The Baronet got himself nicely out of the affair, and Mr. Soloman Snivel, commonly called Mr. Soloman, the accommodation man, is at the house of Madame Flamingo, endeavoring to effect a reconciliation between the Judge and George Mullholland.

CHAPTER VII.

In which is seen A Commingling of citizens.

Night has thrown her mantle over the city.  There is a great gathering of denizens at the house of Madame Flamingo.  She has a bal-masque to-night.  Her door is beset with richly-caparisoned equipages.  The town is on tip-toe to be there; we reluctantly follow it.  An hundred gaudily-decorated drinking saloon are filled with gaudier-dressed men.  In loudest accent rings the question—­“Do you go to Madame Flamingo’s to-night?” Gentlemen of the genteel world, in shining broadcloth, touch glasses and answer—­“yes!” It is a wonderful city-this of ours.  Vice knows no restraint, poverty hath no friends here.  We bow before the shrine of midnight revelry; we bring licentiousness to our homes, but we turn a deaf ear to the cries of poverty, and we gloat over the sale of men.

The sickly gaslight throws a sicklier glare over the narrow, unpaved streets.  The city is on a frolic, a thing not uncommon with it.  Lithe and portly-figured men, bearing dominos in their hands, saunter along the sidewalk, now dangling ponderous watch-chains, then flaunting highly-perfumed cambrics—­all puffing the fumes of choice cigars.  If accosted by a grave wayfarer—­they are going to the opera!  They are dressed in the style of opera-goers.  And the road to the opera seems the same as that leading to the house of the old hostess.  A gaily-equipped carriage approaches.  We hear the loud, coarse laughing of those it so buoyantly bears, then there comes full to view the glare of yellow silks and red satins, and doubtful jewels-worn by denizens from whose faded brows the laurel wreath hath fallen.  How shrunken with the sorrow of their wretched lives, and yet how sportive they seem!  The pale gaslight throws a spectre-like hue over their paler features; the artificial crimson with which they would adorn the withered cheek refuses to lend a charm to features wan and ghastly.  The very air is sickly with the odor of their cosmetics.  And with flaunting cambrics they bend over carriage sides, salute each and every pedestrian, and receive in return answers unsuited to refined ears.  They pass into the dim vista, but we see with the aid of that flickering gas, the shadow of that polluting hand which hastens life into death.

Old Mr. McArthur, who sits smoking his long pipe in the door of his crazy-looking curiosity shop, (he has just parted company with the young theologian, having assured him he would find a place to stow Tom Swiggs in,) wonders where the fashionable world of Charleston can be going?  It is going to the house of the Flamingo.  The St. Cecilia were to have had a ball to-night; scandal and the greater attractions here have closed its doors.