Possessed by the knowledge that I must inevitably perish in a rope, or less fortunately in a debtor's jail, for the instant the hand of the law was laid on my coat, the state of my affairs would never permit it to be removed. I went home and hastily summoned a few choice spirits to my lodgings in Jermyn Street that evening; and I spent the last night of my freedom in that society, expecting at every cast of the cards and every clink of the bottle to hear the boots of the "traps" from Bow Street upon the stairs. Yet all night long they never came, and here it was one o'clock in the afternoon, and I still in the enjoyment of my liberty. And now, as I sat in the sanity of daylight, refreshed by an excellent sleep, I felt myself still to be my own man. Therefore I called to François my valet to draw up the window-blinds, and to have the goodness to bring me a bottle of wine. This blackguard of an Irishman bore in baptism the name of Terence, but I called him François, because one holds that to be as indubitably the name of a valet as Dick of an ostler, and Thomas of a clergyman. Besides, I have such an hereditary instinct for polite letters, that I would as lief have called him after his own honoured patronymic as by that of our excellent Flaccus himself. François waded through the kings and queens and aces on the carpet, let the daylight in, and then withdrew to fetch a clean glass and a bottle of Tokay. "The last bottle, me lord," says he. "We drain the last bottle on the last day," says I. "Can aught be more fitting? _Finis coronal opus_!" As this was the last time I should take the cup of pleasure to my lips, I made the utmost of it; sipped it carefully, turned it over on my tongue, held the glass up to the light, meditated on my past a little, on my present case, and what lay before me. I suppose it was a particular generous quality of the wine that kindled a new warmth in my spirit. Why, I asked myself, should I sit here, tamely waiting on my fate? Why should I be content to have my person contaminated with the dirty hands that would hale it to an ignominious death, or a thing less bearable? Why should I not cheat the Jews and my evil fortune in this last hour? Nothing could be easier than to leave the law in the lurch.