CHAPTER XVI.
Whatever the source that had supplied Jasper Losely with the money, from which he had so generously extracted the sovereigns intended to console Waife for the loss of Sophy, that scource either dried up, or became wholly inadequate to his wants. For elasticity was the felicitous peculiarity of Mr. Losely's wants. They accommodated themselves to the state of his finances with mathematical precision, always requiring exactly five times the amount of the means placed at his disposal. From a shilling to a million, multiply his wants by five times the total of his means, and you arrive at a just conclusion. Jasper called upon Poole, who was slowly recovering, but unable to leave his room; and finding that gentleman in a more melancholy state of mind than usual, occasioned by Uncle Sam's brutal declaration, that "if responsible for his god-son's sins, he was not responsible for his debts;" and that he really thought "the best thing Samuel Dolly could do was to go to prison for a short time, and get whitewashed;" Jasper began to lament his own hard fate: "and just when one of the finest women in Paris has come here on purpose to see me," said the lady-killer; "a lady who keeps her carriage, Dolly! Would have introduced you if you had been well enough to go out. One can't be always borrowing of her. I wish one could. There's Mother Crane would sell her gown off her back for me, but, 'Gad, Sir, she snubs, and positively frightens me. Besides, she lays traps to demean me—set me to work like a clerk (not that I would hurt your feelings, Dolly. If you are a clerk, or something of that sort, you are a gentleman at heart). Well, then, we are both done up and cleaned out; and my decided opinion is that nothing is left but a bold stroke."
"I have no objection to bold strokes, but I don't see any; and Uncle Sam's bold stroke of the Fleet Prison is not at all to my taste."
"Fleet Prison! Fleet fiddlestick! No. You have never been in Russia? Why should we not go there both? My Paris friend, Madame Caumartin, was going to Italy, but her plans are changed, and she is now all for St. Petersburg. She will wait a few days for you to get well. We will all go together and
