public life, he was sufficiently master of the graver subjects that
agitated the times to impress even those practically engaged in them with
a belief in his information and his talents.

But he was born poor; and yet he had lived for nearly thirty years as a
rich man! What was his secret?--he had lived upon others. At all games
of science, he played with a masterly skill; and in those wherein luck
preponderates, there are always chances for a cool and systematic
calculation. He had been, indeed, suspected of unfair play; but the
charge had never cooled the eagerness with which he had been courted.
With far better taste, and in far higher estimation than Brummell, he
obtained an equal, though a more secret sway. Every one was desirious to
know him: without his acquaintance, the young debutant felt that he wanted
the qualification to social success: by his intimacy, even vulgarity
became the rage. It was true that, as no woman's disgrace was confessedly
traced to him, so neither was any man's ruin--save only in the doubtful
instance of the unfortunate Johnstone. He never won of any person,
however ardent, more than a certain portion of his fortune--the rest of
his undoing Saville left to his satellites; nay, even those who had in
reality most reason to complain of him, never perceived his due share in
their impoverishment. It was common enough to hear men say, "Ah! Saville,
I wish I had taken your advice, and left off while I had yet half my
fortune!" They did not accurately heed that the first half was Saville's;
because the first half had excited, not ruined them.

Besides this method of making money, so strictly social, Saville had also
applied his keen intellect and shrewd sense to other speculations. Cheap
houses, cheap horses, fluctuations in the funds, all descriptions of
property (except perhaps stolen goods), had passed under his earnest
attention; and in most cases, such speculations had eminently succeeded.