“This dear Paris,” said Beaufort, as his eye carelessly and unconsciously followed the dark form retreating through the arches;--“this dear Paris! I must make the most of it while I stay! I have only been here a few weeks, and next week I must go.” “Pooh--your health is better: you don’t look like the same man.” “You think so really? Still I don’t know: the doctors say that I must either go to the German waters--the season is begun--or--” “Or what?” “Live less with such pleasant companions, my dear fellow! But as you say, what is life without--” “Women!” “Wine!” “Play!” “Wealth!” “Ha! ha. ‘Throw physic to the dogs: I’ll none of it!’” And Arthur leaped lightly on his saddle, and as he rode gaily on, humming the favourite air of the last opera, the hoofs of his horse splashed the mud over a foot-passenger halting at the crossing. Morton checked the fiery exclamation rising to his lips; and gazing after the brilliant form that hurried on towards the Champs Elysees, his eye caught the statues on the bridge, and a voice, as of a cheering angel, whispered again to his heart, “TIME, FAITH, ENERGY!” The expression of his countenance grew calm at once, and as he continued his rambles it was with a mind that, casting off the burdens of the past, looked serenely and steadily on the obstacles and hardships of the future. We have seen that a scruple of conscience or of pride, not without its nobleness, had made him refuse the importunities of Gawtrey for less sordid raiment; the same feeling made it his custom to avoid sharing the luxurious and dainty food with which Gawtrey was wont to regale himself. For that strange man, whose wonderful felicity of temperament and constitution rendered him, in all circumstances, keenly alive to the hearty and animal enjoyments of life, would still emerge, as the day declined, from their wretched apartment, and, trusting to his disguises, in which indeed he possessed a masterly art, repair to one of the better description of restaurants, and feast away his cares for the moment. William Gawtrey would not have cared three straws for the curse of Damocles. The sword over his head would never have spoiled his appetite! He had lately, too, taken to drinking much more deeply than he had been used to do--the fine intellect of the man was growing thickened and dulled; and this was a spectacle that Morton could not bear to contemplate. Yet so great was Gawtrey’s vigour of health, that, after draining wine and spirits enough to have despatched a company of fox-hunters, and after betraying, sometimes in uproarious glee, sometimes in maudlin self-bewailings, that he himself was not quite invulnerable to the thyrsus of the god, he would--on any call on his energies, or especially before departing on those mysterious expeditions which kept him from home half, and sometimes all, the night--plunge his head into cold water--drink as much of the lymph as a groom would have