but having occasion at that time to visit Paris on other business he resolved (without calling on Mr Hammond) to institute there some private inquiry into that rising trader's prospects and status. He found, on arrival at Paris, these inquiries difficult. No one in either the beau monde or in the haut commerce seemed to know anything about this Mr. Jasper Hammond. A few fashionable English roués remembered to have seen once or twice during Matilda's life, and shortly after her decease, a very fine-looking man shooting meteoric across some equivocal salons, or lounging in the Champs Elyseés, or dining at the Café de Paris; but of late that meteor had vanished. Mr. Gotobed, then cautiously employing a commissioner to gain some information of Mr. Hammond's firm at the private residence from which Jasper addressed his letter, ascertained that in that private residence Jasper did not reside. He paid the porter to receive occasional letters, for which he called or sent; and the porter, who was evidently a faithful and discreet functionary, declared his belief that Monsieur Hammond lodged in the house in which he transacted business, though, where was the house, or what was the business, the porter observed, with well-bred implied rebuke, "Monsieur Hammond was too reserved to communicate, he himself too incurious to inquire." At length Mr. Gotobed's business, which was, in fact, a commission from a distressed father to extricate an imprudent son, a mere boy, from some unhappy associations, having brought him into the necessity of seeing persons who belonged neither to the beau monde nor to the haut commerce, he gleaned from them the information he desired. Mr. Hammond lived in the very heart of a certain circle in Paris, which but few Englishmen ever penetrate. In that circle Mr. Hammond had, on receiving his late wife's dowry, became the partner in a private gambling hell; in that hell had been engulfed all the moneys he had received—a hell that ought to have "prospered with him, if he could have economized his villanous gains. His senior partner in that firm retired into the country with a fine fortune—no doubt the very owner of those mulberry plantations which were now on sale! But Jasper scattered Napoleons faster than any croupier could rake them away. And Jasper's natural talent for converting solid gold into thin air had been assisted by a lady, who, in the course of her amiable life, had assisted many richer men than Jasper to lodgings in St. Pelagie, or cells in the Maison des Fous. With that lady he had become acquainted during the life-time of his wife, and it was supposed that Matilda's discovery of this liaison had contributed perhaps to the illness which closed in her decease;
