This promise, however, he did not attend to, not
feeling himself bound by such a villainous transaction,
especially after giving them so much. But the robbers found out
who he was and his residence, and had the audacity to go, armed
with bludgeons, and attack him publicly on his own premises, in
the presence of those employed there, demanding payment of their
nefarious 'debt of honour,' and threatening him, if he did not
pay, that he should fight!
This exposure had such an effect on his feelings that he made an
excuse to retire--did so--and blew out his brains with a pistol!
This rash act was the more to be lamented because it prevented
the bringing to condign punishment, the plundering villains who
were the cause of it.[16]
[16] Annual Register, vol. lviii.
OTHER INSTANCES.
A gallant Dutch officer, after having lost a splendid fortune not
long since (1823) in a gambling house at Aix-la-Chapelle, shot
himself. A Russian general, also, of immense wealth, terminated
his existence in the same manner and for the same cause. More
recently, a young Englishman, who lost the whole of an immense
fortune by gambling at Paris, quitted this world by stabbing
himself in the neck with a fork.
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