He
wears a very good coat, however, and a waistband, which he lets out
after dinner. Before ladies he blushes, and is as silent as a
schoolboy. He calls them "modest women." His society is chiefly
among young lads belonging to his former profession. He knows the
best wine to be had at each tavern or cafe, and the waiters treat
him with much respectful familiarity. He knows the names of every
one of them; and shouts out, "Send Markwell here!" or, "Tell
Cuttriss to give us a bottle of the yellow seal!" or, "Dizzy voo,
Monsure Borrel, noo donny shampang frappy," etc. He always makes
the salad or the punch, and dines out three hundred days in the
year: the other days you see him in a two-franc eating-house at
Paris, or prowling about Rupert Street, or St. Martin's Court, where
you get a capital cut of meat for eightpence. He has decent
lodgings and scrupulously clean linen; his animal functions are
still tolerably well preserved, his spiritual have evaporated long
since; he sleeps well, has no conscience, believes himself to be a
respectable fellow, and is tolerably happy on the days when he is
asked out to dinner.
Poor Pop is not very high in the scale of created beings; but, if
you fancy there is none lower, you are in egregious error.
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