 are we not, dear Mr. Sedley?«
    And Mr. Kirsch, having lost all his money by this time, followed his master
out into the moonlight, where the illuminations were winking out, and the
transparency over our mission was scarcely visible.
 

                                  Chapter LXIV

                              A Vagabond Chapter.

We must pass over a part of Mrs. Rebecca Crawley's biography with that lightness
and delicacy which the world demands - the moral world, that has, perhaps, no
particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice
called by its proper name. There are things we do and know perfectly well in
Vanity Fair, though we never speak of them - as the Ahrimanians worship the
devil, but don't mention him; and a polite public will no more bear to read an
authentic description of vice than a truly refined English or American female
will permit the word breeches to be pronounced in her chaste hearing. And yet,
Madam, both are walking the world before our faces every day, without much
shocking us. If you were to blush every time they went by, what complexions you
would have! It is only when their naughty names are called out that your modesty
has any occasion to show alarm or sense of outrage, and it has been the wish of
the present writer, all through this story, deferentially to submit to the
fashion at present prevailing, and only to hint at the existence of wickedness,
in a light, easy, and agreeable manner, so that nobody's fine feelings may be
offended. I defy any one to say that our Becky, who has certainly some vices,
has not been presented to the public in a perfectly genteel and inoffensive
manner. In describing this siren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the
author, with modest pride, asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the
laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those
who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent, and see it
writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones,
or curling round corpses; but above the water-line, I ask, has not everything
been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist
in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however, the siren disappears and dives
below, down among the dead men, the water, of course, grows turbid over her, and
it is labour lost to look into it ever so curiously. They look pretty enough
when they sit upon a rock, twangling their
