considerable farm, and stocked it abundantly with sheep. Speculation had not yet burst itself, like the frog in the fable; and large successes, as in water-lot and steamboat operations here, to-day, were the rule. On the third anniversary of my landing at Sydney, I was worth three hundred thousand pounds, and my commercial name was among the best in the colony. Six months after that, the rot, the infernal rot, had turned my thriving populous pastures into shambles for carrion-mutton, and I had not sixpence of my own in the wide world. A few of the more generous of my creditors left me a hundred pounds with which to make my miserable way to some South American port on the Pacific.
"So I chose Valparaiso, to paint miniatures, and teach English, French, Italian, and German in. But earthquakes shook my poor house, and the storm-fiend shook my soul with fear;--for skies in lightning and thunder are to me as the panorama and hurly-burly of the Day of Wrath, in all the stupid rushing to and fro and dazed stumbling of Martin's great picture. I shall surely die by lightning; I have not had that live shadow of a sky-reaching fear hanging over me, with its black wings and awful mutterings, so long for nothing; in every flash my eyes are scathed by the full blaze of hell. If I had been deaf and blind, I might have lived in Valparaiso. As it was, I must go somewhere where I need not sit all day and night stopping my ears and with my face covered, fearing that the rocks would fall upon me too soon.
"So, with my wife and the child,--we have had no other, thank God!--I got round Cape Horn--Heaven knows how! I dare not think of that time--to the United States. We were making for Boston; but the ship, strained by long stress of heavy weather, sprung a leak, and we put in at Baltimore. I was pleased with the place; it is picturesque, and has a kindly look; and as all places were alike to me then, save by the choice of a whim, I let go my weary anchor there.
"But the Baltimoreans only admired my pictures,--they did not buy them; they only wondered at my polyglot accomplishment, and were content with ringing silly-kind changes on an Encyclopaedic compliment about the Admirable Crichton, and other well-educated personages, to be found alphabetically embalmed in Conversations-Lexicons,--they did not inquire into my system of teaching, or have quarterly knowledge of my charges. So I fled from Baltimore, pretty speeches, and starvation, to San Francisco, plain talk, and pure gold. And now--see here, Sir!--I carry these always about with me, lest the pretty pickings of this Tom Tiddler's ground should make my experience forget."
He drew from his pocket an "illuminated" card, bearing a likeness of Queen Victoria, and a creased and soiled bit of yellow paper. The one was, by royal favor, a complimentary pass to a reserved place in Westminster Abbey, on the occasion of the coronation of her Britannic Majesty, "For the Señor Camillo Alvarez y Pintal, Chevalier of the Noble Order of the Cid, Secretary to His Catholic Majesty's Legation near the Court of St. James,"--the other, a Sydney pawnbroker's ticket for books pledged by "Mr. Camilla Allverris i Pintal." He held these contrasted certificates of Fortune,--her mocking visiting-cards, when she called on him in palace and in cabin,--one in each hand for a moment; and bitterly smiling, and shaking his head, turned from one to the other. Then suddenly he let them fall to the ground, and, burying his face in his hands, was roughly shaken through all his frame by a great gust of agony.
I laid my hand tenderly on his shoulder: "But, Pintal," I said,--"the Lady Angelica,--tell me why she chose that course."
In a moment the man was fiercely aroused. "Ah, true! I had forgotten that delectable passage in my story. Why, man, Bermudez went to her, told her that my aspirations and my prospects were so and so,--faring, brilliant,--that she, only she, stood in the way, an impa
