Here he could afford to buy brandy, for at that date brandy was much
cheaper in France than it is now. Here he could indulge his growing
propensity for strong drink to the uttermost extent of his means, and
could drown his sorrows, and drink destruction to his enemies, in fiery
draughts of cognac.
For some years he inhabited the same dirty garret, keeping the key of
his wretched chamber, going up and down the crumbling old staircase
uncared for and unnoticed. Few who had known him in the past would have
recognized the once elegant young man in this latter stage of his
existence. Form and features, complexion and expression, were alike
degraded. The garments worn by him, who had once been the boasted
patron of crack West-end tailors, were now shapeless and hideous. The
dandy of the clubs had become a perambulating mass of rags.
Every day when the sun shone he buttoned his greasy, threadbare
overcoat across his breast, and crawled to the public garden of the
Luxembourg, where he might be seen shuffling slipshod along the
sunniest walk, an object of contempt and aversion in the eyes of
nursery-maids and _grisettes_--a butt for the dare-devil students of
the quarter.
Had he any consciousness of his degradation?
Yes; that was the undying vulture which preyed upon his entrails--the
consuming fire that was never quenched.
During the brief interval of each day in which he was sober, Sir
Reginald Eversleigh was wont to reflect upon the past.
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