very prettiest lyrics ‘how happy one is at twenty in a garret.’ I have no doubt, for my part, that the vicinity of the slates and the poverty of the apartment would have much contributed to my peace of mind at the time I speak of. The fact of a magnificently furnished salon, a splendid dinner every day, champagne and Seltzer promiscuously, cab fares and theatre tickets innumerable being all scored against me were sad dampers to my happiness; and from being one of the cheeriest and most light-hearted of fellows, I sank into a state of fidgety and restless impatience, the nearest thing I ever remember to low spirits.