To describe the progress of this gambling conspiracy would be a waste of time. It was managed with consummate ability. The devoted youth became desperately enamored of this friend, of the captain; he "told his love," and then came proof positive, that Greek and Roman friendship are not comparable to the tremendous sacrifice of personal feeling, which you may expect from a _café_ acquaintance. Damon returned in time to substitute his own neck, and stay the execution of a gentleman called Pythias, while "Cato the sententious Lent his fair lady to his friend Hortensius." Now Captain K----, on learning the state of the young Londoner's affections, although himself a secret worshiper at the shrine of the same divinity, resigned his own pretensions, and actually undertook to plead with the fair enslaver for his friend. Great was the intimacy, of course, that succeeded; and at the apartments of Madame La C----, morning, noon, and night, the young Englishman might have been found. Play was cautiously introduced--nothing was staked excepting a mere _bagatelle_--beyond the hazard of a trifle, it was evident that any experiment would be dangerous. The day for the citizen's departure was fixed, and it was pretty certain the bird would escape the net of the fowler. Could he have been but led to play he would have been cheated scientifically. That was not to be done, and nothing could succeed but bold and downright felony. Madame's birthday returned, as it did some twenty times a year; and she gave a _petit souper_. K---- sent in the wine, and the citizen provided the viands. A merrier evening could not be spent. Two or three ladies, and as many gentlemen of high honor, favored La C---- with their company. There was play, limited to a few francs, and on the Englishman's part to gloves and garters. Supper was served--all was hilarious--the wine circulated freely, and all the Londoner remembered in the morning when he awoke with a burning head was, that he had become unaccountably drunk, and got home he knew not how. He strove to get up, but his temples throbbed almost to bursting. An excess in wine had never affected him so before: could this arise from simple drunkenness? The sensation was altogether new. The truth was he had not been drunk, but drugged! While rolling his aching head from side to side upon the pillow his _lacquey de place_ announced his dear friend, the captain; and next minute "Little Joe" was standing at his bedside. "Good heaven!" exclaimed the citizen; "how awfully drunk I must have been last night! My very brain's on fire." "Drunk!" returned his companion; "you were not drunk but mad--what devil possessed you to play? D--n it, you always swore you hated it, and every score of _naps_ you lost you would, though I warned you, lay it on thicker."