The Devil, at this, grinned so horribly that every drop of beer in the house turned sour; he gnashed his teeth so frightfully that every person in the company well-nigh fainted with the colic. He slapped down the great parchment upon the floor, trampled upon it madly, and lashed it with his hoofs and his tail: at last, spreading out a mighty pair of wings as wide as from here to Regent Street, he slapped Gambouge with his tail over one eye, and vanished, abruptly, through the keyhole. * * * * * Gambouge screamed with pain and started up. ‘You drunken, lazy scoundrel!’ cried a shrill and well-known voice, ‘you have been asleep these two hours:’ and here he received another terrific box on the ear. It was too true, he had fallen asleep at his work; and the beautiful vision had been dispelled by the thumps of the tipsy Griskinissa. Nothing remained to corroborate his story except the bladder of lake, and this was spirted all over his waistcoat and breeches. ‘I wish,’ said the poor fellow, rubbing his tingling cheeks, ‘that dreams were true;’ and he went to work again at his portrait. * * * * * My last accounts of Gambouge are, that he has left the arts, and is footman in a small family. Mrs. Gam. takes in washing; and it is said that her continual dealings with soap-suds and hot water have been the only things in life which have kept her from spontaneous combustion. CARTOUCHE I have been much interested with an account of the exploits of Monsieur Louis Dominic Cartouche, and as Newgate and the highways are so much the fashion with us in England, we may be allowed to look abroad for histories of a similar tendency. It is pleasant to find that virtue is cosmopolite, and may exist among wooden-shoed Papists as well as honest Church-of-England men. Louis Dominic was born in a quarter of Paris called the Courtille, says the historian whose work lies before me;--born in the Courtille, and in the year 1693. Another biographer asserts that he was born two years later, and in the Marais;--of respectable parents, of course. Think of the talent that our two countries produced about this time: Marlborough, Villars, Mandrin, Turpin, Boileau, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Molière, Racine, Jack Sheppard, and Louis Cartouche,--all famous within the same twenty years, and fighting, writing, robbing, _à l’envi_! Well, Marlborough was no chicken when he began to show his genius; Swift was but a dull, idle college lad; but if we read the histories of some other great men mentioned in the above list--I mean the thieves, especially--we shall find that they all commenced very early: they showed a passion for their art, as little Raphael did, or little Mozart; and the history of Cartouche’s knaveries begins almost with his breeches.