Some three or four years after his stay in Paris, when Rawdon Crawley

and his wife were established in a very small comfortable house in

Curzon Street, May Fair, there was scarcely one of the numerous friends

whom they entertained at dinner that did not ask the above question

regarding them. The novelist, it has been said before, knows

everything, and as I am in a situation to be able to tell the public

how Crawley and his wife lived without any income, may I entreat the

public newspapers which are in the habit of extracting portions of the

various periodical works now published not to reprint the following

exact narrative and calculations--of which I ought, as the discoverer

(and at some expense, too), to have the benefit? My son, I would say,

were I blessed with a child--you may by deep inquiry and constant

intercourse with him learn how a man lives comfortably on nothing a

year. But it is best not to be intimate with gentlemen of this

profession and to take the calculations at second hand, as you do

logarithms, for to work them yourself, depend upon it, will cost you

something considerable.

On nothing per annum then, and during a course of some two or three

years, of which we can afford to give but a very brief history, Crawley

and his wife lived very happily and comfortably at Paris. It was in

this period that he quitted the Guards and sold out of the army. When

we find him again, his mustachios and the title of Colonel on his card

are the only relics of his military profession.

It has been mentioned that Rebecca, soon after her arrival in Paris,

took a very smart and leading position in the society of that capital,

and was welcomed at some of the most distinguished houses of the

restored French nobility. The English men of fashion in Paris courted

her, too, to the disgust of the ladies their wives, who could not bear

the parvenue. For some months the salons of the Faubourg St. Germain,

in which her place was secured, and the splendours of the new Court,

where she was received with much distinction, delighted and perhaps a

little intoxicated Mrs. Crawley, who may have been disposed during this

period of elation to slight the people--honest young military men

mostly--who formed her husband's chief society.

But the Colonel yawned sadly among the Duchesses and great ladies of

the Court. The old women who played ecarte made such a noise about a

five-franc piece that it was not worth Colonel Crawley's while to sit

down at a card-table. The wit of their conversation he could not

appreciate, being ignorant of their language. And what good could his

wife get, he urged, by making curtsies every night to a whole circle of

Princesses? He left Rebecca presently to frequent these parties alone,

resuming his own simple pursuits and amusements amongst the amiable

friends of his own choice.




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