Bohemian Days | Page 2

hairs of his thirtieth year shading his working
temples; he had been the most envied man in Paris; no woman could
resist the magnetism of his eye; he was almost a match for the great
Berger at billiards; he rode like a centaur on the Boulevards, and
counterfeited Apollo at the opera and the masque. His credit was good
for fifty thousand francs any day in the year. He had travelled in far and
contiguous regions, conducted intrigues at Athens and Damascus, and
smoked his pipe upon the Nile and among the ruins of Sebastopol.
Without principle, he was yet amiable, and with his dashing style and
address, one forgot his worthlessness.
How keenly he is reminded of it now! He cannot work, he has no craft
nor profession; he knew enough to pass for an educated gentleman; 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.
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-room in a roar. He paid the village editor ten dollars to compose
it, and the same sum to publish it.
"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 thirty-four courses, and eleven qualities of wine, and
a bill of eight hundred francs.
In that prosperous era, his inalienable comrade had been Mr. Andy
Plade, who now stood beside him, intensely absorbed.
Of late Mr. Plade's affection had been transferred to Hugenot, the only
possessor of an entire franc in the chamber. Hugenot was a short-set
individual, in pumps and an eye-glass, who had been but a few days in
the city. He was decidedly a man of sentiment. He called the
Confederacy "ow-ah cause," and claimed to have signed the call for the
first secession meeting in the South.
He asserted frankly that he was of French extraction, but only hinted
that he was of noble blood. He had been a hatter, but carefully ignored
the fact; and, having run the blockade with profitable cargoes fourteen

times, had settled down to be a respectable trader between Havre and
Nassau. Mr. Plade shared much of the sentiment and some of the
money of this illustrious personage.
There were rumors abroad that Plade himself had great, but
embarrassed, fortunes.
He was one of the hundred thousand chevaliers who hail the advent of
war as something which will hide their nothingness.
"I knew it," said Auburn Risque, at length, pinching the ball between
his hard palms as if it were the creature of his will. "My system is good;
yours do not validate themselves. You are novices at gambling; I am an
old blackleg." It was as he had said; the method of betting which he
proposed had seemed