('twas in the Rue de Rivoli, gentle reader!) all the way to St Cloud and Meudon, one of the sweetest and gayest prospects in the world, by the by, and hold soft communings either with the stars or our next neighbours--(but thereon hangs a tale!) and yet never did we know the name even of any other soul in the house, nor they ours. Oh! we have had many an adventure up and down that interminable staircase, when we used to skip up two hundred and twenty steps to get to our eyry; many a blow-up with our old porter: she was a good soul, too, was old Madame Nicaise; many a time have we seen flounces and redingotes coming in and out of doors as we went up or down; but actually we cannot call to mind the reality, the living vision of a single individual in that vasty mansion. On the contrary, we used to think them all a set of unsociable toads, and, in our days of raw Anglicism, we used to think that we might be just as well called in to "assist" at some of the charming soirées which we used to hear of from the porter: we did not then know that a Parisian likes to be "chez lui" as he calls it, quite as much as an Englishman. We should have lived on in that house, gentle reader, _ad infinitum_; but one day on going up-stairs, we saw in ominous letters, on a new brass plate, "au troisième, de la cour," LEGRAND, TAILLEUR. Horror of horrors! 'twas our own man! we had not paid him for two years: we gave _congé_ that evening, and were off to the Antipodes. "ROGUES IN OUTLINE." BIRBONE I. SIGNOR RUSCA. "Rusca the lawyer, an exceeding knave."--POPE. "Currunt verba licet, manus est velocior illis Nondum linguâ suâ, dextra peregit opus."--MARTIAL. A more knowing man in his way than Signor Avocato Rusca R---- it would not be easy to find; so first-rate is he in his style, though his style may not be quite first-rate! His father intended him for a lawyer, whilst nature qualified him for a cheat; and, as there seemed to be nothing absolutely incompatible in the prosecution of these two professions, "He sought, without offence to either, How he might deal in both together;" in doing which for a season, he accumulated much useful knowledge, besides laying the foundation of his future fortune. Whether in his earlier career he followed the practice of his learned predecessor, Paulus, and sought, like him, to augment his fees by pleading in a hired Sardonyx,[74] we have not heard; but his passion for jewels, none who have seen him without his gloves (and we never saw him otherwise) can for a moment doubt. "Tight girt with gems, in massive mountings set, Beneath their weight his tumid fingers sweat."