Vanity Fair - Page 547/573

At Brussels Becky arrived, recommended by Madame de Saint Amour to her

friend, Madame la Comtesse de Borodino, widow of Napoleon's General,

the famous Count de Borodino, who was left with no resource by the

deceased hero but that of a table d'hote and an ecarte table.

Second-rate dandies and roues, widow-ladies who always have a lawsuit,

and very simple English folks, who fancy they see "Continental society"

at these houses, put down their money, or ate their meals, at Madame de

Borodino's tables. The gallant young fellows treated the company round

to champagne at the table d'hote, rode out with the women, or hired

horses on country excursions, clubbed money to take boxes at the play

or the opera, betted over the fair shoulders of the ladies at the

ecarte tables, and wrote home to their parents in Devonshire about

their felicitous introduction to foreign society.

Here, as at Paris, Becky was a boarding-house queen, and ruled in

select pensions. She never refused the champagne, or the bouquets, or

the drives into the country, or the private boxes; but what she

preferred was the ecarte at night,--and she played audaciously. First

she played only for a little, then for five-franc pieces, then for

Napoleons, then for notes: then she would not be able to pay her

month's pension: then she borrowed from the young gentlemen: then she

got into cash again and bullied Madame de Borodino, whom she had coaxed

and wheedled before: then she was playing for ten sous at a time, and

in a dire state of poverty: then her quarter's allowance would come

in, and she would pay off Madame de Borodino's score and would once

more take the cards against Monsieur de Rossignol, or the Chevalier de

Raff.

When Becky left Brussels, the sad truth is that she owed three months'

pension to Madame de Borodino, of which fact, and of the gambling, and

of the drinking, and of the going down on her knees to the Reverend Mr.

Muff, Ministre Anglican, and borrowing money of him, and of her coaxing

and flirting with Milor Noodle, son of Sir Noodle, pupil of the Rev.

Mr. Muff, whom she used to take into her private room, and of whom she

won large sums at ecarte--of which fact, I say, and of a hundred of her

other knaveries, the Countess de Borodino informs every English person

who stops at her establishment, and announces that Madame Rawdon was no

better than a vipere.

So our little wanderer went about setting up her tent in various cities

of Europe, as restless as Ulysses or Bampfylde Moore Carew. Her taste

for disrespectability grew more and more remarkable. She became a

perfect Bohemian ere long, herding with people whom it would make your

hair stand on end to meet.

There is no town of any mark in Europe but it has its little colony of

English raffs--men whose names Mr. Hemp the officer reads out

periodically at the Sheriffs' Court--young gentlemen of very good

family often, only that the latter disowns them; frequenters of

billiard-rooms and estaminets, patrons of foreign races and

gaming-tables. They people the debtors' prisons--they drink and

swagger--they fight and brawl--they run away without paying--they have

duels with French and German officers--they cheat Mr. Spooney at

ecarte--they get the money and drive off to Baden in magnificent

britzkas--they try their infallible martingale and lurk about the tables

with empty pockets, shabby bullies, penniless bucks, until they can

swindle a Jew banker with a sham bill of exchange, or find another Mr.

Spooney to rob. The alternations of splendour and misery which these

people undergo are very queer to view. Their life must be one of great

excitement. Becky--must it be owned?--took to this life, and took to

it not unkindly. She went about from town to town among these

Bohemians. The lucky Mrs. Rawdon was known at every play-table in

Germany. She and Madame de Cruchecassee kept house at Florence

together. It is said she was ordered out of Munich, and my friend Mr.

Frederick Pigeon avers that it was at her house at Lausanne that he was

hocussed at supper and lost eight hundred pounds to Major Loder and the

Honourable Mr. Deuceace. We are bound, you see, to give some account

of Becky's biography, but of this part, the less, perhaps, that is said

the better.