“Curiosity was the poor child’s foible.  I could see, as I talked to her, that her thoughts were elsewhere (as yours, my friend, have been absent once or twice to-night).  To know the secret of Masonry was the wretched child’s mad desire.  With a thousand wiles, smiles, caresses, she strove to coax it from me—­from me—­ha! ha!

“I had an apprentice—­the son of a dear friend, who died by my side at Rossbach, when Soubise, with whose army I happened to be, suffered a dreadful defeat for neglecting my advice.  The Young Chevalier Goby de Mouchy was glad enough to serve as my clerk, and help in some chemical experiments in which I was engaged with my friend Dr. Mesmer.  Bathilde saw this young man.  Since women were, has it not been their business to smile and deceive, to fondle and lure?  Away!  From the very first it has been so!” And as my companion spoke, he looked as wicked as the serpent that coiled round the tree, and hissed a poisoned counsel to the first woman.

“One evening I went, as was my wont, to see Blanche.  She was radiant:  she was wild with spirits:  a saucy triumph blazed in her blue eyes.  She talked, she rattled in her childish way.  She uttered, in the course of her rhapsody, a hint—­an intimation—­so terrible that the truth flashed across me in a moment.  Did I ask her?  She would lie to me.  But I knew how to make falsehood impossible.  And I ordered her to go to sleep.”

At this moment the clock (after its previous convulsions) sounded twelve.  And as the new Editor* of the Cornhill Magazine—­and he, I promise you, won’t stand any nonsense—­will only allow seven pages, I am obliged to leave off at the very most interesting point of the story.

* Mr. Thackeray retired from the Editorship of the Cornhill Magazine in March, 1862

III

“Are you of our fraternity?  I see you are not.  The secret which Mademoiselle de Bechamel confided to me in her mad triumph and wild hoyden spirits—­she was but a child, poor thing, poor thing, scarce fifteen;—­but I love them young—­a folly not unusual with the old!” (Here Mr. Pinto thrust his knuckles into his hollow eyes; and, I am sorry to say, so little regardful was he of personal cleanliness, that his tears made streaks of white over his guarled dark hands.) “Ah, at fifteen, poor child, thy fate was terrible!  Go to!  It is not good to love me, friend.  They prosper not who do.  I divine you.  You need not say what you are thinking—­”

In truth, I was thinking, if girls fall in love with this sallow, hook-nosed, glass-eyed, wooden-legged, dirty, hideous old man, with the sham teeth, they have a queer taste.  That is what I was thinking.

“Jack Wilkes said the handsomest man in London had but half an hour’s start of him.  And, without vanity, I am scarcely uglier than Jack Wilkes.  We were members of the same club at Medenham Abbey, Jack and I, and had many a merry night together.  Well, sir, I—­Mary of Scotland knew me but as a little hunchbacked music master; and yet, and yet, I think she was not indifferent to her David Riz—­and she came to misfortune.  They all do—­they all do!”