not enough to earn a franc a day. He is the protégé at present of his washerwoman, and can say, with some governments, that his debts are impartially distributed. He has only two fears—those of starvation in France, and a soldier's death in America.[Pg 15]

[Pg 15]

The prospect of a debtor's prison at Clichy has long since ceased to be a terror. There, he would be secure of sustenance and shelter, and of these, at liberty, he is doubtful every day.

Still, with his threadbare coat, he haunts the Casino and the Valentino of evenings; for some mistresses of a former day send him billets.

He lies in bed till long after noon, that he may not have pangs of hunger; and has yet credit for a dinner at an obscure cremery. When this last confidence shall have been forfeited, what must result to Pisgah?

He is striving to anticipate the answer with this experiment at roulette; for he has a "system" whereby it is possible to break any gambling bank—Spa, Baden, Wisbaden or Homburg. The others have systems also, from Auburn Risque to Simp, the only son of the richest widow in Louisiana, who disbursed of old in Paris ten thousand dollars annually.

His house at Passy was a palace in miniature, and his favorite a tragedy queen. She played at the Folies Dramatiques, and drove three horses of afternoons upon the Champs Elysées. She had other engagements, of course, when Mr. Lincoln's "paper blockade" stopped Master Simp's remittances, and he passed her yesterday upon the Rue Rivoli, with the Russian ambassador's footman at her back, but she only touched him with her silks.

Simp studied a profession, and was a volunteer counsel in the memorable case of Jeems Pinckney against Jeems Rutledge. His speech, on that occasion, occupied in delivery just three minutes, and set the court[Pg 16]room in a roar. He paid the village editor ten dollars to compose it, and the same sum to publish it.

[Pg 16]

"If you could learn it for me," said Simp, anxiously, "I would give you twenty dollars."

This, his first and last public appearance, was conditional to the receipt from his mother, of six thousand acres of land and eighty negroes. It might have been a close calculation for a mathematician to know how many black sweat-drops, how many strokes of the rawhide, went into the celebrated dinner at the Maison Dorée, wherein Master Simp and only his lady had 

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