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HYDE MARSTON;

OR, RECOLLECTIONS OF A SPORTSMAN'S LIFE.

BY THE EDITOR.

CHAPTER THE FORTIETH.- A GAMBLER'S LIFE.

“O villain! villain! abhorred, unnatural villain!"
SHAKSPEARE.

"Talents, 'tis true-quick, various, bright—has God
To virtue oft denied, on vice bestow'd:
Just as fond nature lovelier colours brings
To deck the insect's than the eagle's wings.
But then, of man, the high-boru nobler part,
The ethereal energies that touch the heart-
These, virtue, these to thee alone belong."

CHARLES GRANT.

"Rude was navigation then."

DRYDEN.

On a lugubrious metropolitan morning, I set forth to keep tryst with my recently acquired confidant at his hotel in New-street, Covent Garden. He was at breakfast, and however he might have treated my advice about going to bed, he had certainly not exhibited much respect for it, so far as related to the affair of his potations. Though I took the precaution to give him a wide berth, the odour of grog was almost too much for my forenoon fastidiousness of fragrance; notwithstanding, I must do him the justice to say he had corrected it by a liberal infusion of garlic.

His face and hands had been submitted to soap and water, but the former had not benefited by the process; in fact, just the contrary, for it had compelled his cambric into melancholy relief, and deprived his features of the shading which toned down their unearthy hue and expression. Certainly there never was a much less prepossessing exterior. His toilette was the superlative of shocking bad; while his countenance, unlike any existing image to which it might be compared, may be faintly sketched by fancying the fashion in which the property-man of a puppet-show would be likely to get up Punch in the last stage of consumption: in short, his visage was that of an Israelite in whom there was much guile, and little or no nourishment. He rose at my entrance, and offered me the courtesies of the day, a polite attention I could as well have dispensed with, as the chamber,

at the time, was also occupied by a couple of tinkers, who were pouring their oblations to Aurora, from chalices of XX. These presently took their departure, and we were alone.

"With your leave," said the Levite - there was no mistaking the badge of his tribe, "with your leave I'll call for a little cold waterand brandy.

I offered no objection to the proposal. This having been secured, and of course tasted, or tested—we wont dispute about terms-the man of rags threw off reserve, and thus began.

"Still you do not recognise me: can it be that dress (he might have said the want of it) or circumstance is powerful enough to negative identity? And must I tell you, the unfortunate you saved in his worst strait was once but too well known to you as Von Hofman-you start-and still earlier as the valet of Charles, at the period of the catastrophe at —— Hall, of which you were a witness?

"But let not this declaration move you: there is that to be told you will need good nerves to listen to. At all events, hear me with patience; let not natural indignation prevent attention to details which, for the common debt all owe to society, demand earnest and solemn regard. You are astonished at the language in which I address you: it belongs to the education I received; as its counterfeit, which I used when you first knew me, belonged to the craft I then practised. I allude to my rôle of the Baron Von Hofman.

"I am, by birth, a Pole, a native of Warsaw, where I was brought up to the profession of medicine. As my family possessed good means, I was sent, for several years, to study anatomy in London, and on my return to my native city I spoke English better than my natural tongue. My father died when I was twenty years of age, leaving me, in ready money, a sum sufficient to have secured a handsome independence for life. But I had already become a professed gamester, deeply versed in all the arcana of play, but still no match for the gangs of experienced dicers at the time, abounding in that, the most licentious capital in Europe. Soon beggared in fame and fortune, I was compelled to fly from the consequences of a crime into which destitution and a naturally desperate spirit had hurried me. Having, after many hazards, reached Constantinople, I abandoned my faith and adopted the turban, and entered the Turkish navy as a surgeon's mate to one of their splendid frigates.

"I had fled from my country, but not from that which had made me a fugitive. The spirit of play was still within me, busy, restless as ever; and there was no want of opportunity for its indulgence among my associates of the crescent. A lengthened detention in the Bosphorus afforded me ample occasion for cultivating the dissipation of the Turkish metropolis, of which my aforesaid naturalization permitted me the range whenever it suited my inclination, and my duty allowed. Soon involvements and difficulties beset me; and when no hope seemed left, I made the chance acquaintance with an Armenian physician at one of the baths. He was also a heavy player, and, like myself, had suffered largely. This man proposed that we should become confederates, and I accepted his offer. You know the universal

taste for the pipe in Turkey. It was a part of his plan that measures should be taken for introducing into the tobacco used at the coffeehouses to which we resorted to play, certain narcotics, with which he was familiar, that when smoked produced a 'kief,' or placid

intoxication.

"This scheme we pursued with great success for a time, but it was followed by results we never contemplated. All those who used the tobacco so prepared became more or less indisposed. Suspicion was aroused, and while a keen surveillance was kept upon all who frequented the house, two of its most constant guests and emphatic smokers died. Our situation now became one of considerable danger. Your Turk does'nt stand upon ceremony as to the use of the bow-string, and our lives were held upon rather an insecure tenure. Once more, therefore, I was a wanderer; and Paris, ever the refuge of crime, cunning, desperation, or despair, wherever engendered or however begot, became my resting-place.

"The career of play, again begun, soon left me as penniless as before. In this condition, having run the gauntlet of scorn and contumely at the salons that had been enriched by my plunder, while debating between a meerschaum of my own tobacco and the morgue, accident threw me in the path of him whose menial I appeared to be during our abode at his brother's seat in Lancashire. I was of use to him in a broil in which he was concerned at the notorious numero, in the Palais Royale; and as I seemed to possess qualities he might turn to account, he offered me the situation of confidential servant, and my necessity accepted the offer. A short experience, however, enabled Mr. Charles to discover that I was in a position for which I was not suited; while there was one in which my talents might be made infinitely more available. In short, he elected me his confederate at the play table; and in that capacity I played so successful a game, that Paris soon became too hot for both master and man.

"These vicissitudes may seem extraordinary to you, yet they are but the ordinary routine consequent upon the trade in which I embarked. Could you read the histories of the men who, in braided coats, ormolu jewellery, and moustachios, swagger or sneak, feast or famish, among the hells of St. James's, you would find that nine-tenths of them have been scouted out of half the capitals of Europe.

"But this is from my purpose. On our arrival in London it was found convenient I should enact the valet, both in its English downright and French un-right signification. In defiance of every stratagem, however, our resources melted away rapidly, and one heavy loss gave them the coup de grace. It was obvious, too, that if the nature

of our connection was not actually discovered, it had become the subject of canvass, and a temporary removal was again the most prudent step that remained to us. In this originated that visit to Lancashire during which Charles became known to you. At that period he was, in every sense, a ruined man: not a guinea of patrimony was left; his credit was utterly gone, and his honour more than mis

trusted.

"Even this was not the worst-there were others to be affected by

his loss of fortune: others who monopolized the only natural feeling that survived in the gambler's heart! It was a subject on which he always spoke with reserve, but I contrived to glean from him that, in one of his play excursions beyond the Alps, he had formed a connection with an Italian girl, a Neapolitan dancer of rare beauty, who brought him children. She had died in giving birth to the second, but in the first-born his soul seemed garnered.

He never alluded to

her without an emotion whose truth and intensity were evidences of the great moral principle that 'none are all evil.' How often, when weaving some dark plot or devilish device, have I heard him murmur, 'if I succeed it will be all for her: for my dark-eyed daughter: for my pearl above all price!'

"It was in this terrible necessity that he resolved on a visit to his elder brother; and the obscure hints occasionally given during my first knowledge of him, concerning one obstacle that lay between him and fortune, took a palpable form. Soon after our arrival he threw off all reserve; and that the impediment should be forthwith removed, became understood between us. Presently we took counsel together as to the most convenient and the securest means of effecting our purpose: : numerous plans were devised, but as constantly thwarted by one accident or other. The danger of a violent attempt was too imminent, and there seemed no hope of bringing the issue about by any other course. We had almost come to the resolution of abandoning the project, and once more trying our luck in the metropolis, when an occurrence suggested to me a scheme we had unaccountably overlooked till thus prompted by opportunity.

"A severe fall in hunting, by which his brother was wounded externally, made the daily attendance of a surgeon necessary. There was a difficulty in obtaining such attendance from the distance of Hall from the residence of any practitioner of character, and at last it flashed upon Charles that the occasion he sought for had arrived. He proposed that as I was versed in the common practice of surgery, the dressing of the wound should be committed to my care, for which purpose I could remain in the country while he pursued his intention of proceeding to London. The offer was cheerfully accepted, and we parted with an understanding that might not be spoken. I needed little suggestion but that of my necessity. The patient desired relief from pain: I found that which soothed him in body and spirit. His physician approved of his smoking; in preparing his meerschaum I did not forget the secret I had learnt in the east. The great strength of his constitution, however, made my labour a work of time; he was taken, for the sake of more eminent advice to town, and it was not till after many months that my commission was executed."

The murderer paused, and looked at me with eyes of stone; my blood froze-my flesh crept: I was sick to death-the room seemed to whirl around. Probably I was at the point of swooning, for he rose, and was about to lay hands on me. The act restored my senses in an instant. I recoiled from his touch with the energy of horror; the wretch saw and understood it. The scene in all its squalid

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