“Pounds, ponies, or hundreds,” vociferates Lacquers, now decidedly uproarious; “thousands if you like. Fortune favours the brave. Vogue la thingumbob! Waiter! brandy-and-water! Clank, you’re a trump: shake hands, Clank. We won’t go home till morning. Yonder he goes: tally-ho!” And while the Major, who is a man of conscience, satisfies himself with betting his friend’s bet in hundreds, Lacquers vainly endeavours to make a corresponding memorandum; and finding his fingers refuse their office, gives himself up to his fate, and with an abortive attempt to embrace the astonished Clank, subsides into a sitting posture on the floor. The rest adjourn to whist in the drawing-room; and Gaston D’Orville concludes his rounds by losing three hundred to Sir Ascot; “Uppy” congratulating himself on not having made such a bad day’s work after all. As the Major walks home to his lodgings in the first pure flush of the summer’s morning, how he loathes that man whose fresh unsullied boyhood he remembers so well. What is he now? Nothing to rest on; nothing to hope for--loving one--deceiving another. If he gain his object, what is it but a bitter perjury? Gambler--traitor--profligate--turn which way he will, there is nothing but ruin, misery, and sin. CHAPTER XIII THE WORLD SELLING THE COPYRIGHT--THE POLITICIAN’S DAY-DREAMS--TATTERSALL’S AT FLOOD--A DANDY’S DESTINY “Can’t do it, my lord--your lordship must consider--overwritten yourself sadly of late--your ‘Broadsides from the Baltic’ were excellent--telling, clever, and eloquent; but you’ll excuse me--you were incorrect in your statistics and mistaken in your facts. Then your last novel, ‘Captain Flash; or, the Modern Grandison,’ was a dead loss to us--lively work--well reviewed--but it _didn’t sell_. In these days people don’t care to go behind the scenes for a peep at aristocratic ruffians and chivalrous black-legs--no, what we want is something original--hot and strong, my lord, and lots of nature. Now, these translations”--and the publisher, for a publisher it was who spoke, waved his sword of office, a huge ivory paper-cutter, towards a bundle of manuscripts--“these translations from the ‘Medea’ are admirably done--elegant language--profound scholarship--great merit--but the public won’t look at them; and even with your lordship’s name to help them off, we cannot say more than three hundred--in point of fact, I think we are hardly justified in going as far as that;” and the publisher crossed his legs and sat back in his arm-chair, like a man who had made up his mind.