Here he leaned on my shoulder heavily a moment, and then fell back.  We raised him, loosened his neckcloth—­

“Fainted!” said the ladies—­

“Drunk!” said the gentlemen—­

He was dead!

A FASHIONABLE FORGER.

I am an attorney and a bill-discounter.  As it is my vocation to lend money at high interest to extravagant people, my connection principally lies among “fools,” sometimes among rogues “of quality.”  Mine is a pursuit which a prejudiced world either holds in sovereign contempt, or visits with envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness; but to my mind, there are many callings, with finer names, that are no better.  It gives me two things which I love—­money and power; but I cannot deny that it brings with it a bad name.  The case lies between character and money, and involves a matter of taste.  Some people like character; I prefer money.  If I am hated and despised, I chuckle over the “per contra.”  I find it pleasant for members of a proud aristocracy to condescend from their high estate to fawn, feign, flatter; to affect even mirthful familiarity in order to gain my good-will.  I am no Shylock.  No client can accuse me of desiring either his flesh or his blood.  Sentimental vengeance is no item in my stock in trade.  Gold and bank-notes satisfy my “rage;” or, if need be, a good mortgage.  Far from seeking revenge, the worst defaulter I ever had dealings with cannot deny that I am always willing to accept a good post-obit.

I say again, I am daily brought in contact with all ranks of society, from the poverty-stricken patentee to the peer; and I am no more surprised at receiving an application from a duchess than from a pet opera-dancer.  In my ante room wait, at this moment, a crowd of borrowers.  Among the men, (beardless folly and mustachioed craft are most prominent,) there is a handsome young fellow, with an elaborate cane and wonderfully vacant countenance, who is anticipating in feeble follies, an estate that has been in the possession of his ancestors since the reign of Henry the Eighth—­there is a hairy, high-nosed, broken-down nondescript, in appearance something between a horse-dealer and a pugilist.  He is an old Etonian.  Five years ago he drove his four-in-hand; he is now waiting to beg a sovereign, having been just discharged from the Insolvent Court, for the second time.  Among the women, a pretty actress, who, a few years since, looked forward to a supper of steak and onions, with bottled stout, on a Saturday night, as a great treat, now finds one hundred pounds a month insufficient to pay her wine merchant and her confectioner.  I am obliged to deal with each case according to its peculiarities.  Genuine undeserved Ruin seldom knocks at my doer.  Mine is a perpetual battle with people who imbibe trickery at the same rate as they dissolve their fortunes.  I am a hard man, of course.  I should not be fit for my pursuit if I were not; but when, by a remote