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A place of business in London like Tellson's place of business in

Paris, would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into

the Gazette. For, what would staid British responsibility and

respectability have said to orange-trees in boxes in a Bank

courtyard, and even to a Cupid over the counter? Yet such things

were. Tellson's had whitewashed the Cupid, but he was still to be

seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very

often does) at money from morning to night. Bankruptcy must

inevitably have come of this young Pagan, in Lombard-street,

London, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the

immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and

also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the

slightest provocation. Yet, a French Tellson's could get on with

these things exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held

together, no man had taken fright at them, and drawn out his

money.