"Duncan, I am the most miserable of men--I am the slave of half-a-dozen vices. I have drunk them all to the dregs, yet I am not blasé; I wish to God I were. No, I still love the world, love my vices more than ever, but cannot enjoy them--and in that is the hell of it. I hate respectability; I hate work. I love dissipation, and can't dissipate. I look at steady fellows grinding away for little incomes and I hate them, I hate myself. No one can pity me--it's all my own fault. I feel sick and mad sometimes with regret, almost to killing myself--yes, with regret, and what for? I'll tell you--listen--regret that I cannot fly about, as I used to before health and coin and all had taken wings. Not regret for the wasting of any good there might have been in me--not a bit of it, I am too far gone to envy and admire _good_. Who can pity a man who suffers from so selfish and ignoble a grief? and yet, dear Duncan, I believe that such a suffering is as bitter as any the human soul is capable of--all the bitterer because it can meet no sympathy, no pity. God help me!--The other day I heard a theatre-girl ask of another about me, 'Who is that bloated-looking old masher? Doesn't he look an old beast?' Yes, women have come to talk about me like that; you don't know, old man, you with your steady mind, what a hell I am in. Despised where I loved. I gave up all for pleasure.--She is a hard mistress, not only does she jilt one--chuck one over with a heartless laugh when she has wrung all the good out of one--but she leaves one without the possibility of ever getting another mistress. Ambition will not come to the old rake--Fortune, mind, constitution all gone.--Well, it can't be helped--Damn it! I can still drink anyhow. Bring me a shilling's worth of brandy, waiter. What for you, dear boy?" "Nothing for me, old man, and don't you have any more just now.--Look here, Hudson, come along with me--to my diggings--we'll have a drink and a chat there. It will remind us of old times. I can give you a shake-down for the night." The barrister smiled with that knowing and suspicious smile that is peculiar to drunkards. "Not to be caught, doctor," he cried, "none of that gammon for me.--I know your game--but I'm not so drunk as all that. You are right, quite right, old man; I'm going to hell--but I'll go there my own way--damn it! the sooner the better." "Hush, man!" said his friend. "Those two men at that table are listening to our conversation. We'll clear out of this. We can talk much better in my rooms, or your's if you prefer it as they are nearer." Hudson glared at the men in question, rose a little from his chair, so that the doctor feared he was about to engage in a quarrel with them, but then altered his mind, drunk some of his brandy--neat again--sobered down, and continued in more subdued tones: