He said he lived on the other side of the passage, "and perhaps his young friend would come in and smoke a pipe with him." They went into a room much the same as Gobion's. A jug of steaming water stood on the table by a bottle of gin. "My name is Belper," said the old gentleman, "the Reverend Peter Belper, though I no longer have a cure of souls. Will you have some Old Tom? I never work, but it makes me very thirsty." Gobion drank; he was not in a state of mind to be surprised at anything. This leering old satyr seemed quite natural and in proper sequence. "I won't ask you what you've done," he said to Gobion. "A gentleman doesn't live here for no reason." He spoke with a wagging of his heavy jaw, with a hoarse bleat, but an accent in which still lingered a trace of culture. "No," said Gobion; "I suppose we're a shady lot in this hole." "We are, we are; I myself am not what I was. Good heavens! I was once a vicar! I am now a moral object-lesson. I used to live by sermonizing, now I sermonize by living. A university man, may I ask?" "Yes--Oxford." "Really, there are then two of us. Mrs. Ebbage ought to congratulate herself." "Have you been with her long?" "Six years now. I have a moderate incompetence left; enough to be constantly drunk on." "You find it really does deaden thought?" "My dear sir, if it wasn't for gin I should long since have been in another hell!" A shrill laugh floated up from the kitchen. "I call her 'laughing water,'" said Mr. Belper. "You are poetic." "Yes, my father was Belper the minor poet. I am the least poetic of his works." He leered at the fire, shaking with drink--a shameless, dirty old man. "I was a pretty fellow in my time," he said, licking the chops of remotest memory. "I had a conscience, and wrote harvest festival hymns with it." Gobion filled his glass. "What do you do with yourself all day?" "Drink and sleep, sleep and drink." "Cheerful!" "Yes, very; what else can I do? My mind is gone; if I think it's only blurred pain. I used to try and philosophise, but I can't think now. I don't believe in the nonsense people talk about the comforting powers of philosophy." "Nor I. Philosophy seems to me to be an attempt to eat one's own soul, and indigestion generally results." The old man filled his pipe anew, his face half in light half in shadow, the gross imprint of vice showing more sharply for the contrast, and suggesting still worse possibilities. Bad as it was, it had the prepotency of lower depths. They often sat together thus, spending the long-drawn evenings over the gin-bottle, japing at society. Mr. Belper was ribald and cynical. Nothing could shock either of them; their only prejudice was to persuade themselves that they had none.