nothing of society. The tiger, a diminutive Irish page called Paddy,
Toby, Joby (which you please), was three feet in height by twenty
inches in breadth, a weasel-faced infant, with nerves of steel
tempered in fire-water, and agile as a squirrel. He drove a landau
with a skill never yet at fault in London or Paris. He had a lizard's
eye, as sharp as my own, and he could mount a horse like the elder
Franconi. With the rosy cheeks and yellow hair of one of Rubens'
Madonnas he was double-faced as a prince, and as knowing as an old
attorney; in short, at the age of ten he was nothing more nor less
than a blossom of depravity, gambling and swearing, partial to jam and
punch, pert as a _feuilleton_, impudent and light-fingered as any Paris
street-arab. He had been a source of honor and profit to a well-known
English lord, for whom he had already won seven hundred thousand
francs on the race-course. The aforesaid nobleman set no small store
on Toby. His tiger was a curiosity, the very smallest tiger in town.
Perched aloft on the back of a thoroughbred, Joby looked like a hawk.
Yet--the great man dismissed him. Not for greediness, not for
dishonesty, nor murder, nor rudeness to my lady, nor for cutting holes
in my lady's own woman's pockets, nor because he had been 'got at' by
some of his master's rivals on the turf, nor for playing games of a
Sunday, nor for bad behavior of any sort or description. Toby might
have done all these things, he might even have spoken to milord before
milord spoke to him, and his noble master might, perhaps, have
pardoned that breach of the law domestic. Milord would have put up
with a good deal from Toby; he was very fond of him. Toby could drive
a tandem dog-cart, riding on the wheeler, postilion fashion; his legs
did not reach the shafts, he looked in fact very much like one of the
cherub heads circling about the Eternal Father in old Italian
pictures. But an English journalist wrote a delicious description of
the little angel, in the course of which he said that Paddy was quite