His friends at Berlin had given him accounts of that charming family.

He knew that he would have to deal with the richest and most avaricious of sharpers: that was why he assumed the cavalier tone that may have seemed strange to more than one reader in the preceding chapter.
Unhappily, he let himself become a little too human as soon as he had his million in his pocket.

A curiosity to investigate the long yellow bottles all the way to the bottom, came near doing him an ugly turn.

His reason wandered, about one o'clock in the morning, if I am to believe the account he himself gave.

He said that, after saying "good night" to the excellent people who had treated him so well, he tumbled into a large and deep well, whose rim was hardly raised above the level of the street, and ought at least to have had a lamp by it.