Some were the common narratives of debt and desertion, protested bills, and so forth; others were the bit-by-bit details of extravagant habits pushed beyond all limits, and ending in expatriation for ever. There were faithless husbands, outraging all decency by proclaiming their bad conduct; there were as faithless wives, parading about in all the effrontery of wickedness. At one side sat the roué companion of George the Fourth, in his princely days, now a mere bloated debauchee, with rouged cheeks and dyed whiskers, living on the hackneyed anecdotes of his youthful rascality, and earning his daily bread by an affected epicurism and a Sybarite pretension, which flattered the vulgar vanity of those who fed him; while the lion of the evening was a newly arrived earl, whose hunters were that very day sold at Tattersall’s, and whose beautiful countess, horror-stricken at the ruin so unexpectedly come upon them, was lying dangerously ill at her father’s house in London. The young peer, indeed, bore up with a fortitude that attracted the highest encomiums, and from an audience the greater portion of which knew in their own persons most of the ills he suffered. He exchanged an easy nod or a familiar shake of the hand with several acquaintances, not seen before for many a day, and seemed to think that the severest blow fortune had dealt him was the miserable price his stud would fetch at such a time of the year. ‘The old story,’ said Wycherley, as he shook him by the hand, and told him his address--‘the old story; he thought twenty thousand a year would do anything, but it won’t though. If men will keep a house in town, and another in Gloucestershire, with a pack of fox-hounds, and have four horses in training at Doncaster--not to speak of a yacht at Cowes and some other fooleries--they must come to the Jews; and when they come to the Jews, the pace is faster than for the Derby itself. Two hundred per cent, is sharp practice, and I can tell you not uncommon either; and then when a man does begin to topple, his efforts to recover always ruin him. It’s like a fall from your horse--make a struggle, and you ‘re sure to break your leg or your collar-bone; take it kindly, and the chances are that you get up all right again, after the first shock.’ I did not like either the tone or the morality of my companion; but I well knew both were the conventional coinage of his set, and I suffered him to continue without interruption. ‘There’s Mosely Cranmer,’ said he, pointing to a slight, effeminate- looking young man, with a most girlish softness about his features. He was dressed in the very extreme of fashion, and displayed all that array of jewelry in pins, diamond vest-buttons, and rings, so frequently assumed by modern dandyism. His voice was a thin reedy treble, scarcely deep enough for a child. ‘Who is he, and what is he doing here?’ asked I.