“Did not live long!” said the Frenchman, evidently gratified by his host’s compliment, while Liancourt threw himself back in his chair in grave displeasure. “The young man remained some years in India, and when he returned to Paris, our friend here, Monsieur de Liancourt (then in favour with Charles X.), and Madame de Merville’s relations took him up. He had already acquired a reputation in this foreign service, and he obtained a place at the court, and a commission in the king’s guards. I allow that he would certainly have made a career, had it not been for the Three Days. As it is, you see him in London, like the rest of us, an exile!” “And I suppose, without a sous.” “No, I believe that he had still saved, and even augmented, in India, the portion he allotted to himself from Madame de Merville’s bequest.” “And if he don’t play whist, he ought to play it,” said Lilburne. “You have roused my curiosity; I hope you will let me make his acquaintance, Monsieur de Liancourt. I am no politician, but allow me to propose this toast, ‘Success to those who have the wit to plan, and the strength to execute.’ In other words, ‘the Right Divine!’” Soon afterwards the guests retired. CHAPTER IV. “Ros. Happily, he’s the second time come to them.”--Hamlet. It was the evening after that in which the conversations recorded in our last chapter were held;--evening in the quiet suburb of H------. The desertion and silence of the metropolis in September had extended to its neighbouring hamlets;--a village in the heart of the country could scarcely have seemed more still; the lamps were lighted, many of the shops already closed, a few of the sober couples and retired spinsters of the place might, here and there, be seen slowly wandering homeward after their evening walk: two or three dogs, in spite of the prohibitions of the magistrates placarded on the walls,--(manifestoes which threatened with death the dogs, and predicted more than ordinary madness to the public,)--were playing in the main road, disturbed from time to time as the slow coach, plying between the city and the suburb, crawled along the thoroughfare, or as the brisk mails whirled rapidly by, announced by the cloudy dust and the guard’s lively horn. Gradually even these evidences of life ceased--the saunterers disappeared, the mails had passed, the dogs gave place to the later and more stealthy perambulations of their feline successors “who love the moon.” At unfrequent intervals, the more important shops--the linen-drapers’, the chemists’, and the gin-palace--still poured out across the shadowy road their streams of light from windows yet unclosed: but with these exceptions, the business of the place stood still.