“Listen to a word of common sense, Alfred, my boy. Men make coats--if you can properly call a tailor a man--but coats can never make men. You may dress an ass up in the grandest lion-skin going, but you can make nothing of him but an ass, nevertheless. In fact, I never believe a man’s a man till I’ve seen him with his coat off; then if he can use his fists as a man should, I believe in him.” “Aha! I comprehend; ce monsieur refers to your English science of the box. Very clever science is the box; I am acquiring him of a professeur, who keeps a restaurant, what you call a public-house, in Smissfiel.” As D’Almayne’s companion thus spoke, Horace seized the opportunity of introducing him, which he did as follows:-- “Allow me to make you acquainted with my friend, Monsieur Adolphe Guillemard, a gentleman connected with the financial interest in Paris, and with that of Europe generally.” Then, in a stage whisper, he added--“He was educated in Rothschild’s house.” So Harry bowed, and Lord Alfred bowed, and Alice inclined her head in rather a stately manner, because she did not approve of Monsieur Guillemard’s roving eyes; and Monsieur Guillemard bowed and scraped, and laid his hand on his waistcoat, where his heart ought to have been, and abased his unappreciated optics, and appeared profoundly touched, and anxious to weep on the bosom of society at large; and Mr. Crane, who at that moment came up in his wife’s custody, not making allowance for foreign manners, thought he was in a fit. Then Monsieur Guillemard drew out his watch, and found he had an engagement at the Bourse, as he was pleased to call the Stock Exchange; and so took leave of his new acquaintance, squeezed both the yellow kid hands of his _cher_ Horace, and with short, jaunty footsteps, as of a male ballet-dancer, quitted the spacious gallery, sacred to the noble efforts of the Amalgamated Amateurs. And when he had departed, of course his friends began to talk him over. D’Almayne drew Mr. Crane aside, and related to him wonderful anecdotes of his (Guillemard’s) skill in foreseeing political events and their consequences, and the splendid hits he had thus made in stock-jobbing for himself, and others who had wisely availed themselves of his talent, and what Baron Rothschild had said and thought of him; until Mr. Crane began to imagine him an incarnation of Mammon, and yearned to fall down and adore him on the spot. For, be it observed, parenthetically, that Mr. Crane, albeit nominally a member of the Established Church, was verily and indeed a worshipper of a certain golden calf, to whose likeness he had for years striven earnestly, and not unsuccessfully, to assimilate himself. And Harry remarked confidentially to Alice, Kate, and Lord Alfred, that he was prepared to bet a pony that Guillemard was neither more nor less than a “leg,” and that whoever had many dealings with him would be safe to put his or her foot in it--which sentence sounded like nonsense, but was only slang.