“It is ordinarily very handsome,” said he, with such a leer at a couple of passers-by, that one of them cried, “Oh, crikey, here’s a precious guy!” and a child, in its nurse’s arms, screamed itself into convulsions.  “Oh, oui, che suis tres-choli garcon, bien peau, cerdainement,” continued Mr. Pinto; “but you were right.  That—­that person was not very well pleased when he saw me.  There was no love lost between us, as you say; and the world never knew a more worthless miscreant.  I hate him, voyez-vous?  I hated him alife; I hate him dead.  I hate him man; I hate him ghost:  and he know it, and tremble before me.  If I see him twenty tausend years hence—­and why not?—­I shall hate him still.  You remarked how he was dressed?”

“In black satin breeches and striped stockings; a white pique waistcoat, a gray coat, with large metal buttons, and his hair in powder.  He must have worn a pigtail—­only—­”

“Only it was cut off!  Ha, ha, ha!” Mr. Pinto cried, yelling a laugh, which I observed made the policeman stare very much.  “Yes.  It was cut off by the same blow which took off the scoundrel’s head—­ho, ho, ho!” And he made a circle with his hook-nailed finger round his own yellow neck, and grinned with a horrible triumph.  “I promise you that fellow was surprised when he found his head in the pannier.  Ha! ha!  Do you ever cease to hate those whom you hate?”—­fire flashed terrifically from his glass eye, as he spoke—­“or to love dose whom you once loved.  Oh, never, never!” And here his natural eye was bedewed with tears.  “But here we are at the ‘Gray’s-inn Coffee-house.’  James, what is the joint?”

That very respectful and efficient waiter brought in the bill of fare, and I, for my part, chose boiled leg of pork and pease-pudding, which my acquaintance said would do as well as anything else; though I remarked he only trifled with the pease-pudding, and left all the pork on the plate.  In fact, he scarcely ate anything.  But he drank a prodigious quantity of wine; and I must say that my friend Mr. Hart’s port-wine is so good that I myself took—­well, I should think, I took three glasses.  Yes, three, certainly.  He—­I mean Mr. P.—­the old rogue, was insatiable:  for we had to call for a second bottle in no time.  When that was gone, my companion wanted another.  A little red mounted up to his yellow cheeks as he drank the wine, and he winked at it in a strange manner.  “I remember,” said he, musing, “when port-wine was scarcely drunk in this country—­though the Queen liked it, and so did Harley; but Bolingbroke didn’t—­he drank Florence and Champagne.  Dr. Swift put water to his wine.  ‘Jonathan,’ I once said to him—­but bah! autres temps, autres moeurs.  Another magnum, James.”

This was all very well.  “My good sir,” I said, “it may suit you to order bottles of ’20 port, at a guinea a bottle; but that kind of price does not suit me.  I only happen to have thirty-four and sixpence in my pocket, of which I want a shilling for the waiter, and eighteenpence for my cab.  You rich foreigners and swells may spend what you like” (I had him there:  for my friend’s dress was as shabby as an old-clothesman’s); “but a man with a family, Mr. What-d’you-call’im, cannot afford to spend seven or eight hundred a year on his dinner alone.”