ing his great fists, and shaking his lean arms wildly. "I'm a wise man now, Mr. Fitz-Boodle. Jemima has gone away from me, and yet you know how I loved her, and how happy we were! I've got nobody now; but I'll die soon, that's one comfort: and to think it's she that'll kill me after all!” The story, which he told with a wild and furious lamentation such as is not known among men of our cooler country, and such as I don't like now to recall, was a very simple one. The mother-in-law had taken possession of the house, and had driven him from it. His property at his marriage was settled on his wife. She had never loved him, and told him this secret at last, and drove him out of doors with her selfish scorn and ill temper. The boy had died; the girls were better, he said, brought up among the Molloys than they could be with him; and so he was quite alone in the world, and was living, or rather dying, on forty pounds a year. His troubles are very likely over by this time. The two fools who caused his misery will never read this history of him; they never read godless stories in magazines: and I wish, honest reader, that you and I went to church as much as they do. These people are not wicked because of their religious observances, but in spite of them. They are too dull to understand humility, too blind to see a tender and simple heart under a rough ungainly bosom. They are sure that all their conduct towards my poor friend here has been perfectly righteous, and that they have given proofs of the most Christian virtue. Haggarty's wife is considered by her friends as a martyr to a savage husband, and her mother is the angel that has come to rescue her. All they did was to cheat him and desert him. And safe in that wonderful self-complacency with which the fools of this earth are endowed, they have not a single pang of conscience for their villany towards him, and consider their heartlessness as a proof and consequence of their spotless piety and virtue. THE END. THE WORKS OF MR. THACKERAY. In Monthly Volumes, Large Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. each. VANITY Now Ready. BALLADS AND TALES. Complete in one Volume. FAIR: A NOVEL WITHOUT A HERO. Complete in Two Volumes. With 40 Steel Engravings and 150 Woodcuts. THE HISTORY OF PENDENNIS: HIS FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES, HIS FRIENDS AND HIS Complete in Two Volumes. With 40 Steel Engravings and THE NEWCOMES: MEMOIRS OF A MOST RESPECTABLE FAMILY. Complete in Two Volumes. With 48 Steel Engravings by Richard Doyle, THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP ON HIS WAY SHOWING WHO ROBBED HIM, WHO HELPED HIM, AND WHO To which is now prefixed A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY. THE VIRGINIANS: A TALE OF THE LAST CENTURY. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND, ESQ. THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH; AND THE MEMOIRS OF MR. C. J. YELLOWPLUSH. THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF; WITH THE HISTORY OF SAMUEL TITMARSH AND THE GREAT HOGGARTY DIAMOND. Complete in One Volume. With Illustrations by the Author. CHRISTMAS BOOKS OF MR. M. A. TITMARSH : MRS. PERKINS'S BALL. DR. BIRCH. OUR STREET. Complete in One Volume. THE KICKLEBURYS ON THE RHINE. With 74 Illustrations. This Volume also bound in extra cloth gilt, gilt edges, 95. NOTES OF A JOURNEY FROM CORNHILL TO GRAND CAIRO. Complete in One Volume. With Illustrations by the Author. THE BOOK OF SNOBS: SKETCHES AND TRAVELS IN LONDON; AND CHARACTER SKETCHES. Complete in One Volume. With Illustrations by the Author. ROUNDABOUT PAPERS: TO WHICH IS ADDED, THE SECOND FUNERAL OF NAPOLEON. On June 1st. THE FOUR GEORGES AND ENGLISH HUMOURISTS. Complete in One Volume. With Portraits. Other Volumes are in Preparation, and will be announced in due course. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER & CO., 15, WATERLOO PLACE. |