THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 ft f /! 
 
 M 
 
 NOTICE. 
 
 A NEW SERIAL WORK, by 
 
 Mr. Thackeray, to be published in 
 
 Monthly Parts, price Is. each, is in 
 preparation. 
 
 Vol. IV. of Miscellanies will be 
 published in October.
 
 MISCELLANIES.
 
 MISCELLANIES: 
 
 PROSE AND VERSE. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. M. THACKERAY, 
 
 Author of "Vanity Fair," "The Newcomes," &c. 
 
 VOL. III. 
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 BEADBTTEY AND EVANS, 11, BOUVEEIE STEEET. 
 
 1856.
 
 LONDON : 
 BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WH1TILFRIAES.
 
 v>3 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ♦ 
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BAERY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 CHAPTER I. — MY PEDIGREE AND FAMILY — UNDERGO THE INFLUENCE OF THE 
 
 TENDER PASSION ........ 1 
 
 H. — IN WHICH I SHOW MYSELF TO BE A MAN OF SPIRIT . . . 25 
 
 III. — I MAKE A FALSE START IN THE GENTEEL WORLD . . .44 
 
 IV. IN WHICH BARRY TAKES A NEAR VIEW OF MILITART GLORY . 57 
 
 V. — IN WHICH BARRY TRIES TO REMOVE AS FAR FROM MILITARY 
 
 GLORY AS POSSIBLE 67 
 
 VI. — THE CRIMP WAGON — MILITARY EPISODES . . . .82 
 
 TIL — BARRY LEADS A GARRISON LIFE, AND FINDS MANY FRIENDS 
 
 THERE . . . . . . . . 99 
 
 VIII. — BARRY BIDS ADIEU TO THE MILITARY PROFESSION . . . 110 
 
 IX. — I APPEAR IN A MANNER BECOMING MY NAME AND LINEAGE . IIS 
 
 X. — MORE RUNS OF LUCK ........ 129 
 
 XI. — IN WHICH THE LUCK GOES AGAINST BARRY . . . .146 
 
 XII. — CONTAINS THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF THE PRINCESS OF X 154 
 
 XIII. — I CONTINUE MY CAREER AS A MAN OF FASHION . . . . 174 
 
 XIV. — I RETURN TO IRELAND, AND EXHIBIT MY SPLENDOUR AND 
 
 GENEROSITY IN THAT KINGDOM 190 
 
 XV. — I PAY COURT TO MY LADY LYNDON 201 
 
 19S5C56
 
 vi CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 CHAPTER XVI. — I PROVIDE NOBLY FOR MY FAMILY, AND ATTAIN THE HEIGHT 
 
 OF MX (SEEMING) GOOD FORTUNE . . . . .215 
 
 XVII. — I APPEAR AS AN ORNAMENT OF ENGLISH SOCIETY . . . 231 
 
 XVIII. — IN WHICH MY GOOD FORTUNE BEGINS TO WAVER . . . 251 
 
 XIX. — CONCLUSION -74 
 
 BUELESQUES. 
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE : 
 
 CHAPTER I. — SIR LUDWIG OF HOMBOURG 309 
 
 II. THE GODESBERGERS . . . . . . ... 313 
 
 III. THE FESTIVAL . . . ■ 31 S 
 
 IV. THE FLIGHT .......... 320 
 
 V. — THE TRAITOR'S DOOM ....... 322 
 
 VI. THE CONFESSION . 32G 
 
 VII. — THE SENTENCE . 329 
 
 VIII. — THE CHILDE OF GODESBERG 330 
 
 IX. — THE LADY OF WINDECK 340 
 
 X. — THE BATTLE OF THE BOWMEN ...... 346 
 
 XI. — THE MARTYR OF LOVE ........ 352 
 
 XII. — THE CHAMPION 358 
 
 XIII. — THE MARRIAGE . 304 
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA: 
 
 ' 1IAPTER I. — THE OVERTURE — COMMENCEMENT OF THE BUSTK] . . 373 
 
 IX. — THE LAST DAYS OF Til 1: I 3SG 
 
 III. — ST. LAND 394 
 
 it. — ivAMi' B r.uDivivus 402
 
 CONTENTS. vii 
 
 PAGE 
 CHAPTE?. V. IVANHOE TO THE RESCUE 409 
 
 VI. IVANHOE THE WIDOWEE 417 
 
 VII. THE END OF TIIE PERFORMANCE 425 
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S 437 
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY : 
 
 CHATTER I. — OP THE LOVES OF MR. PERKINS AKD MISS GOBGOK, AND OF 
 
 THE TWO GREAT FACTIONS IN TnE TOWN OF OLDBOROUGH . 4G7 
 
 II. — SHOWS HOW THE PLOT BEGAN TO THICKEN IN OR ABOUT 
 
 BEDFORD-ROW 485 
 
 III. — BEHIND THE SCK 499
 
 TIIE 
 
 MEMOIES OF BAERY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MY PEDIGREE AND FAMILT. — UNDERGO THE INFLUENCE OE TnE 
 
 TENDER PASSION. 
 
 Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done 
 in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it. Ever 
 since ours was a family (and that must be very near Adam's time, 
 — so old, noble, and illustrious are the Barrys, as every body 
 knows), women have played a mighty part with the destinies of 
 our race. 
 
 I presume that there is no gentleman in Europe that has not 
 heard of the house of Barry of Barryogue, of the kingdom of 
 Ireland, than which a more famous name is not to be found in 
 Grwillim or D'Hozier ; and though as a man of the world I have 
 learned to despise heartily the claims of some pretenders to high 
 birth who have no more genealogy than the lackey who cleans my 
 boots, and though I laugh to utter scorn the boasting of many of 
 my countrymen, who are all for descending from kings of Ireland, 
 acd talk of a domain no bigger than would feed a pig as if it were 
 a principality ; yet truth compels me to assert that my family was 
 the noblest of the island, and, perhaps, of the universal world; 
 while their possessions, now insignificant, and torn from us by war, 
 by treachery, by the loss of time, by ancestral extravagance, by 
 adhesion to the old faith and monarch, were formerly prodigious, 
 
 vol. m. a
 
 2 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 and embraced many counties, at a time when Ireland was vastly 
 more prosperous than now. I would assume the Irish crown 
 over my coat-of-arins, but that there are so many silly pretenders 
 to that distinction who bear it and render it common. 
 
 ATho knows, but for the fault of a woman, I might have been 
 wearing it now ? You start with incredulity. I say, why not ? 
 Had there been a gallant chief to lead my countrymen, instead of 
 puling knaves who bent the knee to King Eichard II. they might 
 have been freemen ; had there been a resolute leader to meet the 
 murderous ruffian, Oliver Cromwell, we should have shaken off 
 the English for ever. But there was no Barry in the field against 
 the usurper ; on the contrary, my ancestor, Simon de Bary, came 
 over with the first-named monarch, and married the daughter of 
 the then King of Munster, whose sons in battle he piteously slew. 
 
 In Oliver's time it was too late for a chief of the name of Barry 
 to Hft up his war-cry against that of the murderous brewer. \Ye 
 were princes of the land no longer ; our unhappy race had lost its 
 possessions a century previously, and by the most shameful treason. 
 This I know to be the fact, for my mother has often told me the 
 story, and besides had worked it in a worsted pedigree which hung 
 up in the yellow saloon at Barryville where we lived. 
 
 That very estate which the Lyndons now possess in Ireland was 
 once the property of my race. Bory Barry of Barryogue owned 
 it in Elizabeth's time, and half Munster beside. The Barry was 
 always in feud with the O'Mahonys in those times : and, as it 
 happened, a certain English colonel passed through the former's 
 country with a body of men-at-arms, on the very day when the 
 O'Mahonys had made an inroad upon our territories, and carried 
 off a frightful plunder of our flocks and herds. 
 
 This young Englishman, whose name was Boger Lyndon, 
 Linden, or Lyndaine, having been most hospitably received by the 
 Barry, and finding him just on the point of carrying an inroad 
 into the O'Mahony's land, offered the aid of himself and his lances, 
 and behaved himself so well, as it appeared, that the O'Mahonys 
 were entirely overcome, all the Barrys' property restored, and 
 with it, says the old chronicle, twice as much of the O'Mahonys' 
 goods and cattle. 
 
 It was the setting-in of the winter season, and the young soldier
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 3 
 
 was pressed by the Barry not to quit his house of Barryogue, aud 
 remained there during several months, his men being quartered 
 with Barn's own gallowglasses, man by man in the cottages round 
 about. They conducted themselves, as is their wont, with the 
 most intolerable insolence towards the Irish ; so much so, that 
 fights and murders continually ensued, and the people vowed to 
 destroy them. 
 
 The Barry's son (from whom I descend) was as hostile to the 
 English as any other man on his domain ; and, as they would not 
 go when bidden, he and his friends consulted together and deter- 
 mined on destroying these English to a man. 
 
 But they had let a woman into their plot, and this was the 
 Barry's daughter. She was in love with the English Lyndon, and 
 broke the whole secret to him ; and the dastardly English pre- 
 vented the just massacre of themselves by falling upon the Irish, 
 and destroying Pbaudrig Barry, my ancestor, and many hundreds 
 of his men. The cross at Barrycross near Carrignadihioul is the 
 spot where the odious butchery took place. 
 
 Lyndon married the daughter of Boderick Barry, and claimed 
 the estate which he left ; and though the descendants of Pbaudrig 
 were alive, as indeed they are in my person,* on appealing to the 
 English courts, the estate was awarded to the Englishman, as has 
 ever been the case where English and Irish were concerned. 
 
 Thus had it not been for the weakness of a woman, I should 
 have been born to the possession of those very estates which after- 
 wards came to me by merit, as you shall hear. But to proceed 
 with my family history. 
 
 My father was well known to the best circles in this kingdom 
 as in that of Ireland, under the name of Soaring Harry Barry. 
 He was bred like many other young sons of genteel families to 
 the profession of the law, being articled to a celebrated attorney 
 of Sackville Street in the city of Dublin; and, from his great 
 genius and aptitude for learning, there is no doubt he would have 
 made an eminent figure in his profession, had not his social 
 qualities, love of field-sports, and extraordinary graces of manner, 
 
 * As -we have never been able to find proofs of the marriage of my ancestor 
 Phaudrig with his wife, I make no doubt that Lyndon destroyed the contract, and 
 murdered the Driest and witnesses of the marriage. — B. L. 
 
 b 2
 
 4 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 marked him out for a higher sphere. While he was attorney's 
 clerk he kept seven race-horses, and hunted regularly both with 
 the Kildare and Wicklow hunts ; and rode on his grey horse 
 Endymion that famous match against Captain Punter, whicli is 
 still remembered by lovers of the sport, and of which I caused a 
 splendid picture to be made and hung over my dining-hall mantel- 
 piece at Castle Lyndon. A year afterwards he had the honour of 
 riding that very horse Endymion before his late majesty King- 
 George II. on Epsom Downs, and won the plate there and the 
 attention of the august sovereign. 
 
 Although he was only the second son of our family, my dear 
 father came naturally into the estate (now miserably reduced to 
 4i00l. a year) ; for my grandfather's eldest son Cornelius Barry 
 (called the Chevalier Borgne, from a wound which he received in 
 Germany), remained constant to the old religion in which our 
 family was educated, and not only served abroad with credit, 
 but against his most sacred majesty George II. in the unhappy 
 Scotch disturbances in '45. "We shall hear more of the Chevalier 
 hereafter. 
 
 For the conversion of my father I have to thank my dear 
 mother, Miss Bell Brady, daughter of Ulysses Brady of Castle 
 Brady, county Kerry, Esquire and J. P. She was the most beau- 
 tiful woman of her day in Dublin, and universally called the 
 Dasher there. Seeing her at the assembly, my father became 
 passionately attached to her ; but her soul was above marrying a 
 Papist or an attorney's clerk ; and so for the love of her, the good 
 old laws being then in force, my dear father slipped into my uncle 
 Cornelius's shoes and took the family estate. Besides the force 
 of my mother's bright eyes, several persons, and of the genteelest 
 society too, contributed to this happy change ; and I have often 
 heard my mother laughingly tell the story of my father's recanta- 
 tion, which was solemnly pronounced at the tavern in the company 
 of Sir Dick Kingwood, Lord Bagwig, Captain Punter, and two or 
 three other young sparks of the town. Koaring Harry won 300 
 pieces that very night at faro, and laid the necessary information 
 the next morning against his brother; but his conversion caused 
 a coolness between him and my uncle Corney, who joined the i 
 rebels in consequence.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 5 
 
 This great difficulty being settled, my Lord Bagwig lent my 
 father his own yacht, then lying at the Pigeon House, and the 
 handsome Bell Barry was induced to run away with him to 
 England, although her parents were against the match, and her 
 lovers (as I have heard her tell many thousands of times) were 
 among the most numerous and the most wealthy in all the king- 
 dom of Ireland. They were married at the Savoy, and my grand- 
 father dying very soon, Harry Barry, Esquire, took possession of 
 his paternal property and supported our illustrious name with 
 credit in London. He pinked the famous Count Tiercelin behind 
 Montague House, he was a member of "White's, and a frequenter 
 of all the chocolate houses; and my mother, likewise, made no 
 small figure. At length, after his great day of triumph before his 
 sacred majesty at Newmarket, Harry's fortune was just on the 
 point of being made, for the gracious monarch promised to pro- 
 vide for him. But, alas ! he was taken in charge by another 
 monarch, whose will will have no delay or denial, — by Death, 
 namely, who seized upon my father at Chester races, leaving me 
 an helpless orphan. Peace be to his ashes ! He was not faultless, 
 and dissipated all our princely family property; but lie was as 
 brave a fellow as ever tossed a bumper or called a main, and he 
 drove his coach-and-six like a man of fashion. 
 
 I do not know whether his gracious majesty was much affected 
 by this sudden demise of my father, though my mother says he 
 shed some royal tears on the occasion. But they helped us to 
 nothing ; and all that was found in the house for the wife and 
 creditors was a purse of ninety guineas, which my dear mother 
 naturally took, with the family plate, and my father's wardrobe 
 and her own ; and, putting them into our great coach, drove off" 
 to Holyhead, whence she took shipping for Ireland. My father's 
 body accompanied us in the finest hearse and plumes money could 
 buy ; for though the husband and wife had quarrelled repeatedly 
 in life, yet at my father's death his high-spirited widow forgot all 
 her differences, gave him the grandest funeral that had been seen 
 for many a day, and erected a monument over his remains (for 
 which I subsequently paid), which declared him to be the wisest, 
 purest, and most affectionate of men. 
 
 In performing these sad M duties over her deceased lord, the
 
 6 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 widow spent almost every guinea she had, and, indeed, would have 
 spent a great deal more, had she discharged one-third of the 
 demands which the ceremonies occasioned. But the people around 
 our old house of Barryogue, although they did not like my father 
 for his change of faith, yet stood by him at this moment, and were 
 for exterminating the mutes sent by Mr. Plumer of London with 
 the lamented remains. The monument and vault in the church 
 were then, alas ! all that remained of my vast possessions ; for my 
 father had sold every stick of the property to one 2sotley, an 
 attorney, and we received but a cold welcome in his house — a 
 miserable old tumble-down place it was.* 
 
 The splendour of the funeral did not fail to increase the widow 
 Barry's reputation as a woman of spirit and fashion ; and when 
 she wrote to her brother Michael Brady, that worthy gentleman 
 immediately rode across the country to fling himself in her arms, 
 and to invite her in his wife's name to Castle Brady. 
 
 Mick and Barry had quarrelled, as all men will, and very high 
 words had passed between them during Barry's courtship of Miss 
 Bell. "When he took her off, Brady swore he would never forgive 
 Barry or Bell : but coming to London in the year '46, he fell in 
 once more with Roaring Harry, and lived in his fine house in 
 Clarges-street, and lost a few pieces to him at play, and broke a 
 watchman's head or two in his company, — all of which remini- 
 scences endeared Bell and her son very much to the good-hearted 
 gentleman, and he received us both with open arms. Mrs. Barry 
 did not, perhaps wisely, at first make known to her friends what 
 was her condition ; but arriving in a huge gilt coach, with enormous 
 armorial bearings, was taken by her sister-in-law and the rest of 
 the county for a person of considerable property and distinction. 
 
 Tor a time, then, and as was right and proper, Mrs. Barry gave 
 the law at Castle Brady. She ordered the servants to and fro, 
 and taught them, what indeed they much wanted, a little London 
 neatness; and " English Redmond," as I was called, was treated 
 like a little lord, and had a maid and a footman to himself ; and 
 
 * In another part of his memoir Mr. Barry will be found to describe this 
 mansion as one of the most splendid palaces in Europe, but this is a practice not 
 umisual with hie nation ; and with respect to the Irish principalis claimed by 
 
 him, it is known that Mr. Barry's grandfather was an attorney and maker of his 
 own fortune.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 7 
 
 honest Mick paid their wages,— which was much more than he was 
 used to do for his own domestics, — doing all in his power to make 
 his sister decently comfortable under her afflictions. Mamma, in 
 return, determined that, when her affairs were arranged, she would 
 make her kind brother a handsome allowance for her son's main- 
 tenance and her own ; and promised to have her handsome furni- 
 ture brought over from Clarges- street to adorn somewhat the 
 dilapidated rooms of Castle Brady. 
 
 But it turned out, that the rascally landlord seized upon every 
 chair and table that ought by rights to belong to the widow. The 
 estate to which I was heir was in the hands of rapacious creditors ; 
 and the only means of subsistence remaining to the widow and 
 child was a rent-charge of 507. upon my Lord Bagwig's property, 
 who had many turf-dealings with the deceased. And so my dear 
 mother's liberal intentions towards her brother were, of course, 
 never fufilled. 
 
 It must be confessed, very much to the discredit of Mrs. Brady, 
 of Castle Brady, that when her sister-in-law's poverty was thus 
 made manifest, she forgot all the respect which she had been 
 accustomed to pay her, instantly turned my maid and man-servant 
 out of doors, and told Mrs. Barry that she might follow them as 
 soon as she chose. Mrs. Mick was of a low family, and a sordid 
 way of thinking ; and after about a couple of years (during which 
 she had saved almost all her little income) the widow complied 
 with Madam Brady's desire. At the same time, giving way to a 
 just, though prudently dissimulated resentment, she made a vow 
 that she would never enter the gates of Castle Brady while the 
 lady of the house remained alive within them. 
 
 She fitted up her new abode with much economy and consider- 
 able taste, and never, for all her poverty, abated a jot of the dignity 
 which was her due, and which all the neighbourhood awarded to 
 her. How, indeed, could they refuse respect to a lady who had 
 lived in London, frequented the most fashionable society there, 
 and had been presented (as she solemnly declared) at court ? 
 These advantages gave her a right which seems to be pretty 
 unsparingly exercised in Ireland by those natives who have it, — 
 the right of looking down with scorn upon all persons who have 
 not had the opportunity of quitting the mother-country and
 
 8 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 inhabiting England for a while. Thus, whenever Madam Brady 
 appeared abroad in a new dress, her sister-in-law would say, 
 " Poor creature ! how can it be expected that she should know 
 anything of the fashion ? " And though pleased to be called the 
 Handsome Widow, as she was, Mrs. Barry was still better pleased 
 to be called the English widow. 
 
 Mrs. Brady, for her part, was not slow to reply ; she used to say 
 that the defunct Barry was a bankrupt and a beggar ; and as for 
 the fashionable society which he saw, he saw it from my Lord 
 Bagwig's side-table, whose flatterer and hanger-on he was known 
 to be. Begarding Mrs. Barry, the lady of Castle Brady would 
 make insinuations still more painful. However, why should we 
 allude to these charges, or rake up private scandal of a hundred 
 years old ? It was in the reign of George II. that the above- 
 named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome 
 or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now ; and do not the Sun- 
 day papers and the courts of law supply us every week with more 
 novel and interesting slander ? 
 
 At any rate, it must be allowed that Mrs. Brady, after her hus- 
 band's death and her retirement, lived in such a way as to defy 
 slander. For whereas Bell Brady had been the gayest girl in the 
 whole county of Wexford, with half the bachelors at her feet, and 
 plenty of smiles and encouragement for every one of them, Bell 
 Barry adopted a dignified reserve that almost amounted to pom- 
 posity, and was as starch as any Quakeress. Many a man renewed 
 his offers to the widow, who had been smitten by the charms of 
 the spinster; but Mrs. Barry refused all offers of inamage, declaring 
 that she lived now for her son only, and for the memory of her 
 departed saint. 
 
 " Saint, forsooth ! " said ill-natured Mrs. Brady. " Harry Barry 
 was as big a sinner as ever was known ; and 'tis notorious that he 
 and Bell hated each other. If she won't marry now, depend on 
 it, the artful woman has a husband in her eye for all that, and 
 only waits until Lord Bagwig is a widower." 
 
 And suppose she did, what then ? Was not the widow of a 
 Barry fit to marry with any lord of England ? and Avas it not 
 always said that a woman was to restore the fortunes of the Barry 
 family ? If my mother fancied that she was to be that woman, I
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 9 
 
 think it was a perfectly justifiable notion on her part ; for the earl 
 (my godfather) was always most attentive to her ; and I never 
 knew how deeply this notion of advancing my interests in the 
 world had taken possession of mamma's mind, until his lordship's 
 marriage in the year '57 with Miss Goldmore, the Indian nabob's 
 rich daughter. 
 
 Meanwhile, we continued to reside at Barryville, and, consider- 
 ing the smallness of our income, kept up a wonderful state. Of 
 the half-dozen families that formed the congregation at Brady's 
 Town, there was not a single person whose appearance was so 
 respectable as that of the widow, who, though she always dressed 
 in mourning, in memory of her deceased husband, took care that 
 her garments should be made so as to set off her handsome person 
 to the greatest advantage ; and, indeed, I think, spent six hours 
 out of every day in the week in cutting, trimming, and altering 
 them to the fashion. She had the largest of hoops, and the hand- 
 somest of furbelows, and once a month (under my Lord Bagwig's 
 cover) would come a letter from London containing the newest 
 accounts of the fashions there. Her complexion was so brilliant 
 'that she had no call to use rouge, as was the mode in those days. 
 No, she left red and white, she said (and hence the reader niay 
 imagine how the two ladies hated each other) to Madam Brady, 
 whose yellow complexion no plaster could alter. In a word, she 
 was so accomplished a beauty, that all the women in the country 
 took pattern by her, and the young fellows from ten miles round 
 would ride over to Castle Brad)' church to have the sight of her. 
 
 But if (like every other woman that ever I saw or read of) she 
 was proud of her beauty, to do her justice she was still more proud 
 of her son, and has said a thousand times to me that I was the 
 handsomest young fellow in the world. This is a matter of taste. 
 A man of sixty may, however, say what he was at fourteen without 
 much vanity, and I must say I think there was some cause for my 
 mother's opinion. The good soul's pleasure was to dress me; and 
 on Sundays and holidays I turned out in a velvet coat with a 
 silver-hilted sword by my side and a gold garter at my knee, as 
 fine as any lord in the land. My mother worked me several most 
 splendid waistcoats, and I had plenty of lace for my ruffles, and a 
 fresh riband to my hair, and as we walked to church on Sundays,
 
 10 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 even envious Mrs. Brady was found to allow that there was not a 
 prettier pair in the kingdom. 
 
 Of course, too, the lady of Castle Brady used to sneer, because 
 on these occasions a certain Tim, who used to be called my valet, 
 followed me and my mother to church, carrying a huge prayer- 
 book and a cane, and dressed in the livery of one of our own fine 
 footmen from Clarges-street, which, as Tim was a bandy-shanked 
 little fellow, did not exactly become him. But, though poor, we 
 were gentlefolks, and not to be sneered out of these becoming 
 appendages to our rank ; and so would march up the aisle to our 
 pew with as much state and gravity as the lord-lieutenant's lady 
 and son might do. When there, my mother would give the 
 responses and amens in a loud, dignified voice that was delightful 
 to hear, and, besides, had a fine loud voice for singing, which art 
 she had perfected in London under a fashionable teacher ; and she 
 would exercise her talent in such a way that you would hardly 
 hear any other voice of the little congregation which chose to join 
 in the psalm. In fact, my mother had great gifts in every way, 
 and believed herself to be one of the most beautiful, accomplished, 
 and meritorious persons in the world. Often and often has she 
 talked to me and the neighbours regarding her own humility 
 and piety, pointing them out in such a way that I would defy the 
 most obstinate to disbelieve her. 
 
 When we left Castle Brady we came to occupy a house in 
 Brady's Town, Avhich mamma christened Barryville. I confess it 
 was but a small place, but, indeed, we made the most of it. I 
 have mentioned the family pedigree which hung up in the drawing- 
 room, which mamma called the yellow saloon, and my bed-room 
 was called the pink bed-room, and hers the orange-tawny apartment 
 (how well I remember them all !) ; and at dinner-time Tim regu- 
 larly rang a great bell, and we each had a silver tankard to drink 
 from, and mother boasted with justice that I had as good a bottle 
 of claret by my side as any squire of the land. So, indeed, I had, 
 but I was not, of course, allowed at my tender years to drink any 
 of the wine, which thus attained a considerable age, even in the 
 decanter. 
 
 Uncle Brady (in spite of the family quarrel) found out the 
 above fact one day by calling at Barryville at dinner-time, and
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 11 
 
 unluckily tasting the liquor. You should have seen how he 
 spattered and made faces ! But the honest gentleman was not 
 particular about his wine or the company in which he drank it. 
 He would get drunk, indeed, with the parson or the priest indif- 
 ferently; with the latter, much to my mother's indignation, for, 
 as a true blue Xassauite, she heartily despised all those of the old 
 faith, and would scarcely sit down in the room with a benighted 
 Papist. But the squire had no such scruples ; he was, indeed, one 
 of the easiest, idlest, and best-natured fellows that ever lived, and 
 many an hour would be pass with the lonely widow when be was 
 tired of Madam Brady at home. He liked me, he said, as much 
 as one of his own sons, and at length, after the widow had held 
 out for a couple of years, she agreed to allow me to return to the 
 castle ; though, for herself, she resolutely kept the oath which she 
 had made with regard to her sister-in-law. 
 
 The very first day I returned to Castle Brady my trials may be 
 said, in a manner, to have begun. My cousin, Master Mick, a 
 huge monster of. nineteen (who hated me, and I promise you I 
 returned the compliment), insulted me at dinner about my mother's 
 poverty, and made all the girls of the family titter. So when we 
 went to the stables, whither Mick always went for his pipe of 
 tobacco after dinner, I told him a piece of my mind, and there was 
 a fight for at least ten minutes, during which I stood to him like 
 a man, and blacked his left eye, though I was myself only twelve 
 years old at the time. Of course he beat me, but a beating makes 
 only a small impression on a lad of that tender age, as I had 
 proved many times in battles with the ragged Brady's Town boya 
 before, not one of whom, at my time of life, was my match. My 
 uncle was very much pleased when he heard of my gallantry; my 
 cousin Nora brought brown paper and vinegar for my nose, and I 
 went home that night with a pint of claret under my girdle, not a 
 little proud, let me tell you, at having held my own against Mick 
 so long. 
 
 And though he persisted in his bad treatment of me, and used 
 to cane me whenever I fell in his way, yet I was very happy now 
 at Castle Brady with the company there, and my cousins, or some 
 of them, and the kindness of my uncle, with whom I became a 
 prodigious favorite. He bought a colt for me, and taught me to
 
 12 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 ride. He took me out coursing and fowling, and instructed me 
 to shoot flying. And at length I was released from Mick's per- 
 secution, for his brother, Master "Click, returning from Trinity 
 College, and hating his elder brother, as is mostly the way in 
 families of fashion, took me under his protection, and from that 
 time, as "Click was a deal bigger and stronger than Mick, I, 
 English Redmond, as I was called, was left alone, except when 
 the former thought fit to thrash me, which he did whenever he 
 thought proper. 
 
 Nor was my learning neglected in the ornamental parts, for I 
 had an uncommon natural genius for many things, and soon topped 
 in accomplishments most of the persons around me. I had a quick 
 ear and a fine voice, which my mother cultivated to the best of her 
 power, and she taught me to step a minuet gravely and gracefully, 
 and thus laid the foundation of my future success in life. The 
 common dances I learned, as, perhaps, I ought not to confess, in 
 the servants' hall, which, you may be sure, was never without a 
 piper, and where I was considered unrivalled both at a hornpipe 
 and a jig. 
 
 In the matter of book-learning, I had always an uncommon 
 taste for reading plays and novels, as the best part of a gentleman's 
 polite education, and never let a pedlar pass the village, if I had 
 a penny, without having a ballad or two from him. As for your 
 dull grammar, and Greek, and Latin, and stuff, I have always hated 
 them from my youth upwards, and said, very unmistakeably, I 
 would have none of them. 
 
 This I proved pretty clearly at the age of thirteen, when my 
 aunt Biddy Brady's legacy of 1007. came in to mamma, who thought 
 to employ the sum on my education, and sent me to Doctor Tobias 
 Tickler's famous academy at Ballywkacket — Backwhacket, as my 
 uncle used to call it. But six weeks after I had been consigned 
 to his reverence, I suddenly made my appearance again at Castle 
 Brady, having walked forty miles from the odious place, and left 
 the doctor in a state near upon apoplexy. The fact was, that at 
 taw, prison- bars, or boxing, I was at the head of the school, but 
 could not be brought to excel in the classics ; and after having been 
 flogged seven times without its doing me the least good in my Latin 
 I refused to submit altogether (finding it useless) to an eighth
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 13 
 
 application of the rod. " Try some other way, sir," said I, when 
 he was for horseing me once more ; but he wouldn't ; whereou, 
 :ind to defend myself, I flung a slate at him, and knocked down a 
 Scotch usher with a leaden inkstand. All the lads huzzaed at this, 
 aud some of the servants wanted to stop me ; but taking out a 
 large clasp-knife that my cousin Nora had given me, I swore I 
 would plunge it into the waistcoat of the first man who dared to 
 balk me, and faith, they let me pass on. I slept that night 
 twenty miles off Ballywhacket, at the house of a cottier, who gave 
 me potatoes and milk, and to whom I gave a hundred guineas after, 
 when I came to visit Ireland in my days of greatness. I wish I 
 had the money now. But Avhat's the use ot regret ? I have had 
 many a harder bed than that I shall sleep on to-night, and many 
 a scantier meal than honest Phil Murphy gave me on the evening 
 I ran away from school. So six weeks was all the schooling I ever 
 got. And I say this to let parents know the value of it, for though 
 I have met more learned bookworms in the world, especially a great 
 hulking, clumsy, blear-eyed old doctor, whom they called Johnson 
 and who lived in a court off Fleet Street, in London, yet I pretty 
 soon silenced him in an argument (at Button's Coffeehouse), and 
 in that, and in poetry, and in what I call natural philosophy, or 
 the science of life, and in riding, music, leaping, the small-sword, 
 the knowledge of a horse, or a main of cocks, and the manners of 
 an accomplished gentleman and a man of fashion, I may say for 
 myself that Eedmond Barry has seldom found his equal. " Sir," 
 said I to Mr. Johnson, on the occasion I allude to — he was accom- 
 panied by a Mr. Buswell of Scotland, and I was presented to the 
 club by a Mr. Goldsmith, a countryman of my own, — " Sir," said 
 I, in reply to the schoolmaster's great thundering quotation in 
 Greek, "you fancy you know a great deal more than me, because 
 you quote your Aristotle and your Pluto, but can you tell me 
 which horse will win at Epsom Downs next week ? — Can you run 
 six miles without breathing ? — Can you shoot the ace of spades 
 ten times without missing ? If so, talk about Aristotle and Pluto 
 to me." 
 
 "D'ye knaw who ye're speaking to ? " roared out the Scotch 
 gentleman, Mr. Buswell, at this. 
 
 " Hold your tongue, Mr. Boswell," said the old schoolmaster.
 
 14 THE MEMOIRS OF BARKY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 " I had no right to brag of my Greek to the gentleman, and he 
 has answered me very -well." 
 
 " Doctor," says I, looking waggishly at him, " do you know ever 
 a rhyme for Arktotle ?" 
 
 " Port, if you plaise," says Mr. Goldsmith, laughing. And we 
 had six rhymes for Aristotle before we left the coffeehouse that 
 evening. It became a regular joke afterwards when I told the 
 story, and at "White's, or the Cocoa-tree, you would hear the wags 
 say, " Waiter, bring one of Captain Barry's rhymes for Aristotle !" 
 Once, when I was in liquor at the latter place, young Dick Sheri- 
 dan called me a great Staggerite, a joke which I could never 
 understand. But I am wandering from my story, and must get 
 back to home, and dear old Ireland again. 
 
 I have made acquaintance with the best in the land since, and 
 my manners are such, I have said, as to make me the equal of 
 them all ; and, perhaps, you will wonder how a country boy, as I 
 was, educated amongst Irish squires, and their dependents of the 
 stable and farm, should arrive at possessing such elegant manners 
 as I was indisputably allowed to have. I had, the fact is, a very 
 valuable instructor in the person of an old gamekeeper, who had 
 served the French king at Fontenoy, and who taught me the 
 dances, and customs, and a smattering of the language of that 
 country, with the use of the sword, both small and broad. Many 
 and many a long mile I have trudged by his side as a lad, he telling 
 me wonderful stories of the French king, and the Irish brigade, 
 and Marshal Saxe, and the opera-dancers ; he knew my uncle, too, 
 the Chevalier Borgne, and, indeed, had a thousand accomplishments 
 which he taught me in secret. I never knew a man like him for 
 making or throwing a fly, for physicking a horse, or breaking, or 
 choosing one ; he taught me manly sports, from birds'-nesting 
 upwards, and I always shall consider Phil Purcell as the very best 
 tutor I could have had. His fault was drink, but for that I have 
 always had a blind eye ; and he hated my cousin Mick like poison, 
 but I could excuse him that too. 
 
 With Phil, and at the age of fifteen, I was a more accomplished 
 man than either of my cousins ; and I think Nature had been, 
 also, more bountiful to me in the matter of person. Some of the 
 Castle Brady girls (as you shall hear presently) adored me. At fairs
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 15 
 
 and races many of the prettiest lasses present said they would like 
 to have me for their bachelor, and yet somehow, it must be con- 
 fessed, I was not popular. 
 
 In the first place, every one knew I was bitter-poor; and I 
 think, perhaps, it was my good mother's fault that I was bitter 
 proud too. I had a habit of boasting in company of my birth, 
 and the splendour of my carriages, gardens, cellars, and domestics, 
 and this before people who were perfectly aware of my real 
 circumstances. If it was boys, and they ventured to sneer, I 
 would beat them, or die for it ; and many's the time I've been 
 brought home well nigh killed by one or more of them, on what, 
 when my mother asked me, I would say was " a family quarrel." 
 " Support your name with your blood, Eeddy, my boy," would 
 that saint say, with the tears in her eyes ; and so would she 
 herself have done with her voice, ay, and her teeth and nails. 
 
 Thus, at fifteen, there was scarce a lad of twenty, for half-a- 
 dozen miles round, that I had not beat for one cause or other. 
 There were the vicar's two sons of Castle Brady — in course I 
 could not associate with such beggarly brats as them, and many 
 a battle did we have as to who should take the wall in Brady's 
 town ; there was Pat Lurgan, the blacksmith's son, who had the 
 better of me four times before we came to the crowning fight, 
 when I overcame him ; and I could mention a score more of my 
 deeds of prowess in that way, but that fisticuff facts are dull 
 subjects to talk of, and to discuss before high-bred gentlemen and 
 ladies. 
 
 However, there is another subject, ladies, on which I must 
 discourse, and that is never out of place. Day and night you like 
 to hear of it ; young and old, you dream and think of it. Hand- 
 some and ugly (and, faith, before fifty, I never saw such a thing 
 as a plain woman), it's the subject next to the hearts of all of 
 you ; and I think you guess my riddle without more trouble. 
 Love ! sure the word is formed on purpose out of the prettiest 
 soft vowels and consonants in the language, and he or she who 
 does not care to read about it is not worth a fig to my thinking. 
 
 My uncle's family consisted of ten children ; who, as is the 
 custom in such large families, were divided into two camps, or 
 parties ; the one siding with their mamma, the other taking the
 
 10 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 part of my uncle in all the numerous quarrels which arose between 
 that gentleman and his lady. Mrs. Brady's faction was headed 
 by Mick, the eldest son, who hated me so, and disliked his father 
 for keeping him out of his property : while Ulick, the second 
 brother, was his father's own boy ; and, in revenge, Master Mick 
 was desperately afraid of him. I need not mention the girls' 
 names ; I had plague enough with them in after-life, Heaven 
 knows ; and one of them was the cause of all my early troubles ; 
 this was (though to be sure all her sisters denied it) the belle of 
 the family, Miss Honoria Brady by uame. 
 
 She said she was only nineteen at the time ; but I could read 
 the fly-leaf in the family bible as well as another (it was one of 
 the three books which, with the backgammon-board, formed my 
 uncle's library), and know that she was born in the year '37, and 
 christened by Dr. Swift, dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin : hence she 
 was three-and-twenty years old at the time she and I were so 
 much together. 
 
 When I come to think about her now, I know she never could 
 have been handsome ; for her figure was rather of the fattest, 
 and her mouth of the widest; she was freckled over like a 
 partridge's egg, and her hair was the colour of a certain vegetable 
 which we eat with boiled beef, to use the mildest term. Often 
 and often would my dear mother make these remarks concerning 
 her ; but I did not believe them then, and somehow had gotten to 
 think Honoria an angelical being far above all the other angels 
 of her sex. 
 
 And as we know very well that a lady who is skilled in dancing 
 or singing never can perfect herself without a deal of study in 
 private, and that the song or the minuet which are performed with 
 so much graceful ease in the assembly-room have not been acquired 
 without vast labour and perseverance in private ; so it is with the 
 dear creatures who are skilled in coquetting. Honoria, for instance, 
 was always practising, and she would take poor me to rehearse 
 her accomplishment upon ; or the exciseman, when he came his 
 rounds, or the steward, or the poor curate, or the young apothecary's 
 lad from Brady's Town, whom I recollect beating once for that 
 very reason. If he is alive now I make him my apologies. Poor 
 fellow ! as if it was his fault that he should be a victim to the
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 17 
 
 wiles of one of the greatest coquettes (considering her obscure 
 life and rustic breeding) in the world. 
 
 If the truth must be told, and every word of this narrative of 
 my life is of the most sacred veracity, my passion for Xora began 
 in a very vulgar and unromantic way. I did not save her life ; on 
 the contrary, I once very nearly killed her, as you shall hear. I 
 did not behold her by moonlight playing on the guitar, or rescue 
 her from the hands of ruffians, as Alfonso does Lindamira in the 
 novel ; but one day after dinner at Brady s Town in summer, 
 going into the garden to pull gooseberries for my dessert, and 
 thinking only of gooseberries, I pledge my honour, I came upon 
 Miss 2sora and one of her sisters, with whom she was friends at 
 the time, who were both engaged in the very same amusement. 
 
 " "What's the Latin for gooseberry, Redmond ? " says she. She 
 was always " pokiug her fun," as the Irish phrase it. 
 
 " I know the Latin for goose," says I. 
 
 " And what's that 'i " cries ZNIiss Mysie, as pert as a peacock. 
 
 " Bo to you ! " says I (for I had never a want of wit) ; and so 
 we fell to work at the gooseberry-bush, laughing and talking as 
 happy as might be. In the course of our diversion ]S"ora managed 
 to scratch her arm, and it bled, and she screamed, and it was 
 mighty round and white, and I tied it up, and I believe was 
 permitted to kiss her hand ; and though it was as big and 
 clumsy a hand as ever you saw, yet I thought the favour the most 
 ravishing one that was ever conferred upon me, and went home in 
 a rapture. 
 
 I was much too simple a fellow to disguise any sentiment I 
 chanced to feel in those days ; and not one of the eight Castle 
 Brady girls but was soon aware of my passion, and joked and 
 complimented JSTora -about her bachelor. 
 
 The torments of jealousy the cruel coquette made me endure 
 were horrible. Sometimes she would treat me as a child, some- 
 times as a man. She would always leave me if ever there came a 
 stranger to the house. 
 
 " For after all, Eedmond," she would say, " you are but fifteen, 
 and you hav'n't a guinea in the world ; " at which I would swear 
 that I would become the greatest hero ever known out of Ireland, 
 and vow that before I was twenty I would have money enough to 
 
 VOL. III. o
 
 18 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 purchase an estate six times as big as Castle Brady. All which 
 vain promises, of course, I did not keep ; but I make no doubt 
 they influenced me in my very early life, and caused me to do 
 those great actions for which I have been celebrated, and which 
 shall be narrated presently in order. 
 
 I must tell one of them, just that my dear youug lady readers 
 may know what sort of a fellow Redmond Barry was, and what a 
 courage and undaunted passion he had. I question whether any 
 of the jenny-jessamines of the present day would do half as much 
 in the face of danger. 
 
 About this time it must be premised the United Kingdom was 
 in a state of great excitement from the threat generally credited 
 of a French invasion. The Pretender was said to be in high 
 favour at Versailles, a descent upon Ireland was especially looked 
 to, and the noblemen and people of condition in that and all other 
 parts of the kingdom showed their loyalty by raising regiments 
 of horse and foot to resist the invaders. Brady's Town sent a 
 company to join the Kilwangan regiment, of which Master Mick 
 was the captain ; and we had a letter from Master Ulick at 
 Trinity College, stating that the university had also formed a 
 regiment, in which he had the honour to be a corporal. How I 
 envied them both ! especially that odious Mick, as I saw him in 
 his laced scarlet coat with a ribbon in his hat march off" at the 
 head of his men. He, the poor spiritless creature, was a captain, 
 and I nothing, — I who felt I had as much courage as the Duke of 
 Cumberland himself, and felt, too, that a red jacket would mightily 
 become me ! My mother said I was too young to join the new 
 regiment ; but the fact was, that it was she herself who was too 
 poor, for the cost of a new uniform would have swallowed up half 
 her year's income, and she would only have her boy appear in a 
 way suitable to his birth, riding the finest of racers, dressed in the 
 best of clothes, and keeping the genteelest of company. 
 
 Well, then, the whole country was alive with war's alarums, 
 the three kingdoms ringing with military music, and every man of 
 merit paying his devoirs at the court of Bellona, whilst poor I was 
 obliged to stay at home in my fustian jacket and sigh for fame in 
 secret. Mr. Mick came too and fro from the regiment, and brought 
 numerous of his comrades with him. Their costume and swag-
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 19 
 
 gering airs filled me with grief, and Miss Nora's unvarying 
 attentions to them served to make me half wild. No one, how- 
 ever, thought of attributing this sadness to the young lady's score, 
 but rather to my disappointment at not being allowed to join the 
 military profession. 
 
 Once the officers of the Tencibles gave a grand ball at 
 Kilwangan, to which, as a matter of course, all the ladies of Castle 
 Brady (and a pretty ugly coachful they were) were invited. I 
 knew to what tortures the odious little flirt of a Nora would put 
 me with her eternal coquetries with the officers, and refused for a 
 long time to be one of the party to the ball. But she had a way 
 of conquering me, against which all resistance of mine was in 
 vain. She vowed that riding in a coach always made her ill. 
 " And how can I go to the ball," said she, " unless you take me on 
 Daisy behind you on the pillion ? " Daisy was a good blood mare 
 of my uncle's, and to such a proposition I could not for my soul 
 say no ; so we rode in safety to Kilwangan, and I felt myself as 
 proud as any prince when she promised to dance a country-dance 
 with me. 
 
 "When the dance was ended, the little ungrateful flirt informed 
 me that she had quite forgotten her engagement, and actually 
 danced the set with an Englishman ! I have endured torments 
 in my life, but none like that. She tried to make up for her 
 neglect, but I would not. Some of the prettiest girls there 
 offered to console me, for I was the best dancer in the room. I 
 made one attempt, but was too wretched to continue, and so 
 remained alone all night in a state of agony. I would have 
 played but I had no money, only the gold piece that my mother 
 bade me always keep in my purse as a gentleman should. I did 
 not care for drink, or know the dreadful comfort of it in those 
 days ; but I thought of killing myself and Nora, and most 
 certainly of making away with Captain Quin ! 
 
 At last, and at morning, the ball was over. The rest of our 
 
 ladies went off in the lumbering creaking old coach ; Daisy was 
 
 brought out, and Miss Nora took her place behind me, which 1 
 
 let her do without a word. But we were not half a mile out of 
 
 town when she began to try with her coaxing and blandishments 
 
 to dissipate my ill-humour. 
 
 o 2
 
 20 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 " Sure it's a bitter night, Eedmond, dear, and you'll catch cold 
 without a handkerchief to your neck." To this sympathetic 
 remark from the pillion, the saddle made no reply. 
 
 " Did you and Miss Clancy have a pleasant evening, Eedmond ? 
 You were together, I saw, all night." To this the saddle only 
 replied by grinding his teeth, and giving a lash to Daisy. 
 
 " Oh ! mercy, you make Daisy rear and throw me, you careless 
 creature, you ; and you know, Eedmond, I'm so timid." The 
 pillion had by this got her arm round the saddle's waist, and, 
 perhaps, gave it the gentlest squeeze in the world. 
 
 " I hate Miss Clancy, you know I do!" answers the saddle; 
 " and I only danced with her because — because — the person with 
 whom I intended to dance chose to be engaged the whole night." 
 
 " Sure there were my sisters," said the pillion, now laughing 
 outright in the pride of her conscious superiority ; " and for me, 
 i my dear, I had not been in the room five minutes before I was 
 engaged for every single set." 
 
 ""Were you obliged to dance five times with Captain Quin ? " 
 said I ; and, oh ! strange delicious charm of coquetry, I do believe 
 Miss Nora Brady at twenty-three years of age felt a pang of 
 delight in thinking that she had so much power over a guileless 
 lad of fifteen. 
 
 Of course she replied that she did not care a fig for Captain 
 Quin : that he danced prettily, to be sure, and was a pleasant 
 rattle of a man ; that he looked well in his regimentals, too ; and 
 if he chose to ask her to dance, how could she refuse him ? 
 
 " But you refused me, Nora." 
 
 " Oh ! I can dance with you any day," answered Miss Nora, 
 with a toss of her head ; " and to dance with your cousin at a ball, 
 looks as if you could find no other partner. Besides," said Nora 
 — and this was a cruel, unkind cut, which showed what a power 
 she had over me, and how mercilessly she used it, — " besides, 
 Eedmond, Captain Quin's a man, and you are only a boy ! " 
 
 "If ever I meet him again," I roared out with an oath, "you 
 shall see which is the best man of the two. I'll fight him with 
 sword or with pistol, captain as he is. A man, indeed ! I'll fight 
 any man— every man ! Didn't I stand up to Mick Brady when I 
 was eleven years old ? — Didn't I beat Tom Sullivan, the great
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 21 
 
 hulking brute, who is nineteen? — Didn't I do for the "French 
 usher? Ob, Nora, it's cruel of you to sneer at me so ! " 
 
 But Nora was in the sneering mood that night, and pursued 
 her sarcasms, and pointed out that Captain Quin was already 
 known as a valiant soldier, famous as a man of fashion in London, 
 and that it was mighty well of Kedmond to talk and boast of 
 beating ushers, and farmers' boys, but to fight an Englishman was 
 a very different matter. 
 
 Then she fell to talk of the invasion, and of military matters in 
 general, of King Frederick (who was called, in those days, the 
 Protestant hero), of Monsieur Thurot and his fleet, of Monsieur 
 Confiaus and his squadron, of Minorca, how it was attacked, and 
 where it was, and both agreed it must be in America, and 
 hoped the French might be soundly beaten there. 
 
 I sighed after a while (for I was beginning to melt), and said 
 how much I longed to be a soldier ; on which Nora recurred to 
 her infallible, " Ah ! now, would you leave me, then ? But, sure, 
 you're not big enough for any thing more than a little drummer." 
 To which I replied, by swearing that a soldier I would be, and a 
 general too. 
 
 As we were chattering in this silly way, we came to a place 
 that has ever since gone by the name of Redmond's Leap Bridge. 
 It was an old high bridge, over a stream sufficiently deep and 
 rocky, and as the mare Daisy with her double load was crossing 
 this bridge, Miss Nora, giving a loose to her imagination, and still 
 harping on the military theme (T would lay a wager that she was 
 thinking of Captain Quin), Miss Nora said, "Suppose, now, 
 Redmond, you, who are such a hero, was passing over the bridge, 
 and the inimy on the other side ? " 
 
 " I'd draw my sword, and cut my way through them." 
 
 " What, with me on the pillion ? "Would you kill poor me?" 
 (This young lady was perpetually speaking of " poor me ! ") 
 
 " Well, then, I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd jump Daisy into 
 the river, and swim you both across, where no enemy could 
 follow us." 
 
 " Jump twenty feet ! you wouldn't dare to do any such thing on 
 Daisy. There's the captain's horse, Black George, I've heard say 
 that Captain Qui "
 
 22 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 She never finished the word, for maddened by the continual 
 recurrence of that odious monosyllable, I shouted to her to " hold 
 tight by my waist," and, giving Daisy the spur, in a minute 
 sprung with Nora over the parapet into the deeper water below. 
 I don't know why now, whether it was I wanted to drown myself 
 and Nora, or to perform an act that even Captain Quin should 
 crane at, or whether I fancied that the enemy actually was in 
 front of us, I can't tell now ; but over I went. The horse sunk 
 over his head, the girl screamed as she sunk, and screamed as she 
 rose, and I landed her, half fainting, on the shore, where we were 
 soon found by my uncle's people, who returned on hearing the 
 screams. I went home, and was ill speedily of a fever, which 
 kept me to my bed for six weeks, and I quitted my couch pro- 
 digiously increased in stature, and, at the same time, still more 
 violently in love than I had been even before. 
 
 At the commencement of my illness, Miss Nora had been 
 pretty constant in her attendance at my bedside, forgetting, for 
 the sake of me, the quarrel between my mother and her family, 
 which my good mother was likewise pleased, in the most Christian 
 manner, to forget. And, let me tell you, it was no small mark of 
 goodness in a woman of her haughty disposition, who, as a rule, 
 never forgave any body, for my sake to give up her hostility to 
 Miss Brady, and to receive her kindly. For, like a mad boy as I 
 was, it was Nora I was always raving about and asking for ; I 
 would only accept medicines from her hand, and would look rudely 
 and sulkily upon the good mother, who loved me better than any 
 thing else in the world, and gave up even her favourite habits, 
 and proper and becoming jealousies, to make me happy. 
 
 As I got well, I saw that Nora's visits became daily more rare : 
 " Why don't she come ?" I would say, peevishly, a dozen times in 
 the day ; in reply to which query, Mrs. Barry would be obliged 
 to make the best excuses she could find, — such as that Nora had 
 sprained her ankle, or that they had quarrelled together, or some 
 other answer to soothe me. And many a time has the good soul 
 left me to go and break her heart in her own room alone, and 
 come back with a smiling face, so that I should know nothing of 
 her mortification. Nor, indeed, did I take much pains to ascer- 
 tain it ; nor should I, I fear, have been very much touched even
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 23 
 
 had I discovered it, for the commencement of manhood, I think, 
 is the period of our extremest selfishness. We get such a desire 
 then to take wing, and leave the parent-nest, that no tears, 
 entreaties, or feelings of affection, will counterbalance this over- 
 powering longing after independence. She must have been very 
 sad, that poor mother of mine — Heaven be good to her! — at that 
 period of my life ; and has often told me since what a pang of the 
 heart it was to her to see all her care and affection of years 
 forgotten by me in a minute, and for the sake of a little, heartless 
 jilt, who was only playing with me while she could get no better 
 suitor. For the fact is, that during the last four weeks of my 
 illness, no other than Captain Quin was staying at Castle Brady, 
 and making love to Miss Nora in form ; and my mother did not 
 dare to break this news to me, and you may be sure that Nora 
 herself kept it a secret. It was only by chance that I dis- 
 covered it. 
 
 Shall I tell you how ? The minx had been to see me one day, 
 as I sat up in my bed, convalescent, and was in such high spirits, 
 and so gracious and kind to me, that my heart poured over with 
 joy and gladness, and I had even for my poor mother a kind word 
 and a kiss that morning. I felt myself so well that I ate up a 
 whole chicken, and promised my uncle, who had come to see me, 
 to be ready, against partridge-shooting, to accompany him, as my 
 custom was. 
 
 The next day but one was a Sunday, and I had a project for 
 that day whicli I determined to reabse, in spite of all the doctors 
 and my mother's injunctions, which were that I was on no 
 account to leave the house, for the fresh air would be the death 
 of me. 
 
 Well, I lay wondrous quiet, composing a copy of verses, the 
 first I ever made in my life, and I give them here spelt as I spelt 
 them iu those days when I knew no better. And though they 
 are not so polished and elegant as "Ardelia, ease a love-sick 
 swain:" and, "When Sol bedecks the Daisied Mead;" and 
 other lyrical effusions of mine w"hich obtained me so much repu- 
 tation in after life, I still think them pretty good for a humble 
 lad of fifteen : —
 
 24 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 THE ROSE OF FLORA. 
 Sent by a Young Gentleman of Quality to Miss Br — cly, of C — sile Br — dy. 
 
 On Brady's tower there grows a flower, 
 
 It is the loveliest flower that blows, — ■ 
 At Castle Brady there lives a lady, 
 
 (And how I love her no one knows) ; 
 Her name is Nora, and the goddess Flora 
 
 Presents her with this blooming rose. 
 
 " Lady Nora," says the goddess Flora, 
 " I've many a rich and bright parterre ; 
 
 In Brady's towers there's seven more flowers, 
 But you're the fairest lady there : 
 
 Not all the county, nor Ireland's bounty, 
 Can projuice a treasure that's half so fair !" 
 
 "What cheek is redder ? sure roses fed her ! 
 
 Her hair is maregolds, and her eye of blew 
 Beneath her eyelid, is like the vi'let, 
 
 That darkly glistens with gentle jew ! 
 The lily's nature is not surely whiter 
 
 Than Nora's neck is, — and her ai'rums too. 
 
 "Come, gentle Nora," says the goddess Flora, 
 
 " My dearest creature, take my advice, 
 There is a poet, full well you know it, 
 
 Who spends his life-time in heavy sighs, — 
 Young Redmond Barry, 'tis him you'll marry, 
 
 If rhyme and raisin you'd choose likewise." 
 
 On Sunday, no sooner was my mother gone to church, than I 
 summoned Phil the valet, and insisted upon his producing my 
 best suit, in which I arrayed myself (although I found that I had 
 shot up so in my illness that the old dress was woefully too small 
 for me), and, with my notable copy of verses in my hand, ran 
 down towards Castle .Brady, bent upon beholding my beauty. 
 The air was so fresh and bright, and the birds sang so loud amidst 
 the green trees, that I felt more elated than I had been for 
 months before, and sprung down the avenue (my uncle had cut 
 down every stick of the trees, by the way) as brisk as a young 
 fawn. My heart began to thump as I mounted the grass-grown 
 steps of the terrace, and passed in by the ricketty hall-door. The 
 master and mistress were at church, Mr. Screw, the butler, 
 told me, after giving a start back at seeing my altered appearancej 
 and gaunt, lean figure, and so were six of the young ladies.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 25 
 
 " Was Miss Nora one ? " I asked. 
 
 "No, Miss Nora was not one," said Mr. Screw, assuming a 
 wry puzzled, and yet knowing look. 
 
 " "Where was she ? " To this question he answered, or rather 
 made believe to answer, with usual Irish ingenuity, aud left me 
 to settle whether she was gone to Kilwangan on the pillion 
 behind her brother, or whether she and her sister had gone for a 
 walk, or whether she was ill in her room : and while I was settlin°- 
 this query Mr. Screw left me abruptly. 
 
 I rushed away to the back court, where the Castle "Brady stables 
 stand, and there I found a dragoon whistling the " Roast Beef of 
 Old England," as he cleaned down a cavalry horse. " Whose 
 horse, fellow, is that?" cried I. "Feller, indeed!" replied the 
 Englishman ; "the horse belongs to my captain, and he's a better 
 feller nor }*ou any day." 
 
 I did not stop to break his bones, as I would on another occa- 
 sion, for a horrible suspicion had come across me, and I made for 
 the garden as quickly as I could. 
 
 I knew somehow what I should see there. I saw Captain Quin 
 and Nora pacing the alley together. Her arm was under his, and 
 the scoundrel was fondling and squeezing the hand which lay 
 closely nestling against his odious waistcoat. Some distance 
 beyond them was Captain Pagan of the Kilwangan regiment, who 
 was paying court to Nora's sister Mysie. 
 
 I am not afraid of any man or ghost ; but as I saw that sight 
 my knees fell a trembling violently under me, and such a sickness 
 came over me, that I was fain to sink down on the grass by a 
 tree against which I leaned, and lost almost all consciousness for 
 a minute or two ; then I gathered myself up, and, advancing 
 towards the couple on the walk, loosened the blade of the little 
 silver-hilted hanger I always wore in its scabbard ; for I was 
 resolved to pass it through the body of the delinquents, and spit 
 them like two pigeons. I don't tell what feelings else besides 
 those of rage were passing through my mind, what bitter blank 
 disappointment, what mad wild despair, what a sensation as if the 
 whole world was tumbling from under me : I make no doubt that 
 my reader hath been jilted by the ladies many times, and so bid 
 him recall his own sensations when the shock first fell upon him.
 
 26 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 "No, Norelia," said the captain (for it was the fashion of those 
 times for lovers to call themselves by the most romantic names 
 out of novels), " except for you and four others, I vow before all 
 the gods, my heart has never felt the soft flame ! " 
 
 "Ah! you men, you men, Eugenio ! " said she (the beast's 
 name was John), "your passion is not equal to ours. "We are 
 like — like some plant I've read of — we bear but one flower, and 
 then we die ! " 
 
 "Do you mean you never felt an inclination for another?'' 
 said Captain Quin. 
 
 "Never, my Eugenio, but for thee! How can you ask a 
 blushing nymph such a question ? " 
 
 " Darling Norelia ! " said he, raising her hand to his lips. 
 
 I had a knot of cherry-coloured ribands, which she had given 
 me out of her breast, and which somehow I always wore upon me. 
 I pulled these out of my bosom and flung them in Captain Quin's 
 face, and rushed out with my little sword drawn, shrieking, "She's 
 a liar — she's a liar, Captain Quin ! Draw, sir, and defend your- 
 self, if you are a man!" and with these words I leaped at the 
 monster, and collared him, while Nora made the air echo with her 
 screams ; at the sound of which the other captain and Mysie 
 hastened up. 
 
 Although I sprung up like a weed in my illness, and was now 
 nearly attained to my full growth of six feet, yet I was but a lath 
 by the side of the enormous English captain, who had calves and 
 shoulders such as no chairman at Bath ever boasted. He turned 
 very red, and then exceedingly pale at my attack upon him, and 
 slipped back and clutched at his sword — when Nora, in an agony 
 of terror, flung herself round him, screaming, " Eugenio ! Captain 
 Quin, for Heaven's sake spare the child — he is but an infant ! " 
 
 "And ought to be whipped for his impudence," said the 
 captain; "but never fear, Miss Brady, I shall not touch him; 
 your favourite is safe from me." So saying, he stooped down and 
 picked up the bunch of ribands which I had flung at Nora's feet, 
 and handing it to her, said in a sarcastic tone, " When ladies 
 make presents to gentlemen, it is time for other gentlemen to 
 retire." 
 
 " Good heavens, Quin ! " cried the girl, " he is but a boy."
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. ■ 27 
 
 " I'm a man," roared I, "and will prove it." 
 
 "And don't signify any more than my parrot or lap-dog. 
 Mayn't I give a bit of riband to my own cousin ? " 
 
 "You are perfectly welcome, miss," continued the captain, " as 
 many yards as you like." 
 
 " Monster ! " exclaimed the dear girl ; " your father was a tailor, 
 and you are always thinking of the shop. But I'll have my 
 revenge, I will ! Reddy, will you see me insulted ? " 
 
 "Indeed, Miss Nora," says I, "I intend to have his blood as 
 sure as my name's Redmond." 
 
 "I'll send for the usher to cane you, little boy," said the 
 captain, regaining his self-possession ; " but as for you, miss, I 
 have the honour to wish you a good-day." 
 
 He took off his hat with much ceremony, and made a low conge, 
 and was just walking off, when Mick, my cousin, came up, whose 
 ear had likewise been caught by the scream. 
 
 " Hoity — toity ! Jack Quin, what's the matter here ? " says 
 Mick ; " Nora in tears, Redmond's ghost here with his sword 
 drawn, and you making a bow ? " 
 
 " I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Brady," said the Englishman ; " I 
 have had enough of Miss Nora here and your Irish ways. I ain't 
 used to 'em, sir." 
 
 " Well, well ! what is it ? " said Mick, good-humouredly (for he 
 owed Quin a great deal of money as it turned out) ; " we'll make 
 you used to our ways, or adopt English ones." 
 
 " It's not the English way for ladies to have two lovers, (the 
 "Henglish way," as the captain called it), and so, Mr. Brady, I'll 
 thank you to pay me the sum you owe me, and I resign all claims 
 to this young lady. If she has a fancy for school-boys, let her 
 take 'em, sir." 
 
 " Pooh ! pooh ! Quin, you are joking," said Mick. 
 
 " I never was more in earnest," replied the other. 
 
 "By Heaven, then look to yourself!" shouted Mick. "In- 
 famous seducer ! infernal deceiver ! — you come and wind your 
 toils round this suffering angel here — you win her heart and leave 
 her — and fancy her brother won't defend her? Draw this minute, 
 you slave ! and let me cut the wicked heart out of your body ! " 
 
 " This is regular assassination," said Quin, starting back ;
 
 28 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 " there's two on 'em on me at ouce. Pagan, you won't let 'em 
 murder me ? " 
 
 " Faith ! " said Captain Pagan, who seemed mightily amused, 
 "you may settle your own quarrel, Captain Quin ; " and coming 
 over to me, whispered, "At him again, you little fellow." 
 
 "As long as Mr. Quin withdraws his claim," said I, "I, of 
 course, do not interfere." 
 
 " I do, sir, — I do," said Mr. Quin, more and more flustered. 
 
 " Then defend yourself like a man, — curse you!" cried Mick 
 again. " Mysie, lead this poor victim away — Redmond and Pagan 
 will see fair play between us." 
 
 " Well now — I don't — give me time — I'm puzzled — I — I don't 
 know which way to look." 
 
 " Like the donkey betwixt the two bundles of hay," said 
 Mr. Pagan, dryly, "and there's pretty pickings on either side." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN WHICH I SHOW MYSELF TO BE A MAN OE SPIRIT. 
 
 DurinGt this dispute, my cousin Nora did the only thing that a 
 lady, under such circumstances, could do, and fainted in due form. 
 I was in hot altercation with Mick at the time, or I should have, 
 of course, flown to her assistance, but Captain Pagan (a dry sort 
 of fellow this Pagan was) prevented me, saying, "I advise you 
 to leave the young lady to herself, Master Redmond, and be sure 
 she will come to." And so, indeed, after a while, she did, which 
 has shown me since that Fagan knew the world pretty well, for 
 many's the lady I've seen in after times recover in a similar 
 manner. Quin did not offer to help her, you may be sure, for, in 
 the midst of the diversion, caused by her screaming, the faithless 
 bully stole away. 
 
 " Which of us is Captain Quin to engage ? " said I to Mick ; 
 for it was my first affair, and I was as proud of it as of a suit of 
 laced velvet. " Is it you or I, cousin Mick, that is to have the 
 honour of chastising this iusolcnt Englishman ? " And I held out
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 29 
 
 my hand as I spoke, for my heart melted towards my cousin under 
 the triumph of the moment. 
 
 But he rejected the proffered offer of friendship. "You — you!" 
 said he, in a towering passion ; " hang you for a meddling brat, 
 your hand is in everybody's pie. "What business had you to come 
 brawling and quarrelling here, with a gentleman who has fifteen 
 hundred a-year ? " 
 
 " Oh," gasped Nora, from the stone bench, " I shall die ; I 
 know I shall. I shall never leave this spot." 
 
 " The Captain's not gone yet," whispered Fagan, on which 
 Nora, giving him an indignant look, jumped up and walked towards 
 the house. 
 
 " Meanwhile," Mick continued, " what business have you, you 
 meddling rascal, to interfere with a daughter of this house ? " 
 
 "Rascal yourself!" roared I; "call me another such name, 
 Mick Brady, and I'll drive my hanger into your weazand. 
 Recollect, I stood to you when I was eleven years old. I'm your 
 match now, and, by Jove, provoke me, and I'll beat you like — 
 like your younger brother always did." That was a home-cut, 
 and I saw Mick turn blue with fury. 
 
 " This is a pretty way to recommend yourself to the family," 
 said Fagan, in a soothing tone. 
 
 " The girl's old enough to be his mother," growled Mick. 
 
 " Old or not," I replied : " you listen to this, Mick Brady (and 
 I swore a tremendous oath, that need not be put down here), the 
 man that marries Nora Brady must first kill me — do you mind 
 that ? " 
 
 " Pooh, sir," said Mick, turning away, " kill you,— flog you, you 
 mean! I'll send for Nick the huntsman to do it;" and so he 
 went off. 
 
 Captain Fagan now came up, and, taking me kindly by the 
 hand, said I was a gallant lad, and he liked my spirit. " Bufc 
 what Brady says is true," continued he ; " it's a hard thing to give 
 a lad counsel who is in such a far-gone state as you; but, 
 believe me, I know the world, and if you will but follow my 
 advice, you won't regret having taken it. Nora Brady has not a 
 penny ; you are not a whit richer. Tou are but fifteen, and she's 
 four-and-twenty. In ten years, when you're old enough to marry,
 
 SO THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 she "will be an old "woman ; and, my poor boy, don't you see — 
 though it's a hard matter to see — that she's a flirt, and does not 
 care a pin for you or Quin either ? " 
 
 But who in love (or in any other point, for the matter of that) 
 listens to advice ? I never did, and I told Captain Eagan fairly, 
 that Nora might love me or not, as she liked, but that Quin should 
 fio-ht me before he married her — that I swore. 
 
 " 'Faith," says Eagan, " I think you are a lad that's likely to 
 keep your word;" and, looking hard at me for a second or two, 
 he walked away likewise, humming a tune ; and I saw he looked 
 back at me as he went through the old gate out of the garden. 
 And when he was gone, and I was quite alone, I flung myself 
 down on the bench where Nora had made believe to faint, and 
 had left her handkerchief ; and, taking it up, hid my face in it, 
 and burst into such a passion of tears, as I would then have had 
 nobody see for the world. The crumpled riband which I had 
 flung at Quin lay in the walk, and I sat there for hours, as 
 wretched as any man in Ireland, I believe, for the time being. 
 But it's a changeable world ! "When we consider how great our 
 sorrows seem, and how small they are ; how we think we shall die 
 of grief, and how quickly we forget, I think we ought to be 
 ashamed of ourselves and our fickle-heartedness. For, after all, 
 what business has Time to bring us consolation ? I have not, 
 -perhaps, in the course of my multifarious adventures and expe- 
 rience, hit upon the right woman ; and have forgotten, after a 
 little, every single creature I adored ; but I think, if I could 
 but have lighted on the right one, I would have loved her 
 for ever. 
 
 I must have sat for some hours bemoaning myself on the garden- 
 bench, for it was morning when I came to Castle Brady, and the 
 dinner-bell clanged as usual at three o'clock, which wakened me 
 up from my reverie. Presently I gathered up the handkerchief, 
 and once more took the riband. As I passed through the offices, 
 I saw the captain's saddle was still hanging up at the stable-door, 
 and saw his odious red-coated brute of a servant swaggering with 
 the scullion-girls and kitchen-people. " The Englishman's still 
 there, Master Redmond," said one of the maids to me (a senti- 
 mental black-eyed girl, who waited on the young ladies). " He's
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BAEEY LYNDON, ESQ. 21 
 
 there in the parlour, with the sweetest fillet of vale; go in, and 
 don't let him browbeat you, Master Redmond." 
 
 And in I went, and took my place at the bottom of the big 
 table, as usual, and my friend the butler speedily brought me a 
 cover. 
 
 " Hallo, Eeddy, my boy ! " said my uncle, " up and well ? — 
 that's right." 
 
 " He'd better be home with his mother," growled mv 
 aunt. 
 
 "Don't mind her," says uncle Brady ; " it's the cold goose she 
 ate at breakfast didu't agree with her. Take a glass of spirits, 
 Mrs. Brady, to Redmond's health." It was evident he did not 
 know of what had happened ; but Mick, who was at dinner too, 
 and Ulick, and almost all the girls, looked exceedingly black, and 
 the captain foolish ; and Miss Nora, who was again by his side, 
 ready to cry. Captain lagan sat smiling ; and I looked on as cold 
 as a stone. I thought the dinner would choke me, but I was 
 determined to put a good face on it ; and when the cloth was 
 drawn, filled my glass with the rest ; and we drank the King and 
 the Chui'ch, as gentlemen should. My uncle was in high good- 
 humour, and especially always joking with Nora and the captain. 
 It was, " Nora, divide that merrythought with the captain ! see 
 who'll be married first." " Jack Quin, my dear boy, never mind 
 a clean glass for the claret, we're short of crystal at Castle Brady ; 
 take Nora's and the wine will taste none the worse ; " and so on. 
 He was in the highest glee, — I did not know why. Had there 
 been a reconciliation between the faithless girl and her lover since 
 they had come into the house ? 
 
 I learned the truth very soon. At the third toast, it was 
 always the custom for the ladies to withdraw, but my uncle 
 stopped them this time, in spite of the remonstrances of Nora, who 
 said, "0, pa! do let us go ! "and said, "No, Mrs. Brady and 
 ladies, if you plaise ; this is a sort of toast that is drunk a great 
 dale too seldom in my family, and you'll please to receive it with 
 all the honours. Here's Captain and Mes. John Quix, and 
 long life to them. Kiss her, Jack, you rogue ; for 'faith you've 
 got a treasure ! " 
 
 " He has already," ... I screeched out, springing up.
 
 32 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 " Hold your tongue, you fool — hold your tongue ! " said big 
 Ulick, who sat by me ; but I wouldn't hear. 
 
 " He has already," I screamed, " been slapped in the face this 
 morning, Captain John Quin ; he's already been called coward, 
 Captain John Quin ; and this is the way I'll drink his health. 
 ' Here's your health, Captain John Quin : ' " and I flung a glass of 
 claret into his face. I don't know how he looked after it, for the 
 next moment I myself was under the table, tripped up by Ulick, 
 who hit me a violent cuff on the head as I went down ; and I had 
 hardly leisure to hear the general screaming and skurrying that 
 was taking place above me, being so fully occupied with kicks, 
 and thumps, and curses, with which Ulick was belabouring me. 
 " Tou fool ! " roared he — " you great blundering marplot — you 
 silly beggarly brat (a thump at each), hold your tongue ! " These 
 blows from Ulick, of course, I did not care for, for he had always 
 been my friend, and had been in the habit of thrashing me all 
 my life. 
 
 When I got up from under the table all the ladies were gone ; 
 and I had the satisfaction of seeing the captain's nose was 
 bleeding, as mine was — his was cut across the bridge, and his 
 beauty spoiled for ever. Ulick shook himself, sat down quietly, 
 filled a bumper, and pushed the bottle to me. " There, you 
 young donkey," said he " sup that ; and let's hear no more of your 
 braying." 
 
 " In Heaven's name, what does all the row mean ? " says my 
 uncle. " Is the boy in the fever again ? " 
 
 " It's all your fault," said Mick, sulkily : "yours and those who 
 brought him here." 
 
 " Hold your noise, Mick ! " says Ulick, turning on him ; " speak 
 civil of my father and me, and don't let me be called upon to teach 
 you manners." 
 
 " It is your fault," repeated Mick. "What business has the 
 vagabond here ? If I had my will, I'd have him flogged and 
 turned out." 
 
 "And so he should be," said Captain Quin. 
 
 " You'd best not try it, Quin," said Ulick, who was always my 
 champion; and, turning to his father, " The fact is, sir, that the 
 young monkey has fallen in love with .Nora, and finding her and
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 33 
 
 the captain mighty sweet in the garden to-day, he was for mur- 
 dering Jack Quin." 
 
 "Gad, he's beginning young," said my uncle, quite good- 
 humouredly. " '.Faith, Eagan, that boy's a Brady, every inch of 
 him." 
 
 "And I'll tell you what, Mr. B." cried Quin, bristling up; 
 " I've been insulted grossly in this 'ouse. I ain't at all satisfied 
 with these here ways of going on. I'm an Englishman, I am, and 
 a man of property : and I — I " 
 
 " If you're insulted, and not satisfied, remember there's two 
 of us, Quin," said Ulick, gruffly. On which the captain fell to 
 washing his nose in water, and answered never a word. 
 
 " Mr. Quin," said I, in the most dignified tone I could assume, 
 " may also have satisfaction any time he pleases, by calling on 
 Redmond Barry, Esquire, of Barrvville." At which speech my 
 uncle burst out a-laughing (as he did at every thinsj) ; and in this 
 laugh, Captain Fagan, much to my mortification, joined. I turned 
 rather smartly upon him, however, and bade him to understand, 
 that though I was a boy, for my cousin Ulick, who had been my 
 best friend through life, I could put up with rough treatment 
 from him ; yet, even that sort of treatment I would bear from him 
 no longer ; and that any other person who ventured on the like 
 would find me a man to their cost. " Mr. Quin," I added, 
 " knows that fact very well ; and, if he's a man, he'll know where 
 to find me." 
 
 My uncle now observed that it was getting late, and that my 
 mother would be anxious about me. " One of you had better go 
 home with him," said he, turning to his sons, " or the lad may be 
 playing more pranks." But Ulick said, with a nod to his brother, 
 " Both of us ride home with Quin here." 
 
 " I'm not afraid of Ereeny's people," said the captain, 
 with a faint attempt at a laugh ; " my man is armed, and so 
 am 1. 
 
 " You know the use of arms very well, Quin," said Ulick ; 
 " and no one can doubt your courage ; but Mick and I will see you 
 home for all that." 
 
 " Why, you'll not be home till morning, boys. Kilwangan's a 
 good ten mile from here." 
 
 VOL. Ill, D
 
 3-1 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 ""We'll sleep at Quiii's quarters," replied Ulick: " we're going 
 to stop a week there." 
 
 "Thank you," says Quin, very faint ; "it's very kind of 
 you." 
 
 " You'll be lonely, you know, without us." 
 
 " O yes, very lonely ! " says Quin. 
 
 " And in another week, my boy," says Ulick (and here he whis- 
 pered something in the captain's ear, in which I thought I caught 
 the words "marriage," "parson," and felt all my fury returning 
 again). 
 
 " As you please," whined out the captain ; and the horses were 
 quickly brought round, and the three gentlemen rode away. 
 
 lagan stopped, and, at my uncle's injunction, walked across 
 the old treeless park with me. He said, that after the quarrel at 
 dinner, he thought I would scarcely want to see the ladies that 
 night, in which opinion I concurred entirely ; and so we went off 
 without an adieu. 
 
 " A pretty day's work of it you have made, Master Eedmond," 
 said he. " What ! you, a friend to the Bradys, and knowing your 
 uncle to be distressed for money, try and break off a match 
 which will bring fifteen hundred a-year into the family ? Quin 
 has promised to pay off the four thousand pounds which is 
 bothering your uncle so. He takes a girl without a penny — a 
 girl with no more beauty than yonder bullock. Well, well, don't 
 look furious ; let's say she is handsome — there's no accounting 
 for tastes, — a girl that has been flinging herself at the head of 
 every man in these parts these ten years past, and missing them 
 all. And you, as poor as herself, a boy of fifteen — well, sixteen, 
 if you insist — and a boy who ought to be attached to your uncle 
 as to your father " 
 
 " And so I am," said I. 
 
 " And this is the return you make him for his kindness ! 
 Didn't he harbour you in his house when you were an orphan, 
 and hasn't he given you rent-free your fine mansion of Barryville 
 yonder? And now, when his affairs can be put into order, and 
 a chance offers for his old age to be made comfortable, who flings 
 himself in the way of him and competence ? — You, of all others ; 
 the rsan in the world most obliged to him. It's wicked, ungrate-
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 55 
 
 ful, unnatural. From a lad of such spirit as you are, I expect a 
 truer courage." 
 
 " I am not afraid of any man alive," exclaimed I (for this latter 
 part of the captain's argument had rather staggered me, and I 
 wished, of course, to turn it, as one always should when the 
 enemy's too strong) ; " and it's I am the injured man, Captain 
 Fagan. No man was ever, since the world began, treated so. 
 Look here — look at this riband. I've worn it in my heart for six 
 months. I've had it there all the time of the fever. Didn't 
 Nora take it out of her own bosom and give it me ? Didn't 
 she kiss me when she gave it me, and call me her darlin°- 
 Bedmond." 
 
 "She was practising" replied Mr. Fagan, with a sneer. "I 
 know women, sir. Give them time, and let nobody else come to 
 the house, and they'll fall in love with a chimney-sweep. There 
 was a young lady in Fermoy " 
 
 " A young lady in flames," roared I (but I used a still hotter 
 word). "Mark this, come what will of it, I swear I'll fight the 
 man who pretends to the hand of Nora Brady. I'll follow him, 
 if it's into the church, and meet him there. I'll have his blood, 
 or he shall have mine ; and this riband shall be found dyed in it. 
 Tes ! and if I kill him, I'll pin it on his breast, and then she may 
 go take back her token." This I said because I was very much 
 excited at the time, and because I had not read my novels and 
 romantic plays for nothing. 
 
 " "Well," says Fagan after a pause, " if it must be, it must. 
 For a young fellow, you are the most blood-thirsty I ever saw. 
 Quin's a determined fellow, too." 
 
 " "Will you take my message to him ? " said I, quite eagerly. 
 
 " Hush ! " said Fagan : " your mother may be on the look-out. 
 Here we are, close to Barryville." 
 
 " Mind ! not a word to my mother," I said ; and went into the 
 house swelling with pride and exultation to think that I should 
 have a chance against the Englishman I hated so. 
 
 Tim, my servant, had come up from Barryville on my mother's 
 return from church, for the good lady was rather alarmed at my 
 absence, and anxious for my return. But he had seen me go in 
 to dinner, at the invitation of the sentimental lady's-maid ; and 
 
 d 2
 
 36 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 when lie had had his own share of the good things in the kitchen, 
 which was always better furnished than ours at home, had walked 
 hack again to inform his mistress where I was, and, no doubt, to 
 tell her, in his own fashion, of all the events that had happened at 
 Castle Brady. In spite of my precautions to secrecy then, I half 
 suspected that my mother knew all, from the manner in which 
 she embraced me on my arrival, and received our guest, Captain 
 Pagan. The poor soul looked a little anxious and flushed, and 
 every now and then gazed very hard in the captain's face, but she 
 said not a word about the quarrel, for she had a noble spirit, and 
 would as lief have seen any one of her kindred hanged as shirking 
 from the field of honour. What has become of those gallant 
 feelings nowadays ? Sixty years ago a man was a man, in old 
 Ireland, and the sword that was worn by his side was at the 
 service of any gentleman's gizzard, upon the slightest difference. 
 But the good old times and usages are fast fadiug away. One 
 scarcely ever hears of a fair meeting now, and the use of those 
 cowardly pistols, in place of the honourable and manly weapon of 
 gentlemen, has introduced a deal of knavery into the practice of 
 duelling that cannot be sufficiently deplored. 
 
 "When I arrived at home I felt that I was a man in earnest, 
 and welcoming Captain .Fagan to Barryville, and introducing him 
 to my mother, in a majestic and dignified way, said the captain 
 must be thirsty after his walk, and called upon Tim to bring up a 
 bottle of the yellow-sealed Bordeaux, and cakes and glasses, 
 immediately. 
 
 Tim looked at the mistress in great wonderment ; and the fact 
 is, that six hours previous I would as soon have thought of 
 burning the house down as calling for a bottle of claret on my 
 own account ; but I felt I was a man now, and had a right to 
 command ; and my mother felt this too, for she turned to the 
 fellow and said, sharply, " Don't you hear, you rascal, what your 
 master says ! Go, get the wine, and the cakes and glasses, 
 directly." Then (for you may be sure she did not give Tim the 
 keys of our little cellar), she went and got the liquor herself; 
 and Tim brought it in, on the silver tray, in due form. My dear 
 mother poured out the wine, and drank the captain welcome ; 
 but I observed her baud shook very much as she performed this
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. G7 
 
 courteous duty, and the bottle went clink, clink, against the glass. 
 AY hen sue had tasted her glass, she said she had a headache, and 
 would go to bed ; and so I asked her blessing, as becomes a 
 dutiful son — (the modern bloods have given up the respectful 
 ceremonies which distinguished a gentleman in my time) — and she 
 left me and Captain Fagan to talk over our important business. 
 
 " Indeed," said the captain, " I see now no other way out of 
 the scrape than a meeting. The fact is, there was a talk of it at 
 Castle Brady, after your attack upon Quin this afternoon, and he 
 vowed that he would cut you in pieces ; but the tears and sup- 
 plications of Miss Honoria iuduced him, though very unwillingly, 
 to relent. Now, however, matters have gone too far. No officer, 
 bearing his majesty's commission, can receive a glass of wine on 
 his nose — this claret of yours is very good, by the way, and by 
 your leave we'll ring for another bottle — without resenting the 
 affront. Fight you must, and Quin is a huge strong fellow." 
 
 "He'll give the better mark," said I. "I am not afraid of 
 him." 
 
 " In faith," said the captain, " I believe you are not ; for a 
 lad, I never saw more game in my life." 
 
 " Look at that sword, sir," says I, pointing to an elegant 
 silver-mounted one, in a white sbagreen case, that hung on the 
 mantelpiece, under the picture of my father, Harry Barry. " It 
 was with that sword, sir, that my father pinked Mohawk 
 O'Driscol, in Dublin, in the year 17-10 : with that sword, sir, he 
 met Sir Huddlestone Fuddlestone, the Hampshire baronet, and 
 ran him through the neck. They met, on horseback, with, [sword 
 and pistol, on Hounslow Heath, as, I dare say, you have heard tell 
 of, and those are the pistols (they hung on each side of the 
 picture), which the gallant Barry used. He was quite in the 
 wrong, having insulted Lady Fuddlestone, when in liquor, at the 
 Brentford assembly. But like a gentleman, he scorned to 
 apologise, and Sir Huddlestone received a ball through his hat, 
 before they engaged with the sword. I am Harry Barry's son, 
 sir, and will act as becomes my name and my quality." 
 
 " Give me a kiss, my dear boy," said Pagan, with tears in his 
 eyes. "You're after my own soul. As long as Jack Fagan 
 lives, you shall never want a friend or a second."
 
 3S THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Poor fellow ! he was shot six months afterwards, carrying orders 
 to my Lord George Sackville, at Minden, and I lost thereby a 
 kind friend. But we don't know what is in store for us, and that 
 night was a merry one at least. "We had a second bottle, and a 
 third too (I could hear the poor mother going down stairs for 
 each, but she never came into the parlour with them, and sent 
 them in by the butler, Mr. Tim) ; and we parted at length, he 
 engaging to arrange matters with Mr. Quin's second that night, 
 and to bring me news in the morning as to the place where the 
 meeting should take place. I hare often thought since, how 
 different my fate might have been, had I not fallen in love with 
 Nora at that early age ; and had I not flung the wine in Quin's 
 face, and so brought on the duel ! I mi^ht have settled down in 
 Ireland but for that (for Miss Quinlan was an heiress, within 
 twenty miles of us, and Peter Burke, of Kilwangan, left his 
 daughter Judy 7007. a-year, and I might have had- either of them, 
 had I waited a few years). But it was in my fate to be a 
 wanderer, and that battle with Quin sent me on my travels at a 
 very early age, as you shall hear anon. 
 
 I never slept sounder in my life, though I woke a little earlier 
 than usual, and you maybe sure my first thought was of the event 
 of the day, for which I was fully prepared. I had ink and pen in 
 my room — had I not been writing these verses to Nora but the 
 day previous, like a poor fond fool as I Aras ? And now I sat 
 down and wrote a couple of letters more ; they might be the last, 
 thought I, that I ever should write in my life. The first was to 
 my mother. " Honoured madam "—I wrote — " This will not be 
 given you unless I fall by the hand of Captain Quin, whom I meet 
 this day in the field of honour, with sword and pistol. If I die, it 
 is as a good Christian and a gentleman, — how should I be other- 
 wise when educated by such a mother as you ? I forgive all my 
 enemies — I beg your blessing, as a dutiful son. I desire that my 
 mare Nora, which ray uncle gave me, and which I called after the 
 most faithless of her sex, may be returned to Castle Brady, and 
 beg you will give my silver-hilted hanger to Phil Purcell, the 
 gamekeeper. Present my duty to my uncle and Ulick, and all 
 the girls of my party there. And I remain your dutiful son, — 
 
 PiEDMO'D BaEEY."
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 39 
 
 To jSTora I wrote, — " This letter will be found in my bosom 
 along with the token you gave me. It will be dyed in my blood 
 (unless I have Captain Quin's, whom I hate, but forgive), and 
 will be a pretty ornament for you on your marriage day. "Wear 
 it, and think of the poor boy to whom you gave it, and who died 
 (as he was always ready to do) for your sake. — Bedmoxd." 
 
 These letters being written, and sealed with my father's great 
 silver seal of the Barry arms, I went down to breakfast, where . 
 my mother was waiting for me, you may be sure. We did 
 not say a single word about what was taking place ; on the 
 contrary, we talked of anything but that ; about who was at 
 church the day before, and about my wanting new clothes now 1 
 was grown so tall. She said, I must have a suit against winter, if 
 — if — she could afford it. She winced rather at the "if, ; ' Heaven 
 bless her ! I knew what was in her mind. And then she fell to 
 telling me about the black pig that must be killed, and that she 
 had found the speckled hen's nest that morning, whose eggs I 
 liked so, and other such trifiinsr talk. Some of these ee^s were 
 for breakfast, and I ate them with a good appetite ; but in helping 
 myself to salt I spilled it, on which she started up with a scream. 
 " Thank God," said she, " it's fallen, towards me." And then, her 
 heart being too full, she left the room. Ah ! they have their faults, 
 those mothers ; but are there any other women like them ? 
 
 "When she was gone I went to take down the sword with which 
 my father had vanquished the Hampshire baronet, and, would you 
 believe it, the brave woman had tied a new riband to the hilt, for 
 indeed she had the courage of a lioness and a Brady united. And 
 then I took down the pistols, which were always kept bright and 
 well oiled, and put some fresh flints I had into the locks, and got 
 balls and powder ready against the captain should come. There 
 was claret and a cold fowl put ready for him on the sideboard, 
 and a case-bottle of old brandy too, with a couple of little glasses 
 on the silver tray with the Barry arms emblazoned. In after life, 
 and in the midst of my fortune and splendour, I paid thirty-five 
 guineas, and almost as much more interest, to the London gold- 
 smith who supplied my father with that very tray. A scoundrel 
 pawnbroker would only give me sixteen for it afterwards, so little 
 can we trust the honour of rascallv tradesmen !
 
 40 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 At eleven o'clock Captain Pagan arrived, on horseback, with a 
 mounted dragoon after him. He paid his compliments to the 
 collation which my mother's care had provided for him, and then 
 said, " Look ye, Redmond, my boy ; this is a silly business. The 
 girl will marry Quin, mark my words ; and as sure as she does 
 you'll forget her. Tou are but a boy. Quin is willing to 
 consider you as such. Dublin's a fine place, and if you have 
 a mind to take a ride thither and see the town for a month, 
 here are twenty guineas at your service. Make Quin an apology, 
 and be off." 
 
 "A man of honour, Mr. Pagan," says I, "dies, but never 
 apologises. I'll see the captain hanged before I apologise." 
 
 " Then there's nothing for it but a meeting." 
 
 " My mare is saddled and ready," says I ; " where's the meeting, 
 and who's the captain's second ? " 
 
 "Tour cousins go out with him," answered Mr. Pagan. 
 
 " I'll ring for my groom to bring my mare round," I said, 
 " as soon as you have rested yourself." Tim was accordingly 
 despatched for Nora, and I rode away, but I didn't take leave of 
 Mrs. Barry. The curtains of her bedroom windows were down, 
 and they didn't move as we mounted and trotted off. . . . J3ut 
 two liours afterwards, you should have seen her as she came 
 tottering down-stairs, and heard the scream w T hich she gave as 
 she hugged her boy to her heart, quite unharmed and without a 
 wound in his body. 
 
 What had taken place I may as well tell here. When we got 
 to the ground, Ulick, Mick, and the captain, were already there. 
 Quin, flaming in red regimentals, as big a monster as ever led a 
 grenadier company. The party were laughing together at some 
 joke of one or the other, and I must say I thought this laughter 
 very unbecoming in my cousins, who were met, perhaps, to see 
 the death of one of their kindred. 
 
 " I hope to spoil this sport," says I to Captain Pagan, in a 
 great rage, " and trust to see this sword of mine in yonder big 
 bully's body." 
 
 " Oh! it's with pistols we fight," replied Mr. Pagan. "You 
 are no match for Quin with the sword." 
 
 " I'll match any man with the sword," said I.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 41 
 
 " But swords are to-day impossible ; Captain Quiu is — is lame. 
 He knocked his knee against the swinging park gate last night, as 
 he was riding home, and can scarce move it now." 
 
 " Not against Castle Brady gate," says I, " that has been off 
 the hinges these ten years." On which Fagan said it must have 
 been some other gate, and repeated what he had said to Mr. Quin 
 and my cousins, when, on alighting from our horses, we joined 
 and saluted those gentlemen. 
 
 " O yes! dead lame," said Ulick, coming to shake me by the 
 hand, while Captain Quin took off his hat and turned extremely 
 red. " And very lucky for you, Bedtnond, my boy," continued 
 Ulick ; " you were a dead man else, for he is a devil of a fellow — 
 isn't he, Fagan ? " 
 
 " A regular Turk," answered Fagan ; adding, " I never yet 
 knew the man who stood to Captain Quin." 
 
 " Hang the business ! " said Ulick; "I hate it. I'm ashamed 
 of it. Say you're sorry, Bedmond ; you can easily say 
 that." 
 
 " If the young feller will go to Dulling, as proposed — " here 
 interposed Mr. Quin. 
 
 " I am not sorry — I'll not apologise — and I'll as soon go to 
 
 Lulling as to ! " said I, with a stamp of my foot. 
 
 " There's nothing else for it," said Ulick, with a laugh to Fagan. 
 :; Take your ground Fagan, — twelve paces, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Ten, sir," said Mr. Quin, in a big voice; "and make them 
 short ones, do you hear, Captain Fagan? " 
 
 "Don't bully, Mr. Quin," said Ulick, surlily ; "here are the 
 pistols." And he added, with some emotion, to me, " Grod bless 
 you, my boy ; and when I count three, fire." 
 
 Mr. Fagan put my pistol into my hand, — that is, not one of 
 mine (which were to serve, if need were, for the next round), but 
 one of Ulick's. "They are all right," said he. "Never fear: 
 and Bedmond, fire at his neck — hit him there under the gorget. 
 See how the fool shows himself open." 
 
 Mick, who had never spoken a word, Ulick, and the captain 
 retired to one side, and Ulick gave the signal. It was slowly given, 
 and I had leisure to cover my man well. I saw him changing 
 colour and trembling as the numbers were given. At " three,"
 
 42 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, E 
 
 both our pistols went off. I heard something whiz by me, and 
 my antagonist giving a most horrible groan, staggered backwards 
 and fell. 
 
 " He's down — he's down ! " cried the seconds, running towards 
 him. Ulick lifted him up — Mick took his head. 
 
 "He's hit here, in the neck," said Mick; and laying open his 
 coat, blood was seen gurgling from under his gorget, at the very 
 spot at which I aimed. 
 
 " How is it with you r" said Ulick. " Is he really hit ? " said 
 he, looking hard at him. The unfortunate man did not answer, 
 but when the support of "Click's arm was withdrawn from his 
 back, groaned once more, and fell backwards. 
 
 " The young fellow has begun well," said Mick, with a scowl. 
 " Tou had better ride off, young sir, before the police are up. 
 They had wind of the business before we left Ivilwangan." 
 
 " Is he quite dead r " said I. 
 
 " Quite dead," answered Mick. 
 
 " Then the world's rid of a coward" said Captain Fagan, 
 giving the huge prostrate body a scornful kick with his foot. 
 " It's all over with him, Reddy, — he doesn't stir." 
 
 " We are not cowards, Fagan," said Ulick, roughly, "whatever 
 he was ! Let's get the boy off as quick as we may. Tour man 
 shall go for a cart, and take away the body of this unhappy 
 gentleman. This has been a sad day's work for our family, 
 Redmond Barry, and you have robbed us of 15007. a-year." 
 
 " It was Nora did it," said I ; " not I." And I took the 
 riband she gave me out of my waistcoat, and the letter, and 
 flung them down on the body of Captain Quin. "There!" 
 says I — " take her those ribands. She'll know what they 
 mean ; and that's all that's left to her of two lovers she had and 
 ruined." 
 
 I did not feel any horror or fear, young as I was, in seeing my 
 enemy prostrate before me ; for I knew that I had met and 
 conquered him honourably in the field, as became a man of my 
 name and blood. 
 
 " And now, in Heaven's name, get the youngster out of the 
 way," said Mick. 
 
 Ulick said he would ride with me, and off accordingly we
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 43 
 
 galloped, never drawing bridle till we came to my mother's door. 
 "When there, Ulick told Tim to feed mv mare, as I would have 
 far to ride that day, and I was in the poor mother's arms in 
 a minute. 
 
 I need not tell how great were her pride and exultation when 
 she heard from Ulick's lips the account of my behaviour at the 
 duel. He urged, however, that I should go into hiding for a 
 short time; and it was agreed between them that I should 
 drop my name of Barry, and, taking that of .Redmond, go to 
 Dublin, and there wait until matters were blown over. This 
 arrangement was not come to without some discussion ; for why 
 should I not be as safe at Barryville, she said, as my cousin and 
 Ulick at Castle Brady ? — bailiffs and duns never got near titer,} ; 
 why should constables be enabled to come upon me ? But Ulick 
 persisted in the necessity of my instant departure, in which 
 argument, as I was anxious to see the world, I must confess, I 
 sided with him ; and my mother was brought to see that in our 
 small house at Barryville, in the midst of the village, and with the 
 guard but of a couple of servants, escape would be impossible. 
 So the kind soul was forced to yield to my cousin's entreaties, 
 who promised her, however, that the affair would soon be 
 arranged, and that I should be restored to her. Ah ! how little 
 did he know what fortune was in store for me ! 
 
 My dear mother had some forebodings, I think, that our 
 separation was to be a long one ; for she told me, that all night 
 long, she had been consulting the cards regarding my fate in the 
 duel ; and that all the signs betokened a separation ; and, taking 
 out a stocking from her escritoire, the kind soul put twenty 
 guineas in a purse for me (she had herself but twenty-five), and 
 made up a little valise, to be placed at the back of my mare, in 
 which were my clothes, linen, and a silver dressing-case of my 
 father's. She bade me, too, to keep the sword and the pistols I 
 had known to use so like a man. She hurried my departure now 
 (though her heart, I know, was full), and almost in half-ah-hour 
 after my arrival at home I was once more on the road again, with 
 the wide world, as it were, before me. I need not tell how Tim 
 and the cook cried at my departure, and, mayhap, I had a tear or 
 two myself in my eyes ; but no lad of sixteen is very sad who has
 
 U THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 liberty for the first time, and twenty guineas in his pocket ; and I 
 rode away, thinking, I confess, not so much of the kind mother 
 left alone, and of the home behind me, as of to-morrow, and all the 
 wonders it would bring. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 I MAKE A FALSE STAET IN THE GENTEEL WOULD. 
 
 I rode that night as far as Carlow, where I lay at the best inn ; 
 and being asked what was my name by the landlord of the house, 
 gave it as Mr. Redmond, according to my cousin's instructions, 
 and said I was of the Eedmonds of "Waterford county, and was 
 on my road to Trinity College, Dublin, to be educated there. 
 Seeing my handsome appearance, silver-hilted sword, and well- 
 filled valise, my landlord made free to send up a jug of claret 
 without my asking, and charged, you may be sure, pretty hand- 
 somely for it in the bill. ]So gentleman in those good old days went 
 to bed without a good share of liquor to set him sleeping, and on 
 this my first day's entrance into the world, I made a point to act 
 the fine gentleman completely, and, I assure you, succeeded in my 
 part to admiration. The excitement of the events of the day, the 
 quitting my home, the meeting with Captain Quin, were enough 
 to set my brains in a whirl, without the claret, which served to 
 finish me completely. I did not dream of the death of Quin, 
 as some milksops, perhaps, would have done ; indeed, I have 
 never had any of that foolish remorse consequent upon any of my 
 affairs of honour ; always considering, from the first, that where a 
 gentleman risks his own life in manly combat, he is a fool to be 
 ashamed because he wins. I slept at Carlow as sound as man 
 could sleep ; drank a tankard of small beer and a toast to my 
 breakfast ; and exchanged the first of my gold pieces to settle the 
 bill, not forgetting to pay all the servants liberally, and as a 
 gentleman should. I began so the first day of my life, and so have 
 continued. No man has been at greater straits than I, and has
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. iz 
 
 borne more pinching poverty and hardship ; but nobody can sav 
 of me that, if I had a guinea, I was not free-handed with it, and 
 did not spend it as well as a lord could do. 
 
 I had no doubts of the future ; thinking that a man of my 
 person, parts, and courage, could make his way anywhere. Besides, 
 I had twenty gold guineas in my pocket, a sum which (although 
 I was mistaken) I calculated would last me for four months at 
 least, during which time something would be done towards the 
 making of my fortune. So I rode on, singing to myself, or 
 chatting with the passers-by; and all the girls along the road 
 said, " God save me, for a clever gentleman! " As for Nora and 
 Castle Brady, between to-day and yesterday there seemed to be a 
 gap as of half-a-score of years. I vowed I would never re-enter 
 the place but as a great man ; and I kept my vow too, as you 
 shall hear in due time. 
 
 There was much more liveliness and bustle on the kind's hi Mi- 
 
 O O 
 
 road in those times, than in these days of stage-coaches, which 
 carry you from one end of the kingdom to another in a few score 
 hours. The gentry rode their own horses or drove in their own 
 coaches, and spent three days on a journey which now occupies 
 ten hours; so that there was no lack of company for a person 
 travelling towards Dublin. I made part of the journey from 
 Carlow towards Naas with a well-armed gentleman from Kilkenny, 
 dressed in green and a gold cord, with a patch on his eye, and 
 riding a powerful mare. He asked me the question of the day, 
 and whither I was bound, and whether my mother was not afraid 
 on account of the highwaymen to let one so young as myself to 
 travel ? But I said, pulling out one of them from a holster, that 
 I had a pair of good pistols that had already done execution, and 
 were ready to do it again ; and here, a pock-marked man coming 
 up, he put spurs into his bay mare and left me. She was a much 
 more powerful animal than mine, and, besides, I did not wish to 
 fatigue my horse, wishing to enter Dublin that night, and in 
 reputable condition. 
 
 As I rode towards Kilcullen, I saw a crowd of the peasant 
 people assembled round a one-horse chair, and my friend in green, 
 as I thought, making off half a mile up the hill. A footman was 
 howling "stop thief" at the top of his voice; but the country
 
 46 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 fellows were only laughing at his distress, and making all sorts of 
 jokes at the adventure which had just befallen. 
 
 " Sure, you might have kept him off with your blunder&Ms7i / " 
 says one fellow. 
 
 " the coward ! to let the captain late you ; and he only one 
 eye ! " cries another. 
 
 " The next time my lady travels, she'd better lave you at home !" 
 said a third. 
 
 " "What is this noise, fellows ? " said I, riding up amongst them, 
 and, seeing a lady in the carriage very pale and frightened, gave a 
 slash of my whip, and bade the red-shanked ruffians keep off. 
 " What has happened, madam, to annoy your ladyship ? '' I said, 
 pulling off my hat, and bringing my mare up in a prance to the 
 chair-window. 
 
 The lady explained. She was the wife of Captain Eitzsimons, 
 and was hastening to join the captain at Dublin. Her chair had 
 been stopped by a highwayman ; the great oaf of a servant-man 
 had fallen down on his knees armed as he was ; and though there 
 were thirty people in the next field working when the ruffian 
 attacked her, not one of them would help her, but, on the con- 
 trary, wished the captain, as they called the highwayman, good 
 luck. 
 
 " Sure he's the friend of the poor," said one fellow, "and good 
 luck to him ! " 
 
 " "Was it any business of ours ? " asked another. And another 
 told, grinning, that it was the famous Captain Ereny, who, 
 having bribed the jury to acquit him, two days back, at Kil- 
 kenny assizes, had mounted his horse at the gaol door, and the 
 very next day had robbed two barristers who were going the 
 circuit. 
 
 I told this pack of rascals to be off to their work, or they should 
 taste of my thong, and proceeded, as well as I could, to comfort 
 Mrs. Eitzsimons under her misfortunes. " Had she lost much ? " 
 " Everything : her purse, containing upwards of a hundred guineas; 
 her jewels, snuff-boxes, watches, and a pair of diamond shoe- 
 buckles of the captain's." These mishaps I sincerely commise- 
 rated ; and knowing her by her accent to be an Englishwoman, 
 deplored the difference that existed between the two countries,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 47 
 
 and said that in our country (meaning England) such atrocities 
 were unknown. 
 
 " Tou, too, are an Englishman? " said she, with rather a tone 
 of surprise. On which I said, I was proud to he such, as, in fact, 
 I was ; and I never knew a true Tory gentleman of Ireland who 
 did not wish he could say as much. 
 
 I rode by Mrs. Fitzsimons' chair all the way to Naas ; and, as 
 she had been robbed of her purse, asked permission to lend her a 
 couple of pieces to pay her expenses at the inn, which sum she 
 was graciously pleased to accept, and was, at the same time, kind 
 enough to invite me to share her dinner. To the lady's questions 
 regarding my birth and parentage, I replied that I was a young 
 gentleman of large fortune (this was not true ; but what is the 
 use of crying bad fish ? My dear mother instructed me early in 
 this sort of prudence), and good family in the county of Waterford. 
 That I was going to Dublin for my studies, and that my mother 
 allowed me five hundred per annum. Mrs. Fitzsimons was equally 
 communicative. She was the daughter of General Granby Somer- 
 set, of Worcestershire, of whom, of course, I had heard (and though 
 I had not, of course I was too well-bred to say so) ; and had made, 
 as she must confess, a runaway match with Ensign Fitzgerald 
 Fitzsimons. Had I been in Donegal ? — No ! That was a pity. 
 The captain's father possesses a hundred thousand acres there, 
 and Fitzsimonsburgh Castle's the finest mansion in Ireland. 
 Captain Fitzsimons is the eldest son; and, though he has quarrelled 
 with his father, must inherit the vast property. She went on to 
 tell me about the balls at Dublin, the banquets at the Castle, the 
 horse races at the Phoenix, the ridottos and routs, until I became 
 quite eager to join in those pleasures ; and I only felt grieved to 
 think that my position would render secrecy necessary, and pre- 
 vent me from being presented at the court, of which the Fitz- 
 simonses were the most elegant ornaments. How 'different was 
 her lively rattle to that of the vulgar wenches at the Kilwangan 
 assemblies. In every sentence she mentioned a lord or a person 
 of quality. She evidently spoke French and Italian, of the former 
 of which languages I have said I knew a few words ; and, as for 
 her English accent, why, perhaps, I was no judge of that, for, to 
 say the truth, she was the first real English person I had ever
 
 43 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 met. She recommended me, farther, to be very cautious with 
 regard to the company I should meet at Dublin, where rogues and 
 adventurers of all countries abounded ; and my delight and grati- 
 tude to her may be imagined, when, as our conversation grew more 
 intimate (as we sat over our dessert), she kindly offered to accom- 
 modate me with lodgings in her own house, where her Fitzsimons, 
 she said, would welcome with delight her gallant young preserver. 
 
 "Indeed, madam," said I, "I have preserved nothing for you." 
 Which was perfectly true ; for had I not come up too late after 
 the robbery to prevent the highwayman from carrying off her 
 money and pearls ? 
 
 " And sure, ma'am, them wasn't much," said Sullivan, the blun- 
 dering servant, who had been so frightened at Freny's approach, 
 and was waiting on us at dinner. " Didn't he return you the 
 thirteenpence in copper, and the watch, saying it was only pinch- 
 beck ? " 
 
 But his lady rebuked him for a saucy varlet, and turned him 
 out of the room at once, saying to me when he had gone, <; that 
 the fool didn't know what was the meaning of a hundred-pound 
 bill, which was in the pocket-book that Ereny took from her." 
 
 Perhaps had I been a little older in the world's experience, I 
 should have begun to see that Madam Fitzsimons was not the 
 person of fashion she pretended to be ; but, as it was, I took all 
 her stories for truth, and, when the landlord brought the bill for 
 dinner, paid it with the air of a lord. Indeed, she made no motion 
 to produce the two pieces I had lent to her ; and so we rode on 
 slowly towards Dublin, into which city we made our entrance at 
 nightfall. The rattle and splendour of the coaches, the flare of the 
 linkboys, the number and magnificence of the houses, struck mo 
 with the greatest wonder ; though I was careful to disguise this 
 feeling, according to my dear mother's directions, who told me 
 that it was the mark of a man of fashion never to wonder at any- 
 thing, and never to admit that any house, equipage, or company 
 he saw, was more splendid or genteel than what he had been 
 accustomed to at home. 
 
 We stopped, at length, at a house of rather mean appearance, 
 and were let into a passage by no means so clean as that at Barry- 
 ville, where there was a great smell of supper and punch. A stout,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 49 
 
 redfaced man, without a periwig, and in rather a tattered night- 
 gown and cap, made his appearance from the parlour, and embraced 
 his lady (for it was Captain Fitzsimons) with a great deal of 
 cordiality. Indeed, when he saw that a stranger accompanied 
 her, he embraced her more rapturously than ever. In introducing 
 me, she persisted in saying that I was her preserver, and compli- 
 mented my gallantry as much as if I had killed Freny, instead of 
 coming up when the robbery was over. The captain said he knew 
 the Eedmonds of Waterford intimately well, which assertion 
 alarmed me, as I knew nothing of the family to which I was stated 
 to belong. But I posed him, by asking which of the Eedmonds 
 he knew, for I had never heard his name in our family. He said, 
 he " knew the Eedmonds of Eedmondstown." " Oh," says I, 
 " mine are the Eedmonds of Castle Eedmond ; " and so I put him 
 off the scent. I went to see my nag put up at a livery stable 
 hard by, with the captain's horse and chair, and returned to my 
 entertainer. 
 
 Although there were the relics of some'mutton-chops and onions 
 on a cracked dish before him, the captain said, " My love, I wish 
 I had known of your coming, for Bob Moriarty and I just finished 
 the most delicious venison pasty, which his grace the lord lieu- 
 tenant sent us, with a flask of sillery from his own cellar. You 
 know the wine, my dear ? But as bygones are bygones, and no 
 help for them, what say ye to a fine lobster and a bottle of as good 
 claret as any in Ireland? Betty, clear these things from the 
 table, and make the mistress and our young friend welcome to our 
 home." 
 
 jXot having small change, Mr. Fitzsiinons asked me to lend him 
 a tenpenny-piece to purchase the dish of lobsters ; but his lady, 
 handing out one of the guineas I had given her, bade the girl get 
 the change for that, and procure the supper, which she did pre- 
 sently, bringing back only a very few shillings out of the guinea 
 to her mistress, saying that the fishmonger had kept the remainder 
 for an old account. "And the more great, big, blundering fool 
 you, for giving the gold piece to him," roared Mr. Fitzsiinons. I 
 forget how many hundred guineas he said he had paid the fellow 
 during the year. 
 
 Our supper was seasoned, if not by any great elegance, at least 
 
 VOL. III. b
 
 50 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 by a plentiful store of anecdotes, concerning the highest person- 
 ages of the city, with whom, according to himself, the captain 
 lived on terms of the utmost intimacy. Not to be behindhand 
 with him, I spoke of my own estates and property as if I was as 
 rich as a duke. I told all the stories of the nobility I had ever 
 heard from my mother, and some that, perhaps, I had invented ; 
 and ought to have been aware that my host was an impostor 
 himself, as he did not find out my own blunders and misstate- 
 ments. But youth is ever too confident. It was some time 
 before 1 knew that I had made no very desirable acquaintance 
 in Captain Eitzshnons and his lady, and, indeed, went to bed 
 congratulating myself upon my wonderful good luck in having, 
 at the outset of my adventures, fallen in with so distinguished a 
 couple. 
 
 The appearance of the chamber I occupied might, indeed, have 
 led me to imagine that the heir of Eitzshnonsburgh Castle, county 
 Donegal, was not as yet reconciled with his wealthy parents, and, 
 had I been an English lad, probably my suspicion and distrust 
 would have been aroused instantly. But, perhaps, as the reader 
 knows, we are not so particular in Ireland on the score of neat- 
 ness as people are in this precise country, hence the disorder of 
 my bed-chamber did not strike me so much. For were not all the 
 windows broken and stuffed with rags even at Castle Brady, my 
 uncle's superb mansion? Was there ever a lock to the doors 
 there, or if a lock a handle to the lock, or a hasp to fasten it to ? 
 So, though my bed-room boasted of these inconveniences, and a 
 few more, though my counterpane was evidently a greased brocade 
 dress of Mrs. Eitzsimons', and my cracked toilet-glass not much 
 bigger than a half-crown, yet I was used to this sort of ways in 
 Irish houses, and still thought myself in that of a man of fashion. 
 There was no lock to the drawers, which, when they did open, 
 were full of my hostess's rouge-pots, shoes, stays, and rags, so I 
 allowed my wardrobe to remain in my valise, but set out my silver 
 dressing apparatus upon the ragged cloth on the drawers, where 
 it shone to great advantage. 
 
 When Sullivan appeared in the morning, I asked him about my 
 mare, which he informed me was doing well ; I then bade him 
 bring me hot shaving-water in a loud, dignified tone.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ; 51 
 
 "Hot shaving-water!" says he, bursting out laughing (and I 
 confess not without reason). "Is it yourself you're going to 
 shave?" said he. "And maybe when I bring you up the water 
 I'll bring you up the cat too, and you can shave her." I flung a 
 boot at the scoundrel's head in reply to this impertinence, and 
 was soon with my friends in the parlour for breakfast. There was 
 a hearty welcome, and the same cloth that had been used the night 
 before, as I recognised by the black mark of the Irish stew-dish, 
 and the stain left by a pot of porter at supper. 
 
 My host greeted me with great cordiality; Mrs. Fitzsimons 
 said I was an elegant figure for the Phoenix ; and, indeed, without 
 vanity, I may say of myself that there were worse-looking fellows 
 in Dublin than I. I had not the powerful chest and muscular 
 proportion which I have since attained (to be exchanged, alas ! for 
 gouty legs and chalk-stones in my fingers, but 'tis the way of 
 mortality), but I had arrived at near my present growth of six 
 feet, and with my hair in buckle, a handsome lace jabot and wrist- 
 bands to my shirt, and a red plush waistcoat, barred with gold, 
 looked the gentleman I was born. I wore my drab coat with plate 
 buttons, that was grown too small for me, and quite agreed with 
 Captain Fitzsimons that I must pay a visit to his tailor, in order 
 to procure myself a coat more fitting my size. 
 
 "I needn't ask whether you had a comfortable bed," said he. 
 " Young Fred Pimpleton (Lord Pimpleton's second son) slept 
 in it for seven months, during which he did me the honour to 
 stay with me, and if Tie was satisfied, I don't know who else 
 wouldn't be." 
 
 After breakfast we walked out to see the town, and Mr. Fitz- 
 simons introduced me to several of his acquaintances whom we 
 met, as his particular young friend Mr. Redmond, of "Waterford 
 county; he also presented me at his hatter's and tailor's as a 
 gentleman of great expectations and large property ; and although 
 I told the latter that I should not pay him ready cash for more 
 than one coat, which fitted me to a nicety, yet he insisted upon 
 making me several, which I did not care to refuse. The captain, 
 also, who certainly wanted such a renewal of raiment, told the 
 tailor to send him home a handsome military frock, which he 
 selected.
 
 52 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Then we went home to Mrs. Fitzsimons, who drove out in her 
 chair to the Phoenix Park, where a review was, and where numbers 
 of the young gentry were round about her, to all of whom she 
 presented me as her preserver of the day before. Indeed, such 
 was her complimentary account of me, that before half an hour 
 I had got to be considered as a young gentleman of the highest 
 family in the land, related to all the principal nobility, a cousin of 
 Captain Fitzsimons, and heir to 10,000/. a year. Fitzsimons said 
 he had ridden over every inch of my estate ; and faith, as he 
 chose to tell these stories for me, I let him have his way — indeed 
 was not a little pleased (as youth is) to be made much of, and to 
 pass for a great personage. I had little notion then that I had 
 got among a set of impostors — that Captain Fitzsimons was only 
 an adventurer, and his lady a person of no credit ; but such are 
 the dangers to which youth is perpetually subject, and hence let 
 young men take warning by me. 
 
 I purposely hurry over the description of my life, in which the 
 incidents were painful, of no great interest except to my unlucky 
 self, and of which my companions were certainly not of a kind 
 befitting my quality. The fact was, a young man could hardly 
 have fallen into worse hands than those in which I now found 
 myself. I have been to Donegal since, and have never seen the 
 famous Castle of Fitzsimonsburgh, which is, Likewise, unknown 
 to the oldest inhabitants of that county ; nor are the Granby 
 Somersets much better known in Hampshire. The couple into 
 whose hands I had fallen were of a sort much more common than 
 those at present, for the vast wars of later days have rendered it 
 very difficult for noblemen's footmen or hangers-on to procure 
 commissions, and such, in fact, had been the original station of 
 Captain Fitzsimons. Had I known his origin, of course I would 
 have died rather than have associated with him ; but in those 
 simple days of youth I took his tales for truth, and fancied myself 
 in high luck at being, in my outset into life, introduced into such 
 a family. Alas ! we are the sport of destiny. "When I consider 
 upon what small circumstances all the great events of my life 
 have turned, I can hardly believe myself to have been anything 
 but a puppet in the hands of Fate, which has played its most 
 fantastic tricks upon me.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDOX, ESQ. £3 
 
 The captain had been a gentleman's gentleman, and his lady of 
 no higher rank. The society which this worthy pair kept was at 
 a sort of ordinary which they held, and at which their friends 
 were always welcome on payment of a certain moderate sum for 
 their dinner. After dinner, you may be sure that cards were not 
 wanting, and that the company who played did not play for love 
 merely. To these parties persons of all sorts would come; youn°- 
 bloods from the regiments garrisoned in Dublin ; youn^ clerks 
 from the Castle ; horse-riding, wine-tippling, watchman-beating 
 men of fashion about town, such as existed in Dublin in that day 
 more than in any other city with which I am acquainted in 
 Europe. I never knew young fellows make such a show, and 
 upon such small means. I never knew young gentlemen with 
 what I may call such a genius for idleness; and whereas an 
 Englishman, with fifty guineas a year, is not able to do much 
 more than to starve, and toil like a slave in a profession, a young 
 Irish buck, with the same sum, will keep his horses, and drink his 
 bottle, and live as lazy as a lord. Here was a doctor, who never 
 had a patient, cheek by jowl with an attorney, who never had a 
 client ; neither had a guinea — each had a good horse to ride in 
 the park, and the best of clothes to their backs. A sporting 
 clergyman without a living ; several young wine-merchants, who 
 consumed much more liquor than they had or sold; and men 
 of similar character, formed the society at the house into which, 
 by ill-luck, I was thrown. What could happen to a man but 
 misfortune from associating with such company ? (I have not men- 
 tioned the ladies of the society, who were, perhaps, no better than 
 the males) — and in a very, very short time I became their prey. 
 
 As for my poor twenty guineas, in three days I saw, with 
 terror, that they had dwindled down to eight ; theatres and 
 taverns having already made such cruel inroads in my purse. At 
 play I had lost, it is true, a couple of pieces, but seeing that every 
 one round about me played upon honour and gave their bills, I, 
 of course, preferred that medium to the payment of ready money, 
 and when I lost paid on account. 
 
 With the tailors, saddlers, and others, I employed similar 
 means ; and in so far Mr. Fitzsimons' representation did me good, 
 for the tradesmen took him at his word re^ardins: mv fortune (I
 
 54 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 have since learned that the rascal pigeoned several other young 
 men of property), and for a little time supplied me with any 
 goods I might he pleased to order. At length, my cash running 
 low, I was compelled to pawn some of the suits with which the 
 tailor had provided me ; for I did not like to part with my mare, 
 on which I daily rode in the park, and which I loved as the gift 
 of my respected uncle. I raised some little money, too, on a few 
 trinkets which I had purchased of a jeweller who pressed his 
 credit upon me, and thus was enabled to keep up appearances for 
 yet a little time. 
 
 I asked at the post-office repeatedly for letters for Mr. 
 Redmond, hut none such had arrived ; and, indeed, I always felt 
 rather relieved when the answer of " No," was given to me ; for 
 I was not very anxious that my mother should know my pro- 
 ceedings in the extravagant life which I was leading at Dublin. 
 It could not last very long, however ; for when my cash was quite 
 exhausted, and I paid a second visit to the tailor, requesting him 
 to make me more clothes, the fellow hummed and ha'd, and had 
 the impudence to ask payment for those already supplied ; on 
 which, telling him I should withdraw my custom from him, I 
 abruptly left him. The goldsmith, too (a rascal Jew), declined 
 to let me take a gold chain to which I had a fancy, and I felt 
 now, for the first time, in some perplexity. To add to it, one of 
 the young gentlemen who frequented Mr. Fitzsiruons' boarding- 
 house had received from me, in the way of play, an I O U for 
 eighteen pounds (which I lost to him at picquet), and which, 
 owing Mr. Curbyn, the livery-stable keeper, a bill, he passed, 
 into that person's hands. Fancy my rage and astonishment, 
 then, on going for my mare, to find that he positively refused to 
 let me have her out of the stable, excej)t under payment of my 
 promissory note ! It was in vain that I offered him his choice of 
 four notes that I had in my pocket — one of Fitzsimons' for 207., 
 one of Counsellor Mulligan's, and so forth, — the dealer, who was 
 a Yorkshireman, shook his head, and laughed at every one of 
 them ; and said, " I tell you what, Master Redmond, you appear 
 a young fellow of birth and fortune, and let me whisper in your 
 ear that you have fallen into very bad hands — it's a regular gang 
 of swindlers; and a gentleman of your rank and quality should
 
 E MEMOIBS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 55 
 
 never be seen in such company. Go home, pack up your valise, 
 pay the little trifle to me, mount your mare, and ride back again 
 to your parents, — it's the very best thing you ean do." 
 
 In a pretty nest of villains, indeed, was I plunged ! It seemed 
 as if all my misfortunes were to break on me at once ; for, on 
 going home and ascending to my bed-room in a disconsolate way, 
 I found the captain and his lady there before me, my valise open, 
 my wardrobe lying on the ground, and my keys in the possession 
 of the odious Fitzsimons. " Whom have I been harbouring in my 
 house ? " roared he, as I entered the apartment. " "Who are you, 
 sirrah ? " 
 
 " Sirrah ! Sir," said I, " I am as good a gentleman as any in 
 Ireland." 
 
 "You're an impostor, young man, a schemer, a deceiver!" 
 shouted the captain. 
 
 "Repeat the words again, and I will run you through the 
 body," replied I. 
 
 " Tut, tut ! I can play at fencing as well as you, Mr. Redmond 
 Barry. Ah ! you change colour, do you — your secret is known, 
 is it? You come like a viper into the bosom of innocent 
 families ; you represent yourself as the heir of my friends the 
 Redmonds of Castle Redmond ; I inthrojuice you to the nobility 
 and genthry of this methropolis (the captain's brogue was large, 
 and his words, by preference, long) ; I take you to my tradesmen, 
 who give you credit, and what do I find ? That you have pawned 
 the goods which you took up at then* houses." 
 
 " I have given them my acceptances, sir," said I with a 
 dignified air. 
 
 " Under what name, unhappy boy — under what name ? " 
 screamed Mrs. Fitzsimons ; and then, indeed, I remembered that 
 I had signed the documents Barry Redmond instead of Redmond 
 Barry ; but what else could I do ? Had not my mother desired 
 me to take no other designation ? After uttering a furious tirade 
 against me, in which he spoke of the fatal discovery of my real 
 name on my linen — of his misplaced confidence and affection, and 
 the shame with which he should be obliged to meet his fashion- 
 able friends, and confess that he had harboured a swindler, he 
 gathered up the linen clothes, silver toilette articles, and the rest
 
 56 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 of my gear, saying, that he should step out that moment for an 
 officer, and give me up to the just revenge of the law. 
 
 During the first part of his speech, the thought of the im- 
 prudence of which I had been guilty, and the predicament in 
 which I was plunged, had so puzzled and confounded me, that I 
 had not uttered a word in reply to the fellow's abuse, but had 
 stood quite dumb before him. The sense of danger, however, at 
 once roused me to action. " Hark ye, Mr. Eitzsimons," said I ; 
 " I will tell you why I was obliged to alter my name, which is 
 Barry, and the best name in Ireland. I changed it, sir, because, 
 on the day before I came to Dublin, I killed a man in deadly 
 combat — an Englishman, sir, and a captain in His Majesty's 
 service ; and if you offer to let or hinder me in the slightest way, 
 the same arm which destroyed him is ready to punish you ; and, 
 by heaven, sir, you or I don't leave this room alive ! " 
 
 So saying, I drew my sword like lightning, and giving a " ha, 
 ha!" and a stamp with my foot, lounged within an inch of 
 Eitzsimons' heart, who started back and turned deadly pale, while 
 his wife, with a scream, flung herself between us. 
 
 " Dearest Redmond," she cried, " be pacified. Eitzsimons, 
 you don't want the poor child's blood. Let him escape — in 
 Heaven's name let him go." 
 
 " He may go hang for me," said Eitzsimons, sulkily ; " and 
 he'd better be off quickly, too, for the jeweller and the tailor have 
 called once, and will be here again before long. It was Moses the 
 pawnbroker that peached ; I had the news from him myself." By 
 Avhich I conclude that Mr. Eitzsimons had been with the new- 
 laced frock-coat which he procured from the merchant-tailor on 
 the day when the latter first gave me credit. 
 
 "What was the end of our conversation? "Where was now a 
 home for the descendant of the Barrys ? Homo was shut to me 
 by my misfortune in the duel. I was expelled from Dublin by a 
 persecution occasioned, I must confess, by my own imprudence. 
 I had no time to wait and choose. No place of refuge to fly to. 
 Eitzsimons, after his abuse of me, left the room growling, but not 
 hostile; his wife insisted that we should shake hands, and he 
 promised not to molest me. Indeed, I owed the fellow nothing ; 
 and, on the contrary, had his acceptance actually in my pocket for
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 57 
 
 money lost at play. As for my friend, Mrs. Pitzsimons, she sat 
 down on the hed and fairly burst out crying. She had her faults, 
 but her heart was kind; and though she possessed but three 
 shillings in the world, and fourpence in copper, the poor soul 
 made me take it before I left her — to go — whither ? My mind 
 was made up, there was a score of recruiting parties in the town 
 beating up for men to join our gallant armies in America and 
 Germany ; I knew Avhere to find one of these, having stood by 
 the sergeant at a review in the Phoenix Park, where he pointed 
 out to me characters on the field, for which I treated him to 
 drink. 
 
 I gave one of my shillings to Sullivan, the butler of the Pitz- 
 simonses, and, running into the street, hastened to the little ale- 
 house at which my acquaintance was quartered, and before ten 
 minutes had accepted his Majesty's shilling. I told him frankly 
 that I was a young gentleman in difficulties ; that I had killed an 
 officer in a duel, and was anxious to get out of the country. But 
 I need not have troubled myself with any explanations, King 
 George was too much in want of men then to heed from whence 
 they came, and a fellow of my inches, the sergeant said, was always 
 welcome. Indeed, I could not, he said, have chosen my time 
 better. A transport was lying at Dunleary, waiting for a wind, 
 and on board that ship, to which I marched that night, I made 
 some surprising discoveries, which shall be told in the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 IK WHICH BARRY TAKES A NEAR VIEW OE MILITARY GLORY. 
 
 I kever had a taste for anything but genteel company, and 
 hate all descriptions of low life. Hence my account of the society 
 in which I at present found myself must of necessity be short, and 
 indeed, the recollection of it is profoundly disagreeable to me. 
 Pah ! the reminiscences of the horrid black-hole of a place in 
 which we soldiers were confined, of the wretched creatures with 
 whom I was now forced to keep company, of the ploughmen,
 
 53 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 poachers, pickpockets, who had taken refuge from poverty, or the 
 law, as, in truth, I had doue myself, is enough to make me ashamed 
 even now, and it calls the blush into my old cheeks to think I was 
 ever forced to keep such company. I should have fallen into de- 
 spair hut that, luckily, events occurred to rouse my spirits, and in 
 some measure to console me for my misfortunes. 
 
 The first of these consolations I had was a good quarrel, which 
 took place on the day after my entrance into the transport-ship, 
 with a huge red-haired monster of a fellow — a chairman, who had 
 enlisted to fly from a vixen of a wife, who, boxer as he was, had 
 been more than a match for him. As soon as this fellow — Toole, 
 I remember, was his name — got away from the arms of the washer- 
 woman, his lady, his natural courage and ferocity returned, and he 
 became the tyrant of all round about him. All recruits, especially, 
 were the object of the brute's insult and ill-treatment. 
 
 I had no money, as I said, and was sitting very disconsolately 
 over a platter of rancid bacon and mouldy biscuit, which was served 
 to us at mess, when it came to my turn to be helped to drink, and 
 I was served, like the rest, with a dirty tin noggin, containing 
 somewhat more than half a pint of rum and water. The beaker 
 was so greasy and filthy that I could not help turning round to 
 the messman and saying, " Fellow, get me a glass ! " At which 
 all the wretches round about me burst into a roar of laughter, the 
 very loudest among them being, of course, Mr. Toole. " Get the 
 gentleman a towel for his hands, and serve him a basin of turtle- 
 soup," roared the monster, who was sitting, or rather squatting, 
 on the deck opposite me, and as he spoke he suddenly seized my 
 beaker of grog and emptied it, in the midst of another burst of 
 applause. 
 
 " If you want to vex him, ax him about his wife, the washer- 
 woman, who hates him," here whispered in my ear another worthy, 
 a retired link-boy, who, disgusted with his profession, had adopted 
 the military life. 
 
 "Is it a towel of your wife's washing, Mr. Toole?" said I. 
 " I'm told she wiped your face often with one." 
 
 " Ax him why he wouldn't see her yesterday, when she came to 
 the ship," continued the link-boy. And so I put to him some 
 other foolish jokes about soap-suds, hen-pecking, and flat-irons,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 59 
 
 which set the man into a fury, and succeeded in raising a quarrel 
 between us. "We should have fallen-to at once, hut a couple of 
 grinning marines, who kept watch at the door, for fear we should 
 repent of our bargain and have a fancy to escape, came forward 
 and interposed between us with fixed bayonets, and the sergeant, 
 coming down the ladder and hearing the dispute, condescended to 
 say that we might fight it out like men v^ith. Jistes if we chose and 
 that the fore-deck should be free to us for that purpose. But the 
 use ofjistes, as the Englishman called them, was not then general 
 in Ireland, and it was agreed that we should have a pair of cudgels 
 with one of which weapons I finished the fellow in four minutes, 
 giving him a thump across his stupid sconce which laid him lifeless 
 on the deck, and not receiving myself a single hurt of consequence. 
 This victory over the cock of the vile dunghill obtained me 
 respect among the wretches of whom I formed part, and served to 
 set up my spirits, which otherwise were flagging ; and my position 
 was speedily made more bearable by the arrival on board our ship 
 of an old friend. This was no other than my second in the fatal 
 duel which had sent me thus early out into the world, Captain 
 Pagan. There was a young nobleman who had a company in our 
 regiment (Gale's foot), and who, preferring the delights of the 
 mall and the clubs to the dangers of a rough campaign, had given 
 Fagan the opportunity of an exchange, which, as the latter had no 
 fortune but his sword, he was glad to make. The sergeant was 
 putting us through our exercise on deck (the seamen and officers 
 of the transport looking grinning on) when a boat came from the 
 shore bringing our Captain to the ship, and though I started and 
 clashed red as he recognised me — a descendant of the Barrys — in 
 this degrading posture, I promise you that the sight of Fagan' s face 
 was most welcome to me, for it assured me that a friend was near 
 me. Before that I was so melancholy that I would certainly have 
 deserted had I found the means, and had not the inevitable marines 
 kept a watch to prevent any such escapes. Fagan gave me a wink of 
 recognition, but offered no public token of acquaintance, and it 
 was not until two days afterwards, and when we had bidden adieu 
 to old Ireland and were standing out to sea, that he called me into 
 his cabin, and then, shaking hands with me cordially, gave me 
 news, which I much wanted, of my family. " I had news of you
 
 60 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 in Dublin," he said. " Faith, you've begun early, like your father's 
 son, and I think you could not do better than as you have done. 
 But why did you not write home to your poor mother ? She has 
 sent a half-dozen letters to you at Dublin." 
 
 I said I had asked for letters at the post-office, but there were 
 none for Mr. Redmond. I did not like to add that I had been 
 ashamed after the first week to write to my mother. 
 
 " We must write to her by the pilot," said he "who will leave 
 us in two hours, and you cau tell her that you are safe, and married 
 to Brown Bess." I sighed when he talked about being married; 
 on which he said, with a laugh, " I see you are thinking of a certain 
 young lady at Brady's Town." 
 
 " Is Miss Brady well ? " said I, and indeed could hardly utter 
 it, for I certainly was thinking about her ; for, though I had for- 
 gotten her in the gaieties of Dublin, I have always found adversity 
 makes man very affectionate. 
 
 " There's only seven Miss Bradys now," answered Eagan, in a 
 solemn voice, " poor Nora " 
 
 " Good Heavens! Avhat of her?" I thought grief had killed 
 her. 
 
 " She took on so at your going away that she was obliged to 
 console herself with a husband. She's now Mrs. John Q.uin." 
 
 "Mrs. John Quin ! Was there another Mr. John Quin?" 
 asked I, quite wonder-stricken. 
 
 " No, the very same one, my boy. He recovered from his 
 wound. The ball you hit him with was not likely to hurt him. 
 It was only made of tow. Do you think the Bradys would let 
 you kill fifteen hundred a-ycar out of the family ? " And then 
 Bagan farther told me that, in order to get me out of the way, 
 for the cowardly Englishman could never be brought to marry from 
 fear of me, the plan of the duel had been arranged. " But hit 
 him you certainly did, Eedmond, and with a fine thick plngget of 
 tow, and the fellow was so frightened, that he was an hour in 
 coming to. We told your mother the story afterwards, and a 
 pretty scene she made ; she despatched a half-score of letters to 
 Dublin after you, but I suppose addressed them to you in your 
 real name, by which you never thought to ask for them." 
 
 "The coward!" said I (though, I confess, my mind was con-
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. CI 
 
 siderably relieved at the thoughts of not having killed him). 
 " And did the Bradys of Castle Brad)' consent to admit a poltroon 
 like that into one of the most ancient and honourable families of 
 the world." 
 
 " He has paid off your uncle's mortgage," said Fagan, "he gives 
 Xora a coach-and-six, he is to sell out, and Lieutenant "Click 
 Brady of the militia is to purchase his company. That coward of 
 a fellow has been the making of your uncle's family. Faith I the 
 business was well done." And then, laughing, he told me how 
 Mick and "Click had never let him out of their sight, although he 
 was for deserting to England, until the marriage was completed, 
 and the happy couple off on their road to Dublin. " Are you in 
 want of cash, my boy ? " continued the good-natured captain. 
 " Tou may draw upon me, for I got a couple of hundred out of 
 Master Quin for my share, and while they last you shall never 
 want." 
 
 And so he bade me sit down and write a letter to my mother, 
 which I did forthwith in very sincere and repentant terms, stating 
 that I had been guilty of extravagances, that I had not known 
 until that moment under what a fatal error I had been labouring, 
 and that I had embarked for Germany as a volunteer. And the 
 letter was scarcely finished when the pilot sang out that he was 
 going on shore ; and he departed, taking with him, from many an 
 anxious fellow besides myself, our adieus to friends in old Ireland. 
 
 Although I was called Captain Barry for many years of my 
 life, and have been known as such by the first people of Europe, 
 yet I may as well confess I had no more claim to the title than 
 many a gentleman who assumes it, and never had a right to an 
 epaulet, or to any military decoration higher than a corporal's 
 stripe of worsted. I was made corporal by Eagan during our 
 voyage to the Elbe, and my rank was confirmed on terra firma. 
 I was promised a halbert, too, and afterwards, perhaps, an 
 ensigncy, if I distinguished myself; but Fate did not intend that 
 I should remain long an English soldier, as shall appear presently 
 Meanwhile, our passage was very favourable ; my adventures 
 were told by Fagan to his brother officers, who treated me witli 
 kindnes.s ; and my victory over the big chairman procured me 
 respect from my comrades of the fore-deck. Encouraged and
 
 C2 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 strongly exhorted by Pagan, I did my duty resolutely ; but, though 
 affable and good-humoured with the men, I nerer at first conde- 
 scended to associate with such low fellows, and, indeed, was called 
 generally amongst them " my lord." I believe it was the ex-link- 
 boy, a facetious knave, who gave me the title, and I felt 
 that I should become such a rank as well as any peer in the 
 kingdom. 
 
 It would require a greater philosopher and historian than I am 
 to explain the causes of the famous Seven Tears' "War in which 
 Europe was engaged ; and, indeed, its origin has always appeared to 
 me to be so complicated, and the books written about it so amazingly 
 hard to understand, that I have seldom been much wiser at the 
 end of a chapter than at the begiuning, and so shall not trouble 
 my reader with any personal disquisitions concerning the matter. 
 All I know is, that after his Majesty's love of his Hanoverian 
 dominions had rendered him most unpopular in his English 
 kingdom, with Mr. Pitt at the head of the anti-German war- 
 parly, all of a sudden, Mr. Pitt becoming minister, the rest of the 
 empire applauded the war as much as they had hated it before. 
 The victories of Dettingen and Crefeld were in everybody's 
 mouths, and "the Protestant hero," as we used to call the godless 
 old Prederick of Prussia, was adored by us as a saint a very short 
 time after we had been about to make war against him, in alliance 
 with the empress queen. ISTow, somehow, we were on Frederick's 
 side ; the empress, the French, the Swedes, and the Eussians, 
 were leagued against us ; and I remember, when the news of the 
 battle of Lissa came even to our remote quarter of Ireland, we 
 considered it as a triumph for the cause of Protestantism, and 
 illuminated, and bonfired, and had a sermon at church, and kept 
 the Prussian king's birthday, on which my uncle would get drunk, 
 as indeed on any other occasion. Most of the low fellows enlisted 
 with myself were, of course, Papists (the English army was filled 
 with such out of that never- failing country of ours), and these, for- 
 sooth, were fighting the battles of Protestantism with Frederick, 
 who was belabouring the Protestant Swedes and the Protestant 
 Saxons, as well as the Eussians of the Greek Church, and the 
 Papist troops of the emperor and the King of France. It was 
 against these latter that the English auxiliaries were employed,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 63 
 
 and we know that, be the quarrel what it may, an Englishman 
 and a Frenchman are pretty willing to make a fio-kt of it. 
 
 "We landed at Cuxhaven, and before I had been a month in the 
 Electorate I was transformed into a tall and proper voun^ soldier 
 and, having a natural aptitude for military exercise, was soon as 
 accomplished at the drill as the oldest sergeant in the regiment. 
 It is well, however, to dream of glorious war in a snu^ arm-chair 
 at home, ay, or to make it as an officer, surrounded by gentlemen, 
 gorgeously dressed, and cheered by chances of promotion. But 
 those chances do not shine on poor fellows in worsted lace ; the 
 rough texture of our red coats made me ashamed when I saw an 
 officer go by ; my soul used to shudder when, on going the 
 rounds, I would hear their voices as they sat jovially over the 
 mess-table ; my pride revolted at being obliged to plaster my hair 
 with flour and candle-grease, instead of using the proper pomatum 
 for a gentleman. Yes, my tastes have always been high and 
 fashionable, and I loathed the horrid company in which I was 
 fallen. What chances had I of promotion ? Xone of my relatives 
 had money to buy me a commission, and I became soon so low- 
 spirited, that I longed for a general action and a ball to finish me, 
 and vowed that I would take some opportunity to desert. 
 
 When I think that I, the descendant of the kings of Ireland, 
 was threatened with a caning by a young scoundrel who had just 
 joined from Eton College — when I think that he offered to make 
 me his footman, and that I did not, on either occasion, murder 
 him ! On the first occasion I burst into tears, I do not care to 
 own it, and had serious thoughts of committing suicide, so great 
 was my mortification. But my kind friend Fagan came to my aid 
 in the circumstance with some very timely consolation. "My 
 poor boy," said he, " you must not take the matter to heart so. 
 Caning is only a relative disgrace. Young Ensign Eakenham was 
 flogged himself at Eton School only a month ago. I would lay a 
 wager that his scars are not yet healed. You must cheer up, my 
 boy ; do your duty, be a gentleman, and no serious harm can fall 
 on you." And I heard afterwards that my champion had taken 
 Mr. Eakenham very severely to task for this threat, and said to 
 him that any such proceedings for the future he should consider 
 as an insult to himself, whereon the young ensign was, for the
 
 64 THE MEMOIES OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 moment, civil. As for the sergeants, I told one of them, that if 
 any man struck me, no matter who he might be, or what the 
 penalty, I would take his life. And, faith ! there was an air of 
 sincerity in my speech which convinced the whole bevy of them ; 
 and as long as I remained in the English service no rattan was 
 ever laid on the shoulders of Redmond Barry. Indeed, I was in 
 that savage, moody state, that my mind was quite made up to the 
 point, and I looked to hear my own dead march played as sure 
 as I was alive. "When I was made a corporal, some of my evils 
 were lessened ; I messed with the sergeants by special favour, and 
 used to treat them to drink, and lose money to the rascals at 
 play, with which cash my good friend Mr. Fagan punctually 
 supplied me. 
 
 Our regiment, which was quartered about Stade and Luneburg, 
 speedily got orders to march southwards towards the Rhine, for 
 news came that our great general, Prince Ferdinand of Bruns- 
 wick, had been defeated — no, not defeated, but foiled in his attack 
 upon the French under the Duke of Broglio, at Bergen, near 
 Frankforfc-on-the-Main, and had been obliged to fall back. As 
 the allies retreated, the French rushed forward, and made a bold 
 push for the Electorate of our gracious monarch in Hanover, 
 threatening that they would occupy it as they had done before 
 when D'Estrees beat the hero of Culloden, the gallant Duke of 
 Cumberland, and caused him to sign the capitulation of Closter 
 Zeven. An advance upon Hanover always caused a great agita- 
 tion in the royal bosom of the King of England, more troops were 
 sent to join us, convoys of treasure were passed over to our forces, 
 and to our ally's the King of Prussia ; and although, in spite of 
 all assistance, the army under Prince Ferdinand was very much 
 weaker than that of the invading enemy, yet we had the advantage 
 of better supplies, one of the greatest generals in the world, and, 
 I was going to add, of British valour, but the less we say about 
 that the better. My Lord George Sackville did not exactly cover 
 himself with laurels at Minden, otherwise there might have been 
 won there one of the greatest victories of modern times. 
 
 Throwing himself between the French and interior of the 
 Electorate, Prince Ferdinand wisely took possession of the free 
 town of Bremen, which lie made his store-house and place of arms,
 
 THE 7JEJI0IR3 OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 65 
 
 and round which he gathered all his troops, making ready to fight 
 the famous hattle of Minden. 
 
 Were these memoirs not characterised by truth, and did I deign 
 to utter a single word for which my own personal experience did 
 not give me the fullest authority, I might easily make myself the 
 hero of some strange and popular adventures, and, after the fashion 
 of novel-writers, introduce my readers to the great characters of 
 this remarkable time. These persons (I mean the romance- 
 writers), if they take a drummer or a dustman for a hero, somehow 
 manage to bring him in contact with the greatest lords and most 
 notorious personages of the empire, and I warrant me there's not 
 one of them but, in describing the battle of Minden, would 
 manage to bring Prince Ferdinand, and my Lord George Sack- 
 ville, and my Lord Granby, into presence. It would have been 
 easy for me to have said I was present when the orders were 
 brought to Lord George to charge with the cavalry and finish the 
 rout of the Frenchmen, and when he refused to do so, and thereby 
 spoiled the great victory. But the fact is, I was two miles oif 
 from the cavalry when his lordship's fatal hesitation took place, 
 and none of us soldiers of the line knew of what had occurred 
 until we came to talk about the fight over our kettles in the 
 evening, and repose after the labours of a hard-fought day. I saw 
 no one of higher rank that day than my colonel and a couple of 
 orderly officers riding by in the smoke — no one on our side, that 
 is. A poor corporal (as I then had the disgrace of being) is not 
 generally invited into the company of commanders and the great ; 
 but, in revenge, I saw, I promise you, some very good company 
 on the French part, for their regiments of Lorraine and Royal 
 Cravate were charging us all day ; and in that sort of melee high 
 and low are pretty equally received. I hate bragging, but I caunot 
 help saying that I made a very close acquaintance with the colonel 
 of the Cravates, fori drove my bayonet into his body, and finished 
 off a poor little ensign, so young, slender, and small, that a blow 
 from my pig-tail would have despatched him, I think, in place of 
 the butt of my musket, with which I clubbed him down. I killed, 
 besides, four more officers and men, and in the poor ensign's 
 pocket found a purse of fourteen louis-d'or, and a silver box of 
 sugar-plums, of which the former present was very agreeable to 
 
 VOL. III. ?
 
 66 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 ine. If people would tell their stories of battles in this simple 
 way, I think the cause of truth would not suffer by it. All I 
 know of this famous fight of Minden (except from books) is told 
 here above. The ensign's silver bon-bon box and his purse of 
 gold ; the livid face of the poor fellow as he fell ; the huzzas of the 
 men of my company as I went out under a smart fire and rifled 
 him ; their shouts and curses as we came hand in hand with the 
 Frenchmen, — these are, in truth, not very dignified recollections, 
 and had best be passed over briefly. When my kind friend Fagan 
 was shot, a brother captain, and his very good friend, turned to 
 Lieutenant Eawson, and said, " Pagan's down ; RaAvson, there's 
 your company." It was all the epitaph my brave patron got. 
 " I should have left you a hundred guineas, Eedmond," were his 
 last words to me, " but for a cursed run of ill-luck last night 
 at faro ; " and he gave me a faint squeeze of the hand ; ana, as the 
 word was given to advance, I left him. When we came back to 
 our old ground, which we presently did, he was lying there still, 
 but he was dead. Some of our people had already torn off his 
 epaulets, and, no doubt, had rifled his purse. Such knaves and 
 ruffians do men in war become ! It is well for gentlemen to talk 
 of the age of chivalry ; but remember the starving brutes whom 
 they lead — men nursed in poverty, entirely ignorant, made to take 
 a pride in deeds of blood — men who can have no amusement but 
 in drunkenness, debauch, and plunder. It is with these shocking 
 instruments that your great warriors and kings have been doing 
 their murderous work in the world ; and while, for instance, we 
 are at the present moment admiring the " Great Frederick," as 
 we call him, and his philosophy, and his liberality, and his military 
 genius, I, who have served him, and been, as it were, behind the 
 scenes of which that great spectacle is composed, can only look at 
 it with horror. What a number of items of human crime, misery, 
 slavery, to form that sum-total of glory ! I can recollect a certain 
 day, about three weeks after the battle of Minden, and a farm- 
 house in which some of us entered ; and how the old Avoman and 
 her daughters served us, trembling, to wine ; and how we got 
 drunk over the wine, and the house was in a flame, presently : and 
 woe betide the wretched fellow afterwards who came home to look 
 for his house and his children !
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 67 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 I>~ "WHICH BAEEY TEIES TO EEilOTE AS FAE EE01I MILITABY 
 
 GLOET A3 POSSIBLE. 
 
 Afteb the death of my protector, Captain Pagan, I am forced 
 to confe'ss that I fell into the very worst of courses and company. 
 Being a rough soldier of fortune himself, he had never heen a 
 favourite with the officers of his regiment ; who had a contempt 
 for Irishmen, as Englishmen sometimes will have, and used to 
 mock his brogue, and his blunt, uncouth manners. I had been 
 insolent to one or two of them, and had only been screened from 
 punishment by his intercession ; and especially his successor, 
 Mr. Eawson, had no liking for me, and put another man into the 
 sergeant's place vacant in his company after the battle of Minden. 
 This act of injustice rendered my service very disagreeable to me; 
 and, instead of seeking to conquer the dislike of my superiors, and 
 win their good-will by good behaviour, I only sought for means to 
 make my situation easier to me, and grasped at all the amuse- 
 ments in my power. In a foreign country, with the enemy before 
 us, and the people continually under contribution from one side 
 or the other, numberless irregularities were permitted to the 
 troops which would not have been allowed in more peaceable 
 times. I descended gradually to mix with the sergeants, and to 
 share their amusements ; drinking and gambling were, I am sorry 
 to say, our principal pastimes ; and I fell so readily into their 
 ways, that, though only a young lad of seventeen, I was the 
 master of them all in daring wickedness ; though there were some 
 among them, who, I promise you, were far advanced in the science 
 of every kind of profligacy. I should have been under the provost- 
 marshal's hands, for a dead certainty, had I continued much 
 longer in the army : but an accident occurred which took me out 
 of the English service in rather a singular manner. 
 
 The year in which George II. died, our regiment had the honour 
 to be present at the battle of Warburg (where the Marquis of 
 Granby and his horse fully retrieved the discredit which had fallen 
 upon the cavalry since Lord George Sackville's defalcation at 
 
 j? 2
 
 C8 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Minden), and where Prince Ferdinand once more completely de- 
 feated the Frenchmen. During the action, my lieutenant, Mr. 
 Fakenham, of Fakenham, the gentleman who had threatened me, 
 it may be remembered, with the caning, was struck by a musket-ball 
 in the side. He had shown no want of courage in this or any-other 
 occasion where he had been called upon to act against the French ; 
 but this was his first wound, and the young gentleman was exceed- 
 ingly frightened by it. He offered five guineas to be carried into 
 the town which was hard by ; and I and another man, taking him 
 up in a cloak, managed to transport him into a place of decent 
 appearance, where we put him to bed, and where a young surgeon 
 (who desired nothing better than to take himself out of the fire of 
 the musketry) went presently to dress his wound. 
 
 In order to get into the house, we had been obliged, it must be 
 confessed, to fire into the locks with our pieces, which summons 
 brought an inhabitant of the house to the door, a very pretty and 
 black-eyed young woman, who lived there with her old half-blind 
 father, a retired jagd-meister of the Duke of Cassel, hard by. 
 When the French were in the town, meiuherr's house had 
 suffered like those of his neighbours ; and he was at first exceed- 
 ingly unwilling to accommodate our guests. But the first 
 knocking at the door had the effect of bringing a speedy answer ; 
 and Mr. Fakenham, taking a couple of guineas out of a very full 
 purse, speedily convinced the people that they had only to deal 
 with a person of honour. 
 
 Leaving the doctor (who was very glad to stop) with his 
 patient, who paid me the stipulated reward, I was returning to 
 my regiment with my other comrade, after having paid, in my 
 German jargon, some deserved compliments to the black-eyed 
 beauty of Warburg, and thinking, with no small envy, how com- 
 fortable it would be to be billeted there, when the private who 
 was with me cut short my reveries, by suggesting that we should 
 divide the five guineas that the lieutenaut had given me. 
 
 " There is your share," said I, giving the fellow one piece, 
 which was plenty, as I was the leader of the expedition. But he 
 swore a dreadful oath that he would have half; and, when I told 
 him to go to a quarter which I shall not name, the fellow, lifting 
 his musket hit me a blow with the butt-end of it, which sent me
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. CO 
 
 lifeless to the ground ; and, when I awoke from my trance, I 
 found myself bleeding with a large wound in the head, and had 
 barely time to stagger back to the house where I had left the 
 lieutenant, when I again fell fainting at the door. 
 
 Here I must have been discovered by the surgeon on his issuing 
 out ; for when I awoke a second time I found myself in the 
 ground-floor room of the house, supported by the black-eyed girl, 
 while the surgeon was copiously bleeding me at the arm. There 
 was another bed in the room where the lieutenant had been laid, — 
 it was that occupied by Gretel, the servant ; while Lischen, as my 
 fair one was called, had, till now, slept in the couch where the 
 wounded officer lay. 
 
 " "Who are you putting into that bed ? " said he, languidly, in 
 German ; for the ball had been extracted from his side with much 
 pain and loss of blood. 
 
 They told him it was the corporal who had brought him. 
 
 " A corporal ? " said he, in English ; " turn him out." And 
 you may be sure I felt highly complimented by the words. But 
 we were both too faint to compliment or to abuse each other much, 
 and I was put to bed carefully ; and, on being undressed, had an 
 opportunity to find that my pockets had been rifled by the 
 English soldier after he had knocked me down. However, I was 
 in good quarters ; the young lady who sheltered me presently 
 brought me a refreshing drink ; and, as I took it, I could not help 
 pressing the kind hand that gave it me ; nor, in truth, did this 
 token of my gratitude seem unwelcome. 
 
 This intimacy did not decrease with further acquaintance. I 
 found Lischen the tenderest ot nurses. "Whenever any delicacy 
 was to be provided for the wounded lieutenant, a share was always 
 sent to the bed opposite his, and to the avaricious man's no small 
 annoyance. His illness 'was long. On the second day the fever 
 declared itself; for some nights he was delirious ; and I remember 
 it was when a commanding officer was inspecting our quarters, 
 with an intention, very likely, of billeting himself on the house, 
 that the howling and mad words of the patient overhead struck 
 him, and he retired rather frightened. I had been sitting up 
 very comfortably in the lower apartment, for my hurt was quite 
 subsided; and it was onlv when the officer asked me with a
 
 70 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 rough voice, why I was not at my regiment, that I began to 
 reflect how pleasant my quarters were to me, and that I was much 
 better here than crawling under an odious tent with a parcel of 
 tipsy soldiers, or going the night-rounds, or rising long before 
 daybreak for drill. 
 
 The delirium of Mr. Fakenham gave me a hint, and I 
 determined forthwith to go r.iad. There was a poor fellow about 
 Brady's town called " Wandering Billy," whose insane pranks I 
 had often mimicked as a lad, and I again put them in practice. 
 That night I made an attempt upon Lischen, saluting her with a 
 yell and a grin which frightened her almost out of her wits ; and 
 when any body came I was raving. The blow on the head had 
 disordered my brain ; the doctor was ready to vouch for this fact. 
 One night I whispered to him that I was Julius Caesar, and 
 considered him to be my affianced wife Queen Cleopatra, which 
 convinced him of my insanity. Indeed, if her Majesty had been 
 like my iEsculapius, she must have had a carroty beard, such as is 
 rare in Egypt. 
 
 A movement on the part of the French speedily caused an 
 advance on our part. The town was evacuated, except by a few 
 Prussian troops, whose surgeons were to visit the wounded in the 
 place ; and, when we were well, we were to be drafted to our 
 regiments. I determined that I never would join mine again. 
 My intention was to make for Holland, almost the only neutral 
 country of Europe in these times, and thence to get a passage 
 somehow to England, and home to dear old Brady's town. 
 
 If Mr. Fakenham is now alive I here tender him my apologies 
 for my conduct to him. He was very rich ; he used me very ill. I 
 managed to frighten away his servant who came to attend him after 
 the affair of "Warburg, and from that time would sometimes con- 
 descend to wait upon the patient, who always treated me with scorn ; 
 but it was my object to have him alone, and I bore his brutality 
 with the utmost civility and mildness, meditating in my own mind a 
 very pretty return for all his favours to me. JS'or was I the only 
 person in the house to whom the worthy gentleman was uncivil. 
 He ordered the fair Lischen hither and thither, made impertinent 
 love to her, abused her soups, quarrelled with her omelettes, and 
 grudged the money which was laid out for his maintenance, so that
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDOX, ESQ. 71 
 
 our hostess detested him as much as, I think, without vanity, she 
 regarded me. 
 
 For, if the truth must be told, I had made a very deep love to 
 her duriug my stay under her roof, as is always my way with 
 women, of whatever age or degree of beauty. To a man who has 
 to make his way in the world, these dear girls can always be 
 useful in one fashion or another ; never mind, if they repel your 
 passion ; at any rate, they are not offended with your declaration 
 of it, and only look upon you with more favourable eyes in 
 consequence of your misfortune. As for Lischen, I told her such 
 a pathetic story of my life (a tale, a great deal more romantic 
 than that here narrated, — for I did not restrict myself to the exact 
 truth in that history, as in these pages I am bound to do), that I 
 won the poor girl's heart entirely, and, besides, made considerable 
 progress in the German language under her instruction. Do not 
 think me very cruel and heartless, ladies ; this heart of Lischen's 
 was like many a town in the neighbourhood in which she dwelt, 
 and had been stormed and occupied several times before I came to 
 invest it ; now mounting French colours, now green and yellow 
 Saxon, now black and white Prussian, as the case may be. A 
 lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to 
 change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one. 
 
 The German surgeon who attended U3 after the departure of 
 the English only condescended to pay our house a visit twice 
 during my residence ; and I took care, for a reason I had, to 
 receive him in a darkened room, and much to the annoyance of 
 Mr. Fakenharo, who lay there : but I said the light affected my 
 eyes dreadfully since my blow on the head ; and so I covered up 
 mv head with clothes when the doctor came, and told him that I 
 was an Egyptian mummy, or talked to him some insane nonsense, 
 in order to keep up my character. 
 
 " "What is that nonsense you were talking about an Egyptian 
 mummy, fellow ? " asked Mr. Fakenham, peevishly. 
 
 " Oh ! you'll know soon, sir," said I. 
 
 The next time that I expected the doctor to come, instead of 
 receiving him in a darkened room, with handkerchiefs muffled, I 
 took care to be in the lower room, and was having a game at cards 
 with Lischen as the surgeon entered. I had taken possession
 
 72 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 of a dressing-jacket of the lieutenant's, and some other articles 
 of his wardrobe, which fitted me pretty well, and, I flatter myself, 
 was no ungentlemanlike figure. 
 
 " Good morrow, corporal," said the doctor, rather gruffly, in 
 reply to my smiling salute. 
 
 " Corporal ! Lieutenant, if you please," answered I, giving an 
 arch look at Lischen, whom I had not yet instructed in my plot. 
 
 "How lieutenant?" asked the surgeon. "I thought the 
 lieutenant Avas " 
 
 "Upon my word, you do me great honour," cried I, laughing; 
 "you mistook me for the mad corporal upstairs. The fellow has 
 once or twice pretended to be an officer, but my kind hostess here 
 can answer which is which." 
 
 "Yesterday he fancied he was Prince Ferdinand," said Lischen; 
 " the day you came he said he was an Egyptian mummy." 
 
 " So he did," said the doctor ; "I remember; but, ha! ha! do 
 vou know, lieutenant, I have in my notes made a mistake in you 
 two ? " 
 
 " Don't talk to me about his malady ; he is calm now." 
 
 Lischen and I laughed at this error as at the most ridiculous 
 thing in the world ; and, when the surgeon went up to examine 
 his patient, I cautioned him not to talk to him about the subject 
 of his malady, for he was in a very excited state. 
 
 The reader will be able to gather from the above conversation 
 Avhat my design really was. I was determined to escape, and to 
 escape under the character of Lieutenant Fakenham, taking it 
 from him to his face, as it were, and making use of it to meet my 
 imperious necessity. It was forgery and robbery, if you like ; for 
 I took all his money and clothes, — I don't care to conceal it ; 
 but the need was so urgent, that I would do so again ; and I 
 hnew I could not effect my escape without his purse, as well as 
 his name. Hence it became my duty to take possession of one 
 and the other. 
 
 As the lieutenant lay still in bed upstairs, I did not hesitate at 
 all about assuming his uniform, especially after taking care to 
 inform myself from the doctor whether any men of ours who might 
 know me were in the town. But there were none that I could hear 
 of; and so I calmly took my walks witli Madame Lischen, dressed
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 73 
 
 in the lieutenant's uniform, made inquiries as to a horse that I 
 wanted to purchase, reported myself to the commandant of the 
 place as Lieutenant Fakenham, of Gale's English regiment of 
 loot, convalescent, and was asked to dine with the officers of the 
 Prussian regiment at a very sorry mess they had. How Fakenham 
 would have stormed and raged, had he known the use I was 
 making of his name! 
 
 "Whenever that worthy used to inquire about his clothes, which 
 he did with many oaths and curses that he would have me caned 
 at the regiment for inattention, I, with a most respectful air, 
 informed him that they "were put away in perfect safety below; 
 and, in fact, had them very neatly packed, and ready for the day 
 when I proposed to depart. His papers and money, however, he 
 kept under his pillow ; and, as I had purchased a horse, it became 
 necessary to pay for it. 
 
 At a certain hour, then, I ordered the animal to be brought 
 round, when I would pay the dealer for him. (I shall pass over 
 my adieus with my kind hostess, which were very tearful indeed), 
 and then, making up my mind to the great action, walked upstairs 
 to Fakenham's room attired in his full regimentals, and with Ins 
 hat cocked over my left eye. 
 
 " Tou gwea,t scoundzcel ! " said he, with a multiplicity of oaths; 
 ' : you mutinous dog ; what do you mean by dit-essing yourself in 
 my K-egimentals ? As sure as my name's Fakenham, when we get 
 Lack to the wegiment, I'll have your soul cut out of your body." 
 
 " I'm promoted lieutenant," said I, with a sneer ; " I'm come 
 to take my leave of you ; J ' and then going up to his bed, I said, 
 "I intend to have your papers and purse." "With this I put my 
 hand under his pillow, at which he gave a scream that might have 
 called the whole garrison about my ears. " Hark ye, sir! " said 
 I, "no more noise, or you are a dead man ! " and, taking a hand- 
 kerchief, I bound it tight around his mouth so as well-nigh to 
 throttle him, and, pulling forward ^the sleeves of his shirt, tied 
 them in a knot together, and so left him, removing the papers 
 and the purse, you may be sure, and wishing him politely a good 
 day. 
 
 " It is the mad corporal," said I to the people down below who 
 were attracted by the noise from the sick man's chamber; and so
 
 li THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 talcing leave of the old blind jagd-meister, and an adieu I will not 
 say how tender of his daughter, I mounted my newly purchased 
 animal, and, as I pranced away, and the sentinels presented arms 
 to me at the town-gates, felt once more that I was in my proper 
 sphere, and determined never again to fall from the rank of a 
 gentleman. 
 
 I took at first the way towards Bremen, where our arniy was, 
 and bringing reports and letters from the Prussian commandant 
 of "Warburg to head-quarters ; but, as soon as I got out of sight 
 of the advanced sentinels, I turned bridle and rode into the Hesse- 
 Cassel territory, which is luckily not very far from "Warburg, and 
 I promise you I was very glad to see the blue-and-red stripes on 
 the barriers, which showed me that I was out of the land occupied 
 by our countrymen. I rode to Hof, and the next day to Cassel, 
 giving out that I was the bearer of despatches to Prince Henry, 
 then on the Lower Rhine, and put up at the best hotel of the 
 place, where the field-officers of the garrison had their ordinary. 
 These gentlemen I treated to the best wines that the house 
 afforded, for I was determined to keep up the character of the 
 English gentleman, and I talked to them about my English 
 estates with a fluency that almost made me believe in the stories 
 which I invented. I was even asked to an assembly at "Wilhelms- 
 hohe, the Elector's palace, and danced a minuet there with the 
 Hof-marshall's lovely daughter, and lost a few pieces to his excel- 
 lency the first hunt-master of his highness. 
 
 At our table at the inn there was a Prussian officer who treated 
 me with great civility, and asked me a thousand questions about 
 England, which I answered as best I might. But this best, I 
 am bound to say, was bad enough. I knew nothing about 
 England, and the court, and the noble families there ; but, led 
 away by the vain-gloriousness of youth (and a propensity which I 
 possessed in my early clays, but of which I have long since cor- 
 rected myself, to boast and talk in a manner not altogether 
 consonant with truth), I invented a thousand stories which I told 
 him ; described the king and the ministers to him, said the 
 British ambassador at Berlin was my uncle, and promised my 
 acquaintance a letter of recommendation to him. When the 
 officer asked me my uncle's name, I was not able to give him the
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BAKRY LYNDON, ESQ. 75 
 
 real name, and so said his name was O'Grady : it is as good a 
 name as any other, and those of Kilballyowen, county Cork, are 
 as good a family as any in the world, as I have heard. As for 
 stories about my regiment, of these, of course, I had no lack. I 
 wish my other histories had been equally authentic. 
 
 On the morning I left Cassel, my Prussian friend came to me 
 with an open, smiling countenance, and said he too was bound for 
 Dusseldorf, whither I said my route lay ; and so laying our horses' 
 heads together, we jogged on. The country was desolate beyond 
 description. The prince in whose dominions we were was known 
 to be the most ruthless seller of men in Germany. He would sell 
 to any bidder, and, during the five years which the war (afterwards 
 called the Seven Tears' War) had now lasted, had so exhausted 
 the males of his principality, that the fields remained untilled, even 
 the children of twelve years old were driven off to the war, and I 
 saw herds of these wretches marching forwards, attended by a few 
 troopers, now under the guidance of a red-coated Hanoverian 
 sergeant, now with a Prussian sub-officer accompanying them, 
 with some of whom ray companion exchanged signs of recognition. 
 
 " It hurts my feelings," said he, " to be obliged to commune 
 with such wretches, but the stern necessities of war demand men 
 continually, and hence these recruiters whom you see market in 
 human flesh. They get five-and-twenty dollars a man from our 
 government for every man they bring in. Por fine men — for men 
 like you," he added, laughing, " we would go as high as a hundred. 
 In the old king's time we would have given a thousand for you, 
 when he had his giant regiment that our present monarch dis- 
 banded." 
 
 " I knew one of them," said I, " who served with you : we used 
 to call him Morgan Prussia." 
 
 " Indeed ! and who was this Morgan Prussia ? " 
 
 " AVhy a huge grenadier of ours, who was somehow snapped up 
 in Hanover by some of your recruiters." 
 
 " The rascals ! " said my friend, "and did they dare take an 
 Englishman? " 
 
 " Paith this was an Irishman, and a great deal too sharp for 
 them, as you shall hear. Morgan was taken, then, aud drafted 
 into the giant guard, and was the biggest man almost among all
 
 7S THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 the giants there. Many of these monsters used to complain of 
 their life, and their caning, and their long drills, and their small 
 pay, hut Morgan was not one of the grumblers. 'It's a deal 
 better,' said he, ' to get fat here in Berlin than to starve in rags in 
 Tipperary ! ' " 
 
 " Where is Tipperary ? " asked my companion. 
 
 " That is exactly what Morgan's friends asked him. It is a 
 beautiful district in Ireland, the capital of which is the magni- 
 ficent city of Clonmel ; a city, let me tell you, sir, only inferior to 
 Dublin and London, and far more sumptuous than any on the 
 Continent. "Well, Morgan said that his birthplace was near that 
 city, and the only thingwhich caused him unhappiness, in his present 
 situation, was the thought that his brothers were still starving at 
 home, when they might be so much better off in his majesty's 
 service. 
 
 " ' Faith,' says Morgan to the sergeant, to whom he imparted 
 the information, ' it's my brother Bin that would make the fine 
 sergeant of the guards, entirely ! ' 
 
 " ' Is Ben as tall as you are ? ' asked the sergeant. 
 
 '"As tall as me, is it? Why, man, I'm the shortest of my 
 family ! There's six more of us, but Bin's the biggest of all. 
 Oh ! out and out the biggest. Seven feet in his stock'm-fut, as 
 sure as my name's Morgan ! ' 
 
 " ' Can't we send and fetch them over, these brothers of yours ? ' 
 
 " ' Not you. Ever since I was seduced by one of you gentle- 
 men of the cane, they've a mortal aversion to all sergeants,' 
 answered Morgan : ' but it's a pity they cannot come, too. What 
 a monster Bin would be in a grenadier's cap ! ' 
 
 " He said nothing more at the time regarding his brothers, but 
 only sighed as if lamenting their hard fate. However, the story 
 was told by the sergeant to the officers, and by the officers to the 
 king himself; and his majesty was so inflamed by curiosity, that 
 he actually consented to let Morgan go home in order to bring 
 back with him his seven enormous brothers." 
 
 "And were they as big as Morgan pretended?" asked my 
 comrade. I could not help laughing at his simplicity. 
 
 "Do you suppose," cried I, "that Morgan ever came back ? 
 No, no ; once free, and he was too wise for that. He has bought
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 77 
 
 a snug farm in Tipperary with the money that was given him to 
 secure his brothers, and I fancy few men of the guards ever pro- 
 fited so much by it." 
 
 The Prussian captain laughed exceedingly at this story, said 
 that the English were the cleverest nation in the world, and, on 
 my setting him right, agreed that the Irish were even more so ; 
 and we rode on very well pleased with each other, for he had a 
 thousand stories of the war to tell, and the skill and gallantry of 
 Frederick, and the thousand escapes, and victories, and defeats 
 scarcely less glorious than victories, through which the king had 
 passed. Now that I was a gentleman, I could listen with admira- 
 tion to these tales ; and yet the sentiment recorded at the end of 
 the last chapter was uppermost in my mind but three weeks hack, 
 when I remembered that it was the great general got the glory, 
 and the poor soldier only insult and the cane. 
 
 " By the way, to whom are you taking despatches ? " asked the 
 officer. 
 
 It was another ugly question which I determined to answer at 
 hap-hazard; and so I said, "To General Rolls." I had seen the 
 general a year before, and gave the first name in my head. My 
 friend was quite satisfied with it, and we continued our ride until 
 evening came on ; and, our horses being weary, it was agreed that 
 we should come to a halt. 
 
 "There is a very good inn," said the captain, as we rode up to 
 what appeared to me a very lonely-looking place. 
 
 " This may be a very good inn for Germany," said I, "but it 
 would not pass in Old Ireland. Corbach is only a league off : let 
 us push on for Corbach." 
 
 "Do you want to see the loveliest woman in Europe?" said 
 the officer. " Ah! you sly rogue, I see that will influence you ; " 
 and, truth to say, such a proposal was always welcome to me, as I 
 don't care to own. "The people are great farmers," said the 
 captain, "as well as inn-keepers;" and, indeed, the place seemed 
 more a farm than an inn-yard. We entered by a great gate into 
 a court walled round, and at one end of which was the building, a 
 dingy ruinous place. A couple of covered waggons were in the 
 court, their horses were littered under a shed hard by, and 
 lounging about the place were some men, and a pair of sergeants
 
 78 THE MEMOIRS OP BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 in the Prussian uniform, "who both touched their hats to my friend 
 the captain. This customary formality struck me as nothing 
 extraordinary, but the aspect of the inn had something exceedingly 
 chilling and forbidding in it, and I observed the men shut to the 
 great yard-gates as soon as we were entered. Parties of French 
 horsemen, the captain said, were about the countiy, and one could 
 not take too many precautions against such villains. 
 
 "We went in to supper, after the two sergeants had taken 
 charge of our horses ; the captain, also, ordering one of them to 
 take my valise to my bed-room. I promised the worthy fellow a 
 glass of schnapps for his pains. 
 
 A dish of fried eggs and bacon was ordered from a hideous old 
 wench that came to serve us, in place of the lovely creature I had 
 expected to see ; and the captain, laughing, said, " Well, our meal 
 is a frugal one, but a soldier has many a time a Avorse;" and, 
 taking oiF his hat, sword-belt, and gloves, with great ceremony, 
 he sat down to eat. I would not be behindhand with him in 
 politeness, and put my weapon securely on the old chest of 
 drawers where his was laid. 
 
 The hideous old woman before mentioned brought us in a pot 
 of very sour wine, at which and at her ugliness I felt a consider- 
 able ill-humour. 
 
 " Where's the beauty you promised me ? " said I, as soon as the 
 old hag had left the room. 
 
 "Bah ! " said he, laughing, and looking hard at me : "it was 
 my joke. I was tired, and did not care to go farther. There's no 
 prettier woman here than that. If she won't suit your fancy, my 
 friend, you must wait awhile." 
 
 This increased my ill-humour. 
 
 " Upon my word, sir," said I, sternly, " I think you have acted 
 very coolly ! " 
 
 " I have acted as I think fit ! " replied the captain. 
 
 " Sir," said I, " I'm a British officer ! " 
 
 "It's a lie!" roared the other, "you're a deseetee! You're 
 an impostor, sir ; I have known you for such these three hours. 
 I suspected you yesterday. My men heard of a man escaping 
 from Warburg, and I thought you were the man. Tour lies and 
 folly have confirmed me. You pretend to carry despatches to a
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 7S> 
 
 general who has been dead these ten months ; you have an uncle 
 who is an ambassador, and whose name forsooth, you don't know. 
 "Will you join and take the bounty, sir, or will you be given up ? " 
 
 " Neither ! " said I, springing at him like a tiger. But, agile as 
 I was, he was equally on his guard. lie took two pistols out of 
 his pocket, fired one off, and said, from the other end of the table 
 where he stood dodging me, as it were, — 
 
 " Advance a step, and I send this bullet into your brains ! " In 
 another minute the door was flung open, and the two sergeants 
 entered armed with musket and bayonet to aid their comrade. 
 
 The game was up. I flung down a knife with which I had 
 armed myself, for the old hag on bringing in the wine had removed 
 my sword. 
 
 "I volunteer," said I. 
 
 " That's my good fellow ? What name shall I put on my 
 list?" 
 
 " Write Eedmond Barry of Bally Barry," said I, haughtily ; " a 
 descendant of the Irish kings ! " 
 
 "I was once with the Irish brigade, Boche's," said the recruiter, 
 sneering, " trying if I could get any likely fellows among the few 
 countrymen of ours that are in the brigade, and there was 
 scarcely one of them that was not descended from the kings of 
 Ireland." 
 
 "Sir," said I, "king or not, I am a gentleman, as you can see." 
 
 " Oh ! you will find plenty more in our corps," answered the 
 captain, still in the sneering mood. " Give up your papers, 
 Mr. Gentleman, and let us see who you really are." 
 
 As my pocket-book contained some bank-notes as well as 
 papers of Mr. Bakenham's, I was not willing to give up my pro- 
 perty, suspecting very rightly that it was but a scheme on the 
 part of the captain to get and keep it. 
 
 " It can matter very little to you," said I, " what my private 
 papers are: I am enlisted under the name of Bedmond Barry." 
 
 " Give it up, sirrah ! " said the captain, seizing his cane. 
 
 " I will not give it up ! " answered I. 
 
 "Hound! do you mutiny?" screamed he, and, at the same 
 time, gave me a lash across the face with the cane, which had the 
 anticipated effect of producing a struggle. I dashed forward to
 
 80 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 grapple with him, the two sergeants flung themselves on me, I 
 was thrown to the ground and stunned again, being hit on my 
 former wound in the head. It was bleeding severely when I 
 came to myself, my laced coat was already torn off my back, my 
 purse and papers gone, and my hands tied behind my back. 
 
 The great and illustrious Frederick had scores of these white 
 slave-dealers all round the frontiers of his kingdom, debauching 
 troops or kidnapping peasants and hesitating at no crime to supply 
 those brilliant regiments of his with food for powder ; and I 
 cannot help telling here with some satisfaction the fate which 
 ultimately befell the atrocious scoundrel who, violating all the 
 rights of friendship and good fellowship, had just succeeded in 
 entrapping me. This individual was a person of high family and 
 known talents and courage, but who had a propensity to gambling 
 and extravagance, and found his calling as a recruit-decoy fir 
 more profitable to him than his pay of second captain in the line. 
 The sovereign, too, probably found his services more useful in the 
 former capacity. His name was Monsieur de Galgenstein, and 
 he was one of the most successful of the practisers of his rascally- 
 trade. He spoke all languages, and knew all countries, and 
 hence had no difficulty in finding out the simple braggadocio of a 
 young lad like me. 
 
 About 17G5, however, he came to his justly merited end. He 
 was at this time living at Kehl, opposite Strasburg, and used to 
 take his walk upon the bridge there, and get into conversation 
 with the French advanced sentinels, and to whom he was in the 
 habit of promising " mountains and marvels," as the French say, 
 if they would take service in Prussia. One day there was on the 
 bridge a superb grenadier, whom Galgenstein accosted, and to 
 whom he promised a company at least if he would enlist under 
 Frederick. 
 
 " Ask my comrade yonder," said the grenadier, " I can do 
 nothing without him. We were born and bred together, we are 
 of the same company, sleep in the same room, always go in pairs. 
 If he will go and you will give him a captaincy, I will go too." 
 
 " Bring your comrade over to Kehl," said Galgenstein, delighted, 
 " I will give you the best of dinners, and can promise to satisfy 
 both of you."
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 81 
 
 " Had you not better speak to him on the bridge ?" said the 
 grenadier. I dare not leave my post, but you have but to pass, 
 and talk over the matter." 
 
 Galgenstein, after a little parley, passed the sentinel ; but 
 presently a panic took him, and be retraced his steps. But the 
 grenadier brought his bayonet to the Prussian's breast and bade 
 him stand, that he was his prisoner. 
 
 The Prussian, however, seeing his danger, made a bound across 
 the bridge and into the Ehine, whither flinging aside his musket, 
 the intrepid sentry followed him. The Frenchman was the better 
 swimmer of the two. seized upon the recruiter, and bore him to 
 the Strasburg side of the stream, where he gave him up. 
 
 "Tou deserve to be shot," said the general to him, "for 
 abandoning your post and arms, but you merit reward for an act 
 of courage and daring. The king prefers to reward you," and the 
 man received money and promotion. 
 
 As for Galgenstein, he declared his quality as a nobleman and 
 a captain in the Prussian service, and applications were made to 
 Berlin to know if his representations were true. But the kin", 
 though he employed men of this stamp (officers to seduce the 
 subjects of his allies), could not acknowledge his own shame. 
 Letters were written back from Berlin to say that such a family 
 existed in the kingdom, but that the person representing himself 
 to belong to it must be an impostor, for every officer of the name 
 was at his regiment and his post. It was Galgenstein's death 
 warrant, and he was hanged as a spy in Strasburg. 
 
 ******* 
 
 "Turn him into the cart with the rest," said he, as soon as I 
 awoke from my trance. 
 
 TOT. ITT.
 
 82 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 CHAPTEB VI. 
 
 THE CRIMP WAGON — 3IILITAET EPISODES. 
 
 The covered wagon to which I was ordered to march was 
 standing, as I have said, in the court-yard of the farm, with 
 another dismal vehicle of the same kind hard by it. Each was 
 nretty well filled with a crew of men, whom the atrocious crimp, 
 who had seized upon me, had enlisted under the banners of the 
 glorious Frederick ; and I could see by the lanterns of the senti- 
 nels, as they thrust me into the straw, a dozen dark figures 
 huddled together in the horrible moving prison where I was now 
 to be confined. A scream and a curse from my opposite neighbour 
 showed me that he was most likely wounded, as I myself was ; 
 and, during the whole of the wretched night, the moans and sobs 
 of the poor fellows in similar captivity kept up a continual, painful 
 chorus, which effectually prevented my getting any relief from my 
 ills in sleep. At midnight (as far as I could judge) the horses 
 were put to the wagons, and the creaking, lumbering machines 
 were put in motion. A couple of soldiers, strongly armed, sat 
 on the outer bench of the cart, and their grim faces peered in 
 with their lanterns every now and then through the canvas curtains, 
 that they might count the number of their prisoners. The brutes 
 were half drunk, and were singing love and war songs, such as 
 " O GretcJien mem TaiibcJien mein Herzenstrompet, Mein Kanon 
 mein Heerpauk und meine Musket ," " Prinz Ev.gen der eclle Bitter ," 
 and the like ; their wild whoops and jodels making doleful discord 
 with the groans of us captives within the wagons. Many a time 
 afterwards have I heard these ditties sung on the march, or in the 
 barrack-room, or round the fires as we lay out at night. 
 
 I was not near so unhappy, in spite of all, as I had been on my 
 first enlisting in Ireland. At least, thought I, if I am degraded 
 to be a private soldier, there will be no one of my acquaintance 
 who will witness my shame, and that is the point which I have 
 always cared for most. There will be no one to say, " There is 
 young Redmond Barry, the descendant of the Barrys, the fashion-
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. S3 
 
 able young blood of Dublin, pipeclaying his belt, and carrying his 
 brown Bess." Indeed, but for tbat opinion of the world, with 
 which it is necessary that every man of spirit should keep upon 
 equal terms, I, for my part, woidd have always been contented 
 with the humblest portion. Now here, to all intents and 
 purposes, one was as far removed from the world as in the wilds 
 of Siberia, or in Robinson Crusoe's island. And I reasoned with 
 myself thus : — " Now you are caught, there is no use in repining; 
 make the best of your situation, and get all the pleasure you can 
 out of it. There are a thousand opportunities of plunder, &c, 
 offered to the soldier in war-time, out of which he can get both 
 pleasure and profit ; make use of these, and be happy. Besides, 
 you are extraordinarily brave, handsome, and clever: and who 
 knows but you may procure advancement in your new service ? " 
 
 In this philosophical way I looked at my misfortunes, deter- 
 mining not to be cast down by them ; and bore my woes and my 
 broken head with perfect magnanimity. The latter was, for the 
 moment, an evil against which it required no small powers of 
 endurance to contend ; for the jolts of the wagon were dreadful, 
 and every shake caused a throb in my brain which I thought 
 would have split my skull. As the morning dawned, I saw that 
 the man next me, a gaunt, yellow-haired creature, in black, had a 
 cushion of straw under his head. 
 
 "Are you wounded, comrade ? " said I. 
 
 " Praised be the Lord," said he, " I am sore hurt in spirit and 
 body, and bruised in many members ; wounded, however, am I not. 
 And you, poor youth ? " 
 
 " I am wounded in the head," said I, " and I want your pillow : 
 give it me — I've a clasp-knife in my pocket ! " and with this I 
 gave him a terrible look, meaning to say (and mean it I did, for 
 look you, a la guerre dest a la guerre, and I am none of your 
 milk-sops), that, unless he yielded me the accommodation, I would 
 give him a taste of my steel. 
 
 " I would give it thee without any threat, friend," said the 
 yellow-haired man, meekly, and handed me over his little sack of 
 straw. 
 
 He then leaned himself back as comfortably as he could against 
 the cart, and began repeating, " Ein fester Burg ist unser Gott," 
 
 a 2
 
 84 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 by which I concluded that I had got into the company of a parson. 
 With the jolts of the wagon, and accidents of the journey, various 
 more exclamations and movements of the passengers showed what 
 a motley company we were. Every now and then a countryman 
 would burst into tears j a French voice would be heard to say, 
 " O vion Dieu I — mon Dieu ! " a couple more of the same nation 
 Avere jabbering oaths and chattering incessantly ; and a certain 
 allusion to his own and everybody else's eyes, which came from a 
 stalwart figure at the far corner, told me that there was certainly 
 an Englishman in our crew. 
 
 But I was spared soon the tedium and discomforts of the journey. 
 In spite of the clergyman's cushion, my head, which was throbbing 
 with pain, was brought abruptly in contact with the side of the 
 wagon ; it began to bleed afresh ; I became almost light-headed. 
 I only recollect having a draught of water here and there ; once 
 stopping at a fortified town, whez-e an officer counted us : — all the 
 rest of the journey was passed in a drowsy stupor, from which, 
 when I awoke, I found myself lying in a hospital bed, with a nun 
 in a white hood watching over me. 
 
 " They are in sad spiritual darkness," said a voice from the bed 
 next to me, when the nun had finished her kind offices and retired ; 
 H they are in the night of error, and yet there is the light of faith 
 in those poor creatures." 
 
 It was my comrade of the crimp-wagon, his huge, broad face 
 looming out from under a white night-cap, and ensconced in the 
 bed beside. 
 
 " "What ! you there, Herr Pastor ? " said I. 
 
 " Only a candidate, sir," answered the white night-cap. " But, 
 praised be Heaven ! you have come to. Tou have had a wild 
 time of it. Tou have been talking in the English language (with 
 which I am acquainted), of Ireland, and a young lady, and Mick, 
 and of another young lady, and of a house on fire, and of the 
 British Grenadiers, concerning whom you sung us parts of a ballad, 
 and of a number of other matters appertaining, no doubt, to your 
 personal history." 
 
 "It has been a very strange one," said I; "and, perhaps, there 
 is no man in the world, of my birth, whose misfortunes can at all 
 be compared to mine."
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF CARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 85 
 
 I do not object to own that I am disposed to brag of my birth 
 and other acquirements, for I have always found that if a man 
 does not give himself a good word, his friends will not do ifc 
 for him. 
 
 " A^ell," said my fellow-patient, ' : I have no doubt yours is a 
 strange tale, and shall be glad to hear it anon ; but, at present, 
 you must not be permitted to speak much, for your fever has been 
 long, and your exhaustion great." 
 
 " Where are we ? " I asked; and the candidate informed me 
 that we were in the bishopric and town of Fulda, at present 
 occupied by Prince Henry's troops. There had been a skirmish 
 with an out-party of French near the town, in which, a shot 
 entering the wagon, the poor candidate had been wounded. 
 
 As the reader knows already my history, I will not take the 
 trouble to repeat it here, or to give the additions with which I 
 favoured my comrade in misfortune. But I confess that I told 
 him ours was the greatest family and finest palace in Ireland, 
 that we were enormously wealthy, related to all the peerage, 
 descended from the ancient kings, &c. ; and, to my surprise, in the 
 course of our conversation, I found that my interlocutor knew a 
 great deal more about Ireland than I did. When, for instance, I 
 spoke of my descent, — 
 
 "From which race of kings ? " said he. 
 
 " ! " said I (for my memory for dates was never very 
 accurate), from the old ancient kings of all." 
 
 " What ! can yon trace your origin to the sons of Japhet ? " 
 said he. 
 
 "Faith, I can," answered I, "and farther too, — to Nebuchad- 
 nezzar, if vou like." 
 
 " I see," said the candidate, smiling, " that you look upon those 
 legends with incredulity. These Partholans and jNemedians, of 
 whom your writers fondly make mention, cannot be authentically 
 vouched for in history. Nor do I believe that we have any more 
 foundation for the tales concerning them, than for the legends 
 relative to Joseph of Arimathea, and King Brute, which prevailed 
 two centuries back in the sister island." 
 
 And then he began a discourse about thee Phoenicians, the 
 Scyths, or Goths, the Tuath de Danans, Tacitus, and King Mac
 
 S6 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 jtfeil, -which was, to say the truth, the very first news I had heard 
 of those personages. As for English, he spoke it as well as I, and 
 had seven more languages, he said, equally at his command ; for, 
 on my quoting the only Latin line that I knew, that out of the 
 poet Homer, which says, — 
 
 " As in pnesenti perfection fumat in avi," 
 
 he began to speak to me in the Eoinan tongue ; on which I was 
 fain to tell him that we pronounced it in a different way in Ireland, 
 and so got off the conversation. 
 
 My honest friend's history was a curious one, and it may be 
 told here in order to show of what motley materials our levies 
 were composed : — 
 
 " I am," said he, " a Saxon by birth, my father being pastor of 
 the village of Pfannkuchen, where I imbibed the first rudiments 
 of knowledge. At sixteen (I am now twenty-three), having 
 mastered the Greek and Latin tongues, with the French, English, 
 Arabic, and Hebrew ; and, having come into possession of a legacy 
 of a 100 rixdalers, a sum amply sufficient to defray my university 
 courses, I went to the famous academy of Gottingen, where I 
 devoted four years to the exact sciences and theology. Also, I 
 learned what worldly accomplishments I could command ; taking 
 a dancing-tutor at the expense of a groschen a lesson, a course of 
 fencing from a Erench practitioner, and attending lectures on the 
 great horse and the equestrian science at the hippodrome of a 
 celebrated cavalry professor. My opinion is, that a man should 
 know everything as far as in his power lies, that he shoidd com- 
 plete his cycle of experience, and one science being as necessary 
 as another, it behoves him, according to his means, to acquaint 
 himself with all. Eor many branches of personal knowledge (as 
 distinguished from spiritual, though I am not prepared to say 
 that the distinction is a correct one), I confess I have found myself 
 inapt. I attempted tight-rope dancing, with a Bohemian artist 
 who appeared at our academy, but in this I failed, lamentably 
 breaking my nose in the fall which I had. I also essayed to drive 
 a coach-and-four, which an English student, Herr Graff Lord von 
 Martingale, drove at the university. In this, too, I failed ; over- 
 setting the chariot at the postern, opposite the Berliner gate, with
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. S7 
 
 his lordship's friend, Eriiulein Miss Kitty Coddlins within. I 
 had been instructing the young lord in the German language when 
 the above accident took place, and was dismissed by him in conse- 
 quence. My means did not permit me further to pursue this 
 curriculum (you will pardon me the joke), otherwise, I have no 
 doubt, I should have been able to take a place in any hippodrome 
 in the world, and to handle the ribauds (as the high well-born lord 
 used to say) to perfection. 
 
 " At the university I delivered a thesis on the quadrature of the 
 circle, which, I think, would interest you ; and held a disputation 
 in Arabic against Professor Strumpff, hi which I was said to have 
 the advantage. The languages of Southern Europe, of coiuse, I 
 acquired ; and, to a person well grounded in Sanscrit, the Northern 
 idioms offer no difficulty. If you have ever attempted the Russian 
 you will find it child's play, and it will always be a source of regret 
 to me that I have been enabled to get no knowledge (to speak of) 
 of Chinese ; and, but for the present dilemma, I had intended to 
 pass over into England for that purpose, and get a passage in one 
 of the English company's ships to Canton. 
 
 " I am not of a saving turn, hence my little fortune of a 100 
 rixdalers, which has served to keep many a prudent man for a score 
 of years, barely sufficed for a five years' studies ; after which my 
 studies were interrupted, my pupils fell off, and I was obliged to 
 devote much time to shoe-binding in order to save money, and, at 
 a future period, resume my academic course. During this period 
 I contracted an attachment" (here the candidate sighed a little) 
 " with a person, who, though not beautiful, and forty years of age, 
 is yet likely to sympathise with my existence ; and, a month since 
 my kind friend and patron, university prorector, Doctor Nasen- 
 brumm, having informed me that the Pfarrer of Eumpelwitz was 
 dead, asked whether I would like to have my name placed upon the 
 candidate list, and if I were minded to preach a trial sermon ? 
 As the gaining of this living would further my union with my 
 Amalia, I joyously consented, and prepared a discourse. 
 
 " If you like I will recite it to you— No ?— Well, I will give 
 you extracts from it upon our line of march. To proceed, then, 
 with my biographical sketch, which is now very near a conclusion, 
 or, as I should more correctly say, which has very nearly brought
 
 83 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 me to the present period of time, I preached that sermon at Bum- 
 pelwitz, in which I hope that the Babylonian question was pretty 
 satisfactorily set at rest. I preached it before the Herr Baron 
 and his noble family, and some officers of distinction who were 
 staying at his castle. Mr. Doctor Moser of Halle followed me in 
 the evening discourse ; but, though his exercise was learned, and 
 he disposed of a passage of Ignatius, which he proved to be a 
 manifest interpolation, I do not think his sermon had the effect 
 which mine produced, and that the Bumpelwitzers much relished 
 it. After the sermon, all the candidates walked out of church 
 together, and supped lovingly at the Blue Stag in Bumpelwitz. 
 
 " "While so occupied, a waiter came in and said that a person 
 without wished to speak to one of the reverend candidates, ' the 
 tall one.' This could only mean me, for I was a head and shoulders 
 higher than any other reverend gentleman present. I issued out 
 to see who was the person desiring to hold converse with me, and 
 found a man whom I had no difficulty in recognising as one of the 
 Jewish persuasion. 
 
 " ' Sir,' said this Hebrew, ' I have heard from a friend, who was 
 in your church to-day, the heads of the admirable discourse you 
 pronounced there. It has affected me deeply, most deeply. 
 There are only one or two points on which I am yet in doubt, 
 and if your honour could but condescend to enlighten me on 
 these, I think — I think Solomon Hirsch would be a convert to 
 your eloquence.' 
 
 " ' What are these points, my good friend ? ' said I ; and I 
 poiuted out to him the twenty-four heads of my sermon, asking 
 him in which of these his doubts lay. 
 
 " We had been walking up and down before the inn while our 
 conversation took place, but the windows being open, and my 
 comrades having heard the discourse in the morning, requested 
 me, rather peevishly, not to resume it at that period. I, there- 
 fore, moved on with my disciple, and, at his request, began at once 
 the sermon, for my memory is good for anything, and I can repeat 
 any book I have read thrice. 
 
 " I poured out, then, under the trees, and in the calm moon- 
 light, that discourse which I had pronounced under the blazing 
 sun of noon. My Israelite only interrupted me by exclamations
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 89 
 
 indicative of surprise, assent, admiration, and increasing conviction. 
 ' Prodigious ! ' said lie ;— ' WunJersclwn ! ' would he remark at the 
 conclusion of some eloquent passage ; in a word, he exhausted the 
 complimentary interjections of our language, and to compliments 
 what man is averse ? I think we must have walked two miles 
 when I got to my third head, and my companion begged I would 
 enter his house, which we now neared, and partake of a glass of 
 beer, to which I was never averse 
 
 " That house, sir, was the inn at which you, too, if I judge 
 aright, were taken. No sooner was I in the place, than three 
 crimps rushed upon me, told me I was a deserter, and their pri- 
 soner, and called upon me to deliver up my money and papers, 
 which I did with a solemn protest as to my sacred character. 
 They consisted of my sermon in MS., Prorector ISasenbrumm's 
 recommendatory letter, proving my identity, and three groschen 
 four pfennigs in bullion. I had already been in the cart twenty 
 hours when you reached the house. The French officer, who lay 
 opposite you, he who screamed when you trod on his foot, for he 
 was wounded, was brought in shortly before your arrival. He 
 had been taken with his epaulets and regimentals, and declared 
 his quality and rank ; but he was alone (I believe it was some 
 affair of love with a Hessian lady which caused him to be unat- 
 tended) ; and as the persons into whose hands he fell will make 
 more profit of him as a recruit than as a prisoner, he is made to 
 share our fate. He is not the first by many scores so captured. 
 One of M. de Soubise's cooks, and three actors out of a troop in 
 the French camp, several deserters from your English troops (the 
 men are led away by being told that there is no flogging in the 
 Prussian service), and three Dutchmen were taken besides." 
 
 " And you," said I, — " you who were just on the point of getting 
 a valuable living, — you who have so much learning, are you not 
 indignant at the outrage ? " 
 
 "I am a Saxon," said the candidate, "and there is no use in 
 indignation. Our government is crushed under Frederick's heel 
 these five years, and I might as well hope for mercy from the 
 Grand Mogul. JSor am I, in truth, discontented with my lot ; I 
 have lived on a penny bread for so many years, that a soldier's 
 rations will be a luxury to me. I do not care about more or less
 
 90 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 blows of a cane, all such evils are passing, and therefore endurable. 
 I will never, God willing, slay a man in combat, but I am not 
 unanxious to experience on myself the effect of the war-passion, 
 which has bad so great an influence on the human race. It was 
 for the same reason that I determined to marry Amalia, for a man 
 is not a complete MenscJi until he is the father of a family, to be 
 which is a condition of his existence, and therefore a duty of his 
 education. Amalia must wait ; she is out of the reach of want, 
 being, indeed, cook to the Prau Prorectorinn jNTasenbrumm, my 
 worthy patron's lady. I have one or two books with me, which 
 no one is likely to take from me, and one in my heart which is 
 the best of all. If it shall please Heaven to finish my existence 
 here, before I can prosecute my studies further, what cause have 
 I to repine ? I pray God I may not be mistaken, but I think I 
 have wronged no man, and committed no mortal sin. If I have, 
 I know where to look for forgiveness ; and if I die, as I have said, 
 without knowing all that I would desire to learn, shall I not be in 
 a situation to learn everything, and what can human soul ask for 
 more ? 
 
 " Pardon me for putting so many I's in my discourse," said 
 the candidate, " but when a man is talking of himself, 'tis the 
 briefest and simplest way of talking." 
 
 In which, perhaps, 1 hough I hate egotism, I think my friend 
 was right. Although he acknowledged himself to be a mean- 
 spirited fellow, with no more ambition than to know the contents 
 of a few musty books. I think the man had some good in him, 
 especially in the resolution with which he bore his calamities. 
 Many a gallant man of the highest honour is often not proof 
 against these, and has b< >en known to despair over a bad dinner, or 
 to be cast down at a ragged-elbowed coat. My maxim is to bear 
 all, to put up with water if you cannot get burgundy, and if you 
 have no velvet, to be content with frieze. Put burgundy and 
 velvet are the best, Men entendu, and the man is a fool who will 
 not seize the best when the scramble is open. 
 
 The heads of the sermon which my friend the theologian intended 
 to impart to me, were, however, never told ; for, after our coming 
 out of the hospital, he was drafted into a regiment quartered as far 
 as possible from his native country, in Pomerania ; while I was put
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 01 
 
 into the Billow regiment, of which the ordinary head-quarters 
 were Berlin. The Prussian regiments seldom change their 
 garrisons as ours do, for the fear of desertion is so great, that 
 it becomes necessary to know the face of every individual in the 
 service, and, ha time of peace, men live and die in the same town. 
 This does not add, as may be imagined, to the amusements of the 
 soldier's life. It is lest any young gentleman like myself should 
 take a fancy to a military career, and fancy that of a private 
 soldier a tolerable one, that I am giving these, I hope, moral 
 descriptions of what we poor fellows in the ranks really suffered. 
 
 As soon as we recovered, we were dismissed from the nuns and 
 the hospital to the town prison of Fulda, where we were kept like 
 slaves and criminals, with artillerymen with lighted matches at 
 the doors of the court-yards, and the huge black dormitory where 
 some hundreds of us lay ; until we were despatched to our different 
 destinations. It was soon seen by the exercise which were the 
 old soldiers amongst us, and which the recruits ; and for the 
 former, while we lay in prison, there was a little more leisure, 
 though, if possible, a still more strict watch kept than over the 
 broken-spirited yokels who had been forced or coaxed into the 
 service. To describe the characters here assembled would require 
 Mr. G-illray's own pencil. There were men of all nations and 
 callings. The Englishmen boxed and bullied; the Frenchmen 
 played cards, and danced, and fenced ; the heavy Germans smoked 
 their pipes and drank beer, if they could manage to purchase it. 
 Those who had anything to risk gambled, and at this sport I was 
 pretty lucky, for, not having a penny when I entered the depot 
 (having been robbed of every farthing of my property by the 
 rascally crimps), I won near a dollar m my very first game at 
 cards with one of the Frenchmen, who did not think of asking 
 whether I could pay or not upon losing. Such, at least, is the 
 advantage of having a gentlemanlike appearance ; it has saved me 
 many a time since by procuring me credit when my fortunes were 
 at their lowest ebb. 
 
 Among the Frenchmen there was a splendid man and soldier, 
 whose real name Ave never knew, but whose ultimate history 
 created no small sensation, when it came to be known in the 
 Prussian army. If beauty and courage are proofs of nobility, as
 
 92 THE MEMOIRS OF CARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 (although I have seen some of the ugliest dogs and the greatest 
 cowards in the world in the noblesse) I have no doubt courage 
 and beauty are, this Frenchman must have been of the highest 
 families in France, so grand and noble was his manner, so superb 
 his person. He was not quite so tall as myself, fair, while 
 I am dark, and, if possible, rather broader in the shoulders. He 
 was the only man I ever met who could master me with the small- 
 sword, with which he would pink me four times to my three. As 
 for the sabre, I could knock him to pieces with it, and I could 
 leap farther and carry more than he could. This, however, is 
 mere egotism. This Frenchman, with whom I became pretty 
 intimate, for we were the two cocks, as it were, of the depot, and 
 neither had any feeling of low jealousy, was called, for want of a 
 better name, Le Blondin, on account of his complexion. He was 
 not a deserter, but had come in from the Lower Rhine and the 
 bishoprics, as I fancy, fortune having proved unfavourable to him 
 at play probably, and other means of existence being denied him. 
 I suspect that the Bastile was waiting for him in his own country, 
 had he taken a fancy to return thither. 
 
 He was passionately fond of play and liquor, aud thus we had a 
 considerable sympathy together, and when excited by one or the 
 other, became frightful. I, for my part, can bear, without 
 wincing, both ill-luck and wine ; hence my advantage over him 
 was considerable in our bouts, and I won enough money from him 
 to make my position tenable. He had a wife outside (who, I 
 take it, was the cause of his misfortunes and separation from his 
 family), and she used to be admitted to see him twice or thrice 
 a-week, and never came empty-handed — a little, brown, bright- 
 eyed creature, whose ogles had made the greatest impression upon 
 all the world. 
 
 This man was drafted into a regiment that was quartered at 
 Neiss, in Silesia, which is only at a short distance from the 
 Austrian frontier; he maintained always the same character for 
 daring and skill, and was, in the secret republic of the regiment 
 which always exists, as well as the regular military hierarchy, the 
 acknowledged leader. He was an admirable soldier, as I have 
 said, but haughty, dissolute, and a drunkard. A man of this 
 mark, unless he takes care to coax and flatter his officers (which I
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 93 
 
 alwnys did), is sure to fall out with them. Le Blondiu's captain 
 was his sworn enemy, aud his punishments were frequent and 
 severe. 
 
 His wife and the women of the regiment (this was after the 
 pence) used to carry on a little commerce of smuggling across the 
 Austrian frontier, where their dealings were winked at by both 
 parties ; and in obedience to the instructions of her husband, 
 this woman, from every one of her excursions, would bring in a 
 little powder and ball, commodities which are not to be procured 
 by the Prussian soldier, and which were stowed away in secret till 
 wanted. They were to be wanted, and that soon. 
 
 Le Blondin had organised a great and extraordinary conspiracy. 
 AVe don't know how far it went, how many hundreds or thousands it 
 embraced ; but strange were the stories told about the plot amongst 
 us privates, for the news was spread from garrison to garrison, 
 and talked of by the army in spite of all the government efforts 
 to hush it up — hush it up, indeed ! I have been of the people 
 myself, I have seen the Irish rebellion, and I know what is the 
 freemasonry of the poor. 
 
 He made himself the head of the plot. There were no writings 
 nor papers. No single one of the conspirators communicated 
 with auy other but the Frenchman ; but personally he gave his 
 orders to them all. He had arranged matters for a general risinsr 
 of the garrison, at twelve o'clock on a certain day; the guard- 
 houses in the town were to be seized, the sentinels cut down, and 
 — who knows the rest ? Some of our people used to say that the 
 conspiracy was spread through all Silesia, and that Le Blondin 
 was to be made a general in the Austrian service. 
 
 At twelve o'clock, and opposite the guard-house by the Bohmer- 
 Thor of Neiss, some thirty men were lounging about in their 
 undress, and the Frenchman stood near the sentinel of the guard- 
 house, sharpening a wood-hatchet on a stone. At the stroke of 
 twelve, he got up, split open the sentinel's head with a blow of 
 his axe, and the thirty men rushing into the guard-house, took 
 possession of the arms there, and marched at once to the gate. 
 The sentry there tried to drop the bar, but the Frenchman rushed 
 up to him, and, with another blow of the axe, cut off his right 
 hand with which he held the chain. Seeing the men rushing out
 
 di THE MEMOIRS OF BASRY LYNDON", ESQ. 
 
 armed, the guard without the gate drew up across the road to 
 prevent their passage ; hut the Frenchman's thirty gave them a 
 volley, charged them with the hayonet, and brought down several, 
 and the rest flying, the thirty rushed on. The frontier is only a 
 league from Xeiss, and they made rapidly towards it. 
 
 But the alarm was given in the town, and what saved it was that 
 the clock by which the Frenchman went was a quarter of an hour 
 faster than any of the clocks in the town. The generale was beat, 
 the troops called to arms, and thus the men who were to have 
 attacked the other guard-houses were obliged to fall into the 
 ranks, and their project was defeated. This, however, likewise 
 rendered the discovery of the conspirators impossible, for no 
 man could betrav his comrade, nor of course would he criminate 
 
 ml * 
 
 himself. 
 
 Cavalry was sent in pursuit of the Frenchman and his thirty 
 fugitives, who were by this time far on their way to the Bohemian 
 frontier. "When the horse came up with them, they turned, 
 received them with a volley and the bayonet, and drove them 
 back. The Austriaus were out at the barriers, looking eagerly 
 on at the conflict. The women, who were on the look-out too, 
 brought more ammunition to these intrepid deserters, and they 
 encased and drove back the dragoons several times. But in these 
 gallant and fruitless combats much time was lost, and a battalion 
 presently came up, and surrounded the brave thirty, when the fate 
 of the poor fellows was decided. They fought with the fury of 
 despair ; not one of them asked for quarter. "When their ammu- 
 nition failed, they fought with the steel, and were shot down or 
 bayonetted where they stood. The Frenchman was the very last 
 man who was hit. He received a bullet in the thigh, and fell, and 
 in this state was overpowered, killing the officer who first advanced 
 to seize him. 
 
 He and the very few of his comrades who survived were carried 
 back to Neiss, and immediately, as the ringleader, he was brought 
 before a council of war. He refused all interrogations which were 
 made as to his real name and family. " "What matters who I 
 am ?" said he; "you have me and will shoot me. My name 
 would not save me were it ever so famous." In the same way he 
 declined to make a single discovery regarding the plot. " It wa3
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 95 
 
 all my doing," he said; " each man engaged in it only knew me, 
 and is ignorant of every one of his comrades. The secret is mine 
 alone, and the secret shall die with me." "When the officers asked 
 him what was the reason which induced him to meditate a crime 
 so horrible ? " It was your infernal brutality and tyranny," he 
 said. " You are all butchers, ruffians, tigers, and you owe it to 
 the cowardice of your men that you were not murdered long 
 ago." 
 
 At this his captain burst into the most furious exclamations 
 against the wounded man, and rushing up to him, struck him a 
 blow with his fist. But Le Blondin, wounded as he was, as quick 
 as thought seized the bayonet of one of the soldiers who supported 
 him, and plunged it into the officer's breast. "Scoundrel and 
 monster," said he, " I shall have the consolation of sending you 
 out of the world before I die." He was shot that day. He 
 offered to write to the king, if the officers would agree to let his 
 letter go sealed into the hands of the postmaster ; but they feared, 
 no doubt, that something might be said to inculpate themselves, 
 and refused him the permission. At the next review Frederick 
 treated them, it is said, with great severity, and rebuked them for 
 not having granted the FrenchmanHris request. However, it was 
 the king's interest to conceal the matter, and so it was, as I have 
 said before, hushed up — so well hushed up, that a hundred 
 thousand soldiers in the army knew it, and many's the one of us 
 that has drunk to the Frenchman's memory over our wine, as a 
 martyr for the cause of the soldier. I shall have, doubtless, some 
 readers who will cry out at this, that I am encouraging insubor- 
 dination and advocating murder. If these men had served as 
 privates in the Prussian army from 1760 to 17G5, they would not 
 be so apt to take objection. This man destroyed two sentinels to 
 get his liberty ; how many hundreds of thousands of his own and 
 the Austrian people did King Frederick kill because he took a 
 fancy to Silesia ? It was the accursed tyranny of the system that 
 sharpened the axe which brained the two sentinels of JN"eiss ; and 
 so let officers take warning, and think twice ere they visit poor 
 fellows with the cane. 
 
 I could tell many more stories about the army, but as, from 
 having been a soldier myself, all my sympathies are in the ranks,
 
 96 THE MEMOIRS OF BAllRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 no doubt my tales would be pronounced to be of an immoral ten- 
 dency, and I had best, therefore, be brief. Fancy my surprise 
 while in this depot, when one day a well-known voice saluted my 
 ear, and I heard a meagre young gentleman, who was brought in 
 by a couple of troopers and received a few cuts across the 
 shoulders from one of them, say in the best English, " You infernal 
 tcascal, I'll be wevenged for this. I'll unite to my ambassador, as 
 sure as my name's Fakenham of Fakenham." I burst out laugh- 
 ing at this, it was my old acquaintance in my corporal's coat. 
 Lischen had sworn stoutly that he was really and truly the private, 
 and the poor fellow had been drafted off, and was to be made one 
 of us. But I bear no malice, and having made the whole room 
 roar with the story of the way in which I had tricked the poor lad, 
 I gave him a piece of advice, which procured him his liberty. " Go 
 to the inspecting officer," said I ; "if they once get you into 
 Prussia it is all over with you, and they will never give you up. 
 Go now to the commandant of the depot, promise him a hundred 
 — five hundred guineas to set you free ; say that the crimping 
 captain has your papers and portfolio (this was true) ; above all, 
 show him that you have the means of paying him the promised 
 money, and I will warrant you are set free." He did as I advised, 
 and when we were put on the march Mr. Fakenham found means 
 to be allowed to go into hospital, and while in hospital the 
 matter was arranged as I had recommended. He had nearlv, 
 however, missed his freedom by his own stinginess in bargaining 
 for it, and never showed the least gratitude towards me, his 
 benefactor. 
 
 I am not going to give any romantic narrative of the Seven 
 Tears' "War. At the close of it, the Prussian army, so renowned 
 for its disciplined valour, was officered and under-officered by 
 native Prussians, it is true, but was composed for the most part of 
 men hired or stolen, like myself, from almost every nation in 
 Europe. The deserting to and fro was prodigious. In my regi- 
 ment (Pillow's) alone before the war here, had been no less than 
 COO Frenchmen, and as they marched out of Berlin for the cam- 
 paign, one of the fellows had an old fiddle on which he was playing 
 a French tune, and his comrades danced almost, rather than walked, 
 after him, singing " Nous allons en France." Two years after,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 97 
 
 when they returned to Berlin, there were only six of these men 
 left, the rest had fled or were killed in action. The life the 
 private soldier led was a frightful one to any but men of iron 
 courage and endurance. There was a corporal to every three 
 men, marching behind them, and pitilessly using the cane : so 
 much so that it used to be said, that in action there was a front 
 rank of privates and a second rank of sergeants and corporals to 
 drive them on. Many men would give way to the most frightful 
 acts of despair under these incessant persecutions and tortures, 
 and amongst several regiments of the army a horrible practice had 
 sprung up, which for some time caused the greatest alarm to the 
 government. This was a strange frightful custom of child-murder. 
 The men used to say that life was unbearable, that suicide was a 
 crime, in order to avert which, and to finish with the intolerable 
 misery of their position, the best plan was to kill a young child, 
 which was innocent, and therefore secure of heaven, and then to 
 deliver themselves as guilty of the murder. The king himself, the 
 hero, sage, and philosopher, the prince who had always liberality on 
 his lips, and who affected a horror of capital punishments, was 
 frightened at this dreadful protest on the part of the wretches 
 whom he had kidnapped, against his monstrous tyranny, and his 
 only means of remedying the evil was strictly to forbid that such 
 criminals should be attended by any ecclesiastic whatever, and 
 denied all religious consolation. 
 
 The punishment was incessant. Every officer had the liberty 
 to inflict it, and in peace it was more cruel than in war. For 
 when peace came the king turned adrift such of his officers as 
 were not noble, whatever their services mis:ht have been. He 
 would call a captain to the front of his company, and say, " He 
 is not noble, let him go." "We were afraid of him somehow, and 
 were cowed before him like wild beasts before their keeper. I 
 have seen the bravest men of the army cry like children at a cut 
 of the cane ; I have seen a bttle ensign of fifteen call out a man 
 of fifty from the ranks, a man who had been in a hundred battles, 
 and he has stood presenting arms, and sobbing and howling like 
 a baby while the young wretch lashed him over the arms and 
 thighs with the stick. In a day of action this man would dare 
 anything. A button might be awry then and nobody touched 
 
 voi. in. n
 
 (38 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 him ; but when they had made the brute fight then they lashed 
 him again into subordination. Almost all of us yielded to the 
 spell — scarce one could break it. The French officer I have 
 spoken of as taken along with me, was in my company and caned 
 like a dog. I met him at Versailles twenty years afterwards, and 
 he turned quite pale and sick when I spoke to him of old days. 
 "For God's sake," said he, "don't talk of that time; I wake up 
 from my sleep trembling and crying even now." 
 
 As for me, after a very brief time, in which it must be confessed 
 I tasted, like my comrades, of the cane, and after I had found 
 opportunities to show myself to be a brave and dexterous soldier, 
 I took the means I had adopted in the English army to prevent 
 any further personal degradation. I wore a bullet around my 
 neck, which I did not take the pains to conceal, and I gave out 
 that it should be for the man or officer who caused me to be 
 chastised. And there was something in my character which made 
 my superiors believe me, for that bullet had already served me to 
 kill an Austrian colonel, and I would have given it to a Prussian 
 with as little remorse. For what cared I for their quarrels, or 
 whether the eagle under which I marched had one head or two ? 
 All I said was, " No man shall find me tripping in my duty ; but 
 no man shall ever lay a hand upon me." And by this maxim I 
 abided as long as I remained in the service. 
 
 I do not intend to make a history of battles in the Prussian 
 any more than in the English service. I did my duty in them as 
 well as another, and by the time that my moustache had grown 
 to a decent length, which it did when I was twenty years of age, 
 there was not a braver, clever, handsomer, and I must own, 
 wickeder soldier in the Prussian army. I had formed myself to 
 the condition of the proper fighting beast ; on a day of action I 
 was savage and happy ; out of the field I took all the pleasure 
 I could get, and was by no means delicate as to its quality or the 
 manner of procuring it. The truth is, however, that there was 
 among our men a much higher tone of society than among the 
 clumsy louts in the English army, and our service was generally 
 so strict that we had little time for doing mischief. I am very 
 dark and swarthy in complexion, and was called by our fellows 
 the " Black Englauder," the " fSchwartzcr Englander," or the
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 99 
 
 English Devil. If any service was to be done I was sure to be 
 put upon it. I got frequent gratifications of money, but no pro- 
 motion ; and it was on the day after I bad killed the Austrian 
 colonel (a great officer of Uhlans, whom I engaged singly and on 
 foot) that General Billow, my colonel, gave me two Frederics 
 d'or in front of the regiment, and said, " I reward thee now, but 
 1 fear I shall have to hang thee one day or other." I spent the 
 money, and that I had taken from the colonel's body, every 
 groschen, that night with some jovial companions ; but as long as 
 war lasted was never without a dollar in my purse. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 BAEEY LEADS A GAEEISON LIFE, AXD EIXDS MANY EEIENDS 
 
 THESE. 
 
 Aftee the war/ our regiment was garrisoned in the capital, 
 the least dull, perhaps, of all the towns of Prussia; but that 
 does not say much for its gaiety. Our service, which was always 
 severe, still left many hours of the day disengaged, in which we 
 might take our pleasure had we the means of paying for the 
 same. Many of our mess got leave to work in trades, but I 
 had been brought up to none, and besides my honour forbade 
 me, for as a gentleman, I could not soil my fingers by a manual 
 occupation. But our pay was barely enough to keep us from 
 starving, and as I have always been fond of pleasure, and as the 
 position in which we now were, in the midst of the capital, 
 prevented us from resorting to those means of levying contribu- 
 tions which are always pretty feasible in war-time, I was obliged 
 to adopt the only means left me of providing for my expenses, 
 and, in a word, became the Ordonnanz, or confidential military 
 gentleman of my captain. I spurned the office for years previ- 
 ously, when it was made to me in the English service ; but the 
 position is very different in a foreign country : besides, to tell 
 the truth, after five years in the ranks, a man's pride will submit 
 to many rebuffs, which would be intolerable to him in an inde- 
 pendent condition. 
 
 h 2
 
 100 THE MEMOIRS OF BAERY EYKDON, ESQ. 
 
 The captain was a young man and bad distinguished himself 
 during the war, or he would never have been advanced to rank so 
 early. He was, moreover, the nephew and heir of the Minister 
 of Police, Monsieur de Potzdorff, a relationship which no doubt 
 aided in the young gentleman's promotion. Captain de Potzdorff 
 was a severe officer enough on parade or in barracks, but he was 
 a person easily led by flattery. I won his heart in the first place 
 by my manner of tying my hair in queue (indeed it was more 
 neatly dressed than that of any man in the regiment), and subse- 
 quently gained his confidence by a thousand little arts and 
 compliments, which as a gentleman myself, I knew how to 
 employ. He was a man of pleasure, which he pursued more 
 openly than most men in the stern court of the kiug : he was 
 generous and careless with his purse, aud he had a great affection 
 for Rhine wine, in all which qualities I sincerely sympathised 
 with him, and from which I, of course, had my profit. He 
 was disliked in the regiment because he was supposed to have 
 too intimate relations with his uncle, the police minister, to whom, 
 it was hinted, he carried the news of the corps. 
 
 Before long I had ingratiated myself considerably with my 
 officer, and knew most of his affairs. Thus I was relieved from 
 many drills aud parades, which would otherwise have fallen to 
 my lot, and came in for a number of perquisites which enabled 
 me to support a genteel figure and to appear with some eclat in 
 a certain, though it must be confessed very humble society in 
 Berlin. Among the ladies I was always an especial favourite, 
 and so polished was my behaviour amongst them, that they could 
 not understand how I should have obtained my frightful nick- 
 name of the Black Devil in the regiment. "He is not so black 
 as he is painted," I laughingly would say, and most of the ladies 
 agreed that the private was quite as well bred as the captain, as 
 indeed how should it be otherwise, considering my education and 
 birth ? 
 
 "When I was sufficiently ingratiated with him, I asked leave 
 to address a letter to my poor mother in Ireland, to whom I had 
 not given any news of myself for many, many years, for the 
 letters of the foreign soldiers were never admitted to the post for 
 fear of appeals or disturbances on the part of their parents
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 101 
 
 abroad. My captain agreed to find means to forward the letter, 
 and as I knew that he would open it, I took care to give it him 
 sealed, thus showing my confidence in him. But the letter was, 
 as you may imagine, written so that the writer should come to no 
 harm were it intercepted. I begged my honoured mother's 
 forgiveness for having lied from her. I said that my extravagance 
 and folly in my own country I knew rendered my return thither 
 impossible ; but that she would, at least, be glad to know that I 
 was well and happy in the service of the greatest monarch in 
 the world, and that the soldier's life was most agreeable to me. 
 And, I added, that I had found a kind protector and patron who 
 I hoped would some day provide for me as I knew it was out of 
 her power to do. I offered remembrances to all the girls at 
 Castle Brady, naming them from Biddy to Becky downwards, 
 and signed myself, as in truth I was, her affectionate son, Red- 
 mond Barry, in Captain Potzdorff's company of the Biilowisb 
 regiment of foot in garrison at Berlin. Also I told her a pleasant 
 story about the king kicking the chancellor and three judges 
 down stairs, as he had done one day when I was on guard at 
 Potsdam, and said I hoped for another war soon, when I might 
 rise to be an officer. In fact, you might have imagined my letter 
 to be that of the happiest fellow in the world, and I was not on 
 this head at all sorry to mislead my kind parent. 
 
 I was sure my letter was read, for Captain Potzdorff began 
 asking me some days afterwards about my family, and I told him 
 the circumstances pretty truly, all things considered. I was a 
 cadet of a good family, but my mother was almost ruined and had 
 barely enough to support her eight daughters, whom I named. 
 I had been to study for the law at Dublin, where I had got into 
 debt and bad company, had killed a man in a duel, and would be 
 hanged or imprisoned by his powerful friends if I returned. I 
 had enlisted in the English service, where an opportunity for 
 escape presented itself to me such as I could not resist, and here- 
 upon I told the story of Mr. Pakenham of Pakenham in such a 
 way as made my patron to be convulsed with laughter, and he told 
 me afterwards that he had repeated the story at Madame de 
 Kameke's evening assembly, where all the world was anxious to 
 have a sight of the young Englander.
 
 102 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 ""Was the British ambassador there?" I asked, in a tone of 
 the greatest alarm, and added, " For Heaven's sake, sir, do not 
 tell my name to him, or he might ask to hare me delivered up, and 
 I have no fancy to go to be hanged in my dear native country." 
 Potzdorff, laughing, said he would take care that I should remain 
 where I was, on which I swore eternal gratitude to him. 
 
 Some days afterwards, and with rather a grave face, he said to 
 me, " Eedmond, I have been talking to our colonel about you, and 
 as I wondered that a fellow of your courage and talents had not 
 been advanced during the war, the general said they had had their 
 eye upon you ; that you were a gallant soldier, and had evidently 
 come of a good stock ; that no man in the regiment had had less 
 fault found with him ; but that no man merited promotion less. 
 You were idle, dissolute, and unprincipled ; you had done a deal of 
 harm to the men; and, for all your talents and bravery, he was 
 sure would come to no good." 
 
 "Sir!" said I, quite astonished that any mortal man should 
 have formed such an opinion of me, " I hope General Billow is 
 mistaken regarding my character. I have fallen into bad com- 
 pany, it is true ; but I have only done as other soldiers have 
 done ; and, above all, I have never had a kind friend and protector 
 before to whom I might show that I was worthy of better things. 
 The general may say I am a ruined lad, and send me to the d — 1 ; 
 but be sure of this, I would go to the d — 1 to serve you" This 
 speech I saw pleased my patron very much ; and, as I was very 
 discreet and useful in a thousand delicate ways to him, he soon 
 came to have a sincere attachment for me. One day, or rather 
 night, when he was tete-a-tete with the lady of the Tabaks Rath 
 von Dose for instance, I . . . . but there is no use in telling 
 affairs which concern nobody now. 
 
 Four months after my letter to my mother, I got, under cover 
 to the captain, a reply, which created in my mind a yearning after 
 home, and a melancholy which I cannot describe. I had not seen 
 the dear soul's writing for five years. All the old days, and the 
 fresh happy sunshine of the old green fields in Ireland, and her 
 love, and my uncle, and Phil Puree], and everything that I had done 
 and thought, came back to me as I read the letter ; and when I 
 was alone I cried over it, as I hadn't done since the day when
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 103 
 
 Nora jilted me. I took care not to show my feelings to the 
 regiment or my captain; but that night, when I was to have 
 taken tea at the garden-house outside Brandenburg Gate, with 
 Eraulein Lottchen (the Tabaks Eathinn's gentlewoman of com- 
 pany), I somehow had not the courage to go ; but begged to be 
 excused, and went early to bed in barracks, out of which I went 
 and came now almost as I willed, and passed a long night weepiug 
 and thinking about dear Ireland. 
 
 JSText day, my spirits rose again, and I got a ten guinea bill 
 cashed, which my mother sent in the letter, and gave a handsome 
 treat to some of my acquaintance. The poor soul's letter was 
 blotted all over with tears, full of texts, and written in the wildest 
 incoherent way. She said she was delighted to think I was under 
 a Protestant prince, though she feared he was not in the right 
 way : that right way, she said, she had the blessing to find, under 
 the guidance of the Eev. Joshua Jowls, whom she sat under. She 
 said he was a precious, chosen vessel ; a sweet ointment, and 
 precious box of spikenard ; and made use of a great number more 
 phrases that I could not understand ; but one thing was clear in 
 the midst of all this jargon, that the good soul loved her son still, 
 and thought and prayed day and night for her wild Eedmond. 
 Has it not come across many a poor fellow, in a solitary night's 
 watch, or in sorrow, sickness, or captivity, that at that very 
 minute, most likely, his mother is praying for him ? I often have 
 had these thoughts ; but they are none of the gayest, and it's 
 quite as well that they don't come to you in company ; for where 
 would be a set of jolly fellows then ? — as mute as undertakers at 
 a funeral, I promise you. I drank my mother's health that night 
 in a bumper, and lived like a gentleman whilst the money lasted. 
 She pinched herself to give it me, as she told me afterwards ; and 
 Mr. Jowls was very wroth with her. 
 
 Although the good soul's money was pretty quickly spent, I 
 was not long in getting more ; for I had a hundred ways of 
 getting it, and became a universal favourite with the captain and 
 his friends. Xow, it was Madame von Dose who gave me a 
 Erederic d'or for bringing her a bouquet or a letter from the 
 captain ; now it was, on the contrary, the old privy councillor who 
 treated me with a bottle of Ehenish, and slipped into my hand a
 
 104 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 dollar or two, in order that I might give him some information 
 regarding the liaison between my captain and his lady. But 
 though I was not such a fool as not to take his money, you may 
 he sure I was not dishonourable enough to betray my benefactor ; 
 and he got very little out of me. "When the captain and the lady 
 fell out, and he began to pay his addresses to the rich daughter of 
 the Dutch minister, I don't know how many more letters and 
 guineas the unfortunate Tabaks Rathion handed over to me, that 
 I might get her lover back again. But such returns are rare in 
 love, and the captain used only to laugh at her stale sighs and 
 entreaties. In the house of Mynheer Van Guldensack I made 
 myself so pleasant to high and low, that I came to be quite 
 intimate there ; and got the knowledge of a state secret or two 
 which surprised and pleased my captain very much. These little 
 hints he carried to his uncle, the minister of police, who, no doubt, 
 made his advantage of them ; and thus I began to be received 
 quite in a confidential light by the PotzdoriF family, and became a 
 mere nominal soldier, being allowed to appear in plain clothes 
 (which were, I warrant you, of a neat fashion), and to enjoy 
 myself in a hundred ways, which the poor fellows, my comrades, 
 envied. As for the sergeants, they were as civil to me as to an 
 officer ; it was as much as their stripes were worth to offend a 
 person who had the ear of the minister's nephew. There was in 
 my company a young fellow by the name of Kurz, who was six 
 feet high in spite of his name, and whose life I had saved in some 
 affair of the war. What does this lad do, after I had recounted to 
 him one of my adventures, but call me a spy and informer, and 
 beg me not to call him du any more, as is the fashion with 
 young men when they are very intimate. I had nothing for 
 it but to call him out ; but I owed him no grudge. I disarmed 
 him in a twinkling ; and, as I sent his sword flying over his 
 head, said to him, " Kurz, did ever you know a man guilty of 
 a mean action who can do as I do now ? " This silenced the 
 rest of the grumblers ; and no man ever sneered at me after 
 that. 
 
 No man can suppose, that to a person of my fashion, the waiting 
 in antechambers, the conversation of footmen and hangers-on, was 
 pleasant. But it was not more degrading than the barrack-room,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 106 
 
 of which I need not say I was heartily sick. My protestations of 
 liking for the army were all intended to throw dust into the eyes 
 of my employer. I sighed to be out of slavery. I knew I was 
 born to make a figure in the world. Had I been one of the Neiss 
 garrison, I would have cut my way to freedom by the side of the 
 gallant Frenchman ; but here I had only artifice to enable me to 
 attain my end, and was not I justified in employing it ? My plan 
 was this : I may make myself so necessary to M. de Potzdorff, 
 that he will obtain my freedom. Once free, with my fine person 
 and good family, I will do what ten thousand Irish gentlemen 
 have done before, and will marry a lady of fortune and condition. 
 And the proof that I was, if not disinterested, at least actuated 
 by a noble ambition, is this. There was a fat grocer's widow in 
 Berlin with six hundred thalers of rent, and a good business, who 
 gave me to understand that she would purchase my discharge if I 
 would marry her ; but I frankly told her that I was not made to 
 be a grocer, and thus absolutely flung away a chance of freedom 
 which she offered me. 
 
 And I was grateful to my employers, more grateful than they 
 to me. The captain was in debt, and had dealings with the Jews, 
 to whom he gave notes of hand payable on his uncle's death. 
 The old Herr von Potzdorff, seeing the confidence his nephew had 
 in me, offered to bribe me to know what the young man's affairs 
 really were. But what did I do ? I informed Monsieur George 
 von Potzdorff of the fact ; and we made out, in concert, a list of 
 little debts, so moderate, that they actually appeased the old uncle 
 instead of irritating, and he paid them, being glad to get off so 
 cheap. 
 
 And a pretty return I got for this fidelity. One morning, the 
 old gentleman, being closeted with his nephew (he used to come 
 to get any news stirring as to what the young officers of the 
 regiments were doing ; whether this or that gambled ; who 
 intrigued, and with whom ; who was at the Bidotto on such a 
 night ; who was in debt, and what not ; for the kiug liked to 
 know the business of every officer in his army), I was sent with a 
 letter to the Marquis d'Argens (that afterwards married Made- 
 moiselle Cochois, the actress), and, meeting the marquis at a few 
 paces off in the street, gave my message, and returned to the
 
 106 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 captain's lodging. He and his worthy uncle were making my 
 unworthy self the subject of conversation. 
 
 " He is noble," said the captain. 
 
 " Bah ! " replied the uncle (whom I could have throttled for 
 his insolence). " All the beggarly Irish who ever enlisted tell 
 the same story." 
 
 " He was kidnapped by Gralgenstein," resumed the other. 
 
 " A kidnapped deserter," said M. Potzdorff, " la belle affaire ! " 
 
 " Well, I promised the lad I would ask for his discharge ; and 
 I am sure you can make him useful." 
 
 " Tou have asked his discharge," answered the elder, laughing. 
 " Bon Dieu ! Tou are a model of probity ! You'll never succeed 
 to my place, George, if you are no wiser than you are just now. 
 Make the fellow as useful to you as you please. He has a good 
 manner and a frank countenance. He can lie with an assurance 
 that I never saw surpassed, aud fight, you say, on a piuch. The 
 scoundrel does not want for good qualities : but he is vain, a 
 spendthrift, and a bavarcl. As long as you have the regiment in 
 terrorem over him, you can do as 3 r ou like with him. Once let 
 him loose, and the lad is likely to give you the slip. Keep on 
 promising him ; promise to make him a general, if you like. 
 "What the deuce do I care ? There are spies enough to be had in 
 this town without him." 
 
 It was thus that the services I rendered to M. Potzdorff were 
 qualified by that ungrateful old gentleman ; and I stole away 
 from the room extremely troubled in spirit, to think that another 
 of my fond dreams was thus dispelled ; and that my hopes of 
 getting out of the army, by being useful to the captain, were 
 entirely vain. Por some time, my despair was such, that I 
 thought of marrying the widow ; but the marriages of privates 
 are never allowed without the direct permission of the king; and 
 it was a matter of very great doubt whether his majesty would 
 allow a young fellow of twenty-two, the .handsomest man of his 
 army, to be coupled to a pimple-faced old widow of sixty, who 
 was quite beyond the age when her marriage would be likely to 
 multiply the subjects of his majesty. This hope of liberty was 
 therefore vain ; nor could I hope to purchase my discharge, unless 
 any charitable soul would lend me a large sum of money ; for,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 107 
 
 though I made a good deal, as I have said, yet I have always had 
 through life an incorrigible knack of spending, and (such is 
 my generosity of disposition) have been in debt ever since I 
 was born. 
 
 My captain, the sly rascal ! gave me a very different version of 
 his conversation with his uncle to that which I knew to be the 
 true one; and said smilingly to me, "Redmond, I have spoken to 
 the minister regarding thy services,* and thy fortune is made. 
 We shall get thee out of the army, appoint thee to the police 
 bureau, and procure for thee an inspectorship of customs ; and, in 
 fine, allow thee to move in a better sphere than that in which 
 Fortune has hitherto placed thee." 
 
 Although I did not believe a word of this speech, I affected to 
 be very much moved by it, and, of course, swore eternal gratitude 
 to the captain for his kindness to the poor Irish castaway. 
 
 " Tour service at the Dutch minister's has pleased me very 
 well. There is another occasion on which you may make yourself 
 useful to us ; and if you succeed, depend on it your reward will 
 be secure." 
 
 " What is the service, sir ? " said I ; " I will do anything for 
 so kind a master." 
 
 "There is lately come to Berlin," said the captain, "a gentle- 
 man in the service of the Empress Queen, who calls himself the 
 Chevalier de Balibari, and wears the red riband and star of the 
 pope's order of the Spur. He speaks Italian or French indiffer- 
 ently ; but we have some reason to fancy this Monsieur de 
 Balibari is a native of your country of Ireland. Did you ever 
 hear such a name as Balibari in Ireland ? " 
 
 " Balibari ! Balyb * * ? " A sudden thought flashed across me. 
 " No, sir," said I, "never heard the name." 
 
 * The service about which Mr. Barry here speaks has, and we suspect pur- 
 posely, been described by him in very dubious terms. It is most probable that he 
 was employed to wait at the table of strangers in Berlin, and to bring to the police 
 minister any news concerning them which might at all interest the government. 
 The great Frederic never received a guest without taking these hospitable pre- 
 cautions ; and as for the cbiels which Mr. BaiTy fights, may we be allowed to hint 
 a doubt as to a great number of these combats ? It will be observed, in one or 
 two other parts of his Memoirs, that whenever he is at an awkward pass, or does 
 what the world does not usually consider respectable, a duel, in which he is 
 victorious, is sure to ensue ; from which he argues that he is a man of undoubted 
 honour.
 
 10S THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 " Ton must go into his service. Of course, you will not know 
 a word of English ; and if the chevalier asks as to the particularity 
 of your accent, say you are a Hungarian. The servant who came 
 with him will be turned away to-day, and the person to whom he 
 has applied for a faithful fellow will recommend you. You are a 
 Hungarian ; you served in the Seven Tears' "War. Tou left the 
 army on account of weakness of the loins. Tou served Monsieur 
 de Quellenberg two years ; he is now with the army in Silesia, 
 but there is your certificate signed by him. Tou afterwards 
 lived with Dr. Mopsius, who will give you a character, if need be ; 
 and the landlord of the Star will, of course, certify that you are an 
 honest fellow ; but his certificate goes for nothing. As for the 
 rest of your story, you can fashion that as you will, and make it 
 as romantic or as ludicrous as your fancy dictates. Try, however, 
 to win the chevalier's confidence by provoking his compassion. 
 He gambles a great deal, and wins. Do you know the cards 
 well ? " 
 
 " Only a very little, as soldiers do." 
 
 "I had thought you more expert. Tou must find out if 
 the chevalier cheats ; if he does, we have him. He sees the 
 English and Austrian envoys continually, and the young men of 
 either ministry sup repeatedly at his house. Eind out what they 
 talk of; for how much each plays, especially if any of them play 
 on parole. If you once read his private letters, of course you 
 will; though about those which go to the post, you need not 
 trouble yourself, we look at them there. But never see him write 
 a note without finding out to whom it goes, and by what channel 
 or messenger. He sleeps with the keys of his despatch-box with 
 a string round his neck. Twenty Erederics, if you get an impres- 
 sion of the keys. Tou will, of course, go in plain clothes. Tou 
 had best brush the powder out of your hair, aud tie it with a 
 riband simply; your moustache you must of course shave off." 
 
 "With these instructions, and a very small gratuity, the captain 
 left me. AVhen I again saw him, he was amused at the change in 
 my appearance. I had, not without a pang (for they were as black 
 as jet, and curled elegantly), shaved off my moustache; had 
 removed the odious grease and flour, which I always abominated, 
 out of my hair ; had mounted a demure Erench grey coat, black
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BAEEY LYNDON, E .. 109 
 
 satin breeches, and a maroon plush waistcoat, and a hat without a 
 cockade. I looked as meek and humble as any servant out of 
 place could possibly appear ; and I think not my own regiment, 
 which was now at the review at Potsdam, would have known me. 
 Thus accoutred, I went to the Star Hotel, where this stranger 
 was, — my heart beating with anxiety, and something telling me that 
 this Chevalier de Balibari was no other than Barry, of Ballybarry, 
 my father's eldest brother, who had given up his estate in con- 
 sequence of his obstinate adherence to the Eomish superstition. 
 Before I went in to present myself, I went to look in the remises 
 at his carriage. Had he the Barry arms ? Tes, there they were, 
 argent, a bend gules, with four escallops of the field, — the ancient 
 coat of my house. They were painted in a shield about as big as 
 my hat, on a smart chariot handsomely gilded, surmounted with 
 a coronet, and supported by eight or nine cupids, cornucopias, 
 and flower-baskets, according to the queer heraldic fashion of 
 those days. It must be he ! I felt quite faint as I went up the 
 stairs. I was going to present myself before my uncle in the 
 character of a servant ! 
 
 " You are the young man whom J\I. de Seebach recommended? " 
 I bowed, and handed him a letter from that gentleman, with 
 which my captain had taken care to provide me. As he looked at 
 it I had leisure to examine him. My uncle was a man of sixty 
 years of age, dressed superbly in a coat and breeches of apricot- 
 coloured velvet, a white satin waistcoat embroidered with gold 
 like the coat. Across his breast went the purple riband of his 
 order of the Spur ; and the star of the order, an enormous one, 
 sparkled on his breast. He had rings on all his fingers, a couple 
 of watches in his fobs, a rich diamond solitaire in the black riband 
 round his neck, and fastened to the bag of his wig ; his ruffles 
 and frills were decorated with a profusion of the richest lace. 
 He had pink silk stockings rolled over the knee, and tied with 
 gold garters ; and enormous diamond buckles to his red-heeled 
 shoes. A sword mounted in gold, and with a white fish-skin 
 scabbard ; and a hat richly laced, and lined with white feathers, 
 which were lying on a table beside him, completed the costume of 
 this splendid gentleman. In height he was about my size, that is, 
 six feet and half an inch ; his cast of features singularly like
 
 110 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 mine, and extremely distingue. One of his eyes was closed 
 with a black patch, however ; he wore a little white and red paint, 
 by no means an unusual ornament in those days ; and a pair of 
 mustachios, which fell over his lip, and hid a mouth that I after- 
 wards found had rather a disagreeable expression. When his 
 beard was removed, the upper teeth appeared to project very 
 much ; and his countenance wore a ghastly fixed smile, by no 
 means pleasant. 
 
 It was very imprudent of me ; but when I saw the splendour 
 of his appearance, the nobleness of his manner, I felt it impos- 
 sible to keep disguise with him ; and when he said, " Ah, you are 
 a Hungarian I see ! " I could hold no longer. 
 
 " Sir," said I, " I am an Irishman, and my name is Eedmond 
 Barry, of Ballybarry." As I spoke, I burst into tears ; I can't 
 tell why ; but I had seen none of my kith or kin for six years, and 
 my heart longed for some one. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 BAEBY BIDS ADIEU TO THE MILITAEY PEOFE8SIOH". 
 
 You who have never been out of your country, know little what 
 it is to hear a friendly voice in captivity ; and there's many a man 
 that will not understand the cause of the burst of feeling which I 
 have confessed took place on my seeing my uncle. He never for 
 a minute thought to question the truth of what I said. " Mother 
 of God ! " cried he, " it's my brother Harry's son." And I think 
 in my heart he was as much affected as I was at thus suddenly 
 finding one of his kindred ; for he, too, was an exile from home? 
 and a friendly voice, a look, brought the old country back to his 
 memory again, and the old days of his boyhood. " I'd give five 
 years of my life to see them again," said he, after caressing me 
 very warmly. "What??' asked I. "Why," replied he, "the 
 green fields, and the river, and the old round tower, and the 
 burying-place at Ballybarry. 'Twas a shame for your father to 
 part with the land, Eedmond, that went so long with the name."
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON,. ESQ. Ill 
 
 He then began to ask me concerning myself, and I gave him 
 my history at some length ; at which the worthy gentleman 
 laughed many times, saying, that I was a Barry all over. In the 
 middle of my story he would stop me, to make me stand back to 
 back, and measure with him (by which I ascertained that our 
 heights were the same, and that my uncle had a stiff knee, more- 
 over, which made him walk in a peculiar way), and uttered, 
 during the course of the narrative, a hundred exclamations of pity, 
 and kindness, and sympathy. It was "Holy saints!" and 
 "Mother of Heaven!" and "Blessed Mary!" continually, by 
 which, and with justice, I concluded that he was still devotedly 
 attached to the ancient faith of our family. 
 
 It was with some difficulty that I came to explain to him the 
 last part of my history, viz., that I was put into his service as a 
 watch upon his actions, of which I was to give information in a 
 certain quarter. When I told him (with a great deal of hesita- 
 tion) of this fact, he burst out laughing, and enjoyed the joke 
 amazingly. " The rascals ! " said he ; " they think to catch me, 
 do they ? Why, Eedmond, my chief conspiracy is a faro-bank. 
 But the king is so jealous, that he will see a spy in every person 
 who comes to his miserable capital in the great sandy desert here. 
 Ah, my boy, I must show you Paris and "Vienna ! " 
 
 I said, there was nothing I longed for more than to see any city 
 but Berlin, and should be delighted to be free of the odious military 
 service. Indeed, I thought, from his splendour of appearance, the 
 knick-knacks about the room, the gilded carriage in the remise, 
 that my uncle was a man of vast property ; and that he would 
 purchase a dozen, nay, a whole regiment of substitutes, in order 
 to restore me to freedom. 
 
 But I was mistaken in my calculations regarding him, as his 
 history of himself speedily showed me. " I have been beaten 
 about the world," said he, " ever since the year 1742, when my 
 brother, your father, and Heaven forgive him, cut my family 
 estate from under my heels, by turning heretic, in order to marry 
 that scold of a mother of yours. Well, let by-gones be by-goues. 
 'Tis probable that I should have run through the little property 
 as he did in my place, and I should have had to begin a year or 
 two later the life I have been leading ever since I was compelled to
 
 112 THE ilEMOIES OF BAILEY LYNDON, E . , 
 
 leave Ireland. My lad, I have been in every service; and be- 
 tween ourselves, owe money in every capital in Europe. I made 
 a campaign or two witb the Pandours under Austrian Trenek. I 
 was captain in the Guard of His Holiness the Pope. I made the 
 campaign of Scotland with the Prince of "Wales — a bad fellow, my 
 dear, earing more for his mistress and his brandv-bottle than for 
 the crowns of the three kingdoms. I have served in Spain and in 
 Piedmont ; but I have been a rolling stone, my good fellow. 
 Play — play has been my ruin ! that and beauty (here he gave a 
 leer which made him, I must confess, look any thing but hand- 
 some ; besides, his rouged cheeks were all beslobbered with the 
 tears which he had shed on receiving me). The women have made 
 a fool of me, my dear Redmond. I am a soft-hearted creature, 
 and this minute, at sixty-two, have no more command of myself 
 than when Peggy O'Dwyer made a fool of me at sixteen." 
 
 " Faith sir," says I, laughing, " I think it runs in the. family ! " 
 and described to him, much to his amusement, my romantic pas- 
 sion for my cousin, ±S ora Brady. He resumed his narrative. 
 
 '•' The cards now are my only livelihood. Sometimes I am in 
 luck, and then I lay out my money in these trinkets you see. It's 
 property, look you, Redmond, and the only way I have found of 
 keeping a little about me. "When the luck goes against me, why, 
 my dear, my diamonds go to the pawnbrokers, and I wear paste. 
 Friend Moses, the goldsmith, will pay me a visit this very day, 
 for the chances have been against me all the week past, and I 
 must raise monev for the bank to-ni"ht. Do vou understand the 
 cards ? " 
 
 I replied that I could play as soldiers do, but had no great skill. 
 
 " AYe will practise in the morning, my boy," said he, " and I'll 
 put you up to a thing or two worth knowing." 
 
 Of course I was glad to have such an opportunity of acquiring 
 knowledge, and professed myself delighted to receive my uncle's 
 instruction. 
 
 The chevalier's account of himself rather disagreeablv affected 
 me. All his show was on his back, as he said. His carriage, 
 with the fine gilding, was a part of his stock in trade. He had 
 a sort of mission from the Austrian court : — it was to discover 
 whether a certain quantity of alloyed ducats which had been
 
 TFTE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDOX, ESQ. 113 
 
 traced to Berlin, were from the king's treasury. But the real 
 end of Monsieur de Balibari was plav. There was a vounof 
 attache of the English embassy, my Lord Deuceace, afterwards 
 Viscount and Earl of Crabs in the English peerage, who was 
 playing high ; and it was after hearing of the passion of this 
 young English nobleman that my uncle, then at Prague, deter- 
 mined to visit Berlin and engage him. Eor there is a sort of 
 chivalry among the knights of the dice-box : the fame of great 
 players is known all over Europe. I have known the Chevalier 
 de Casanova, for instance, to travel six hundred miles, from Paris 
 to Turin, for the purpose of meeting Mr. Cliarles Fox, then only 
 my Lord Holland's dashing son, afterwards the greatest of 
 European orators and statesmen. 
 
 It was agreed that I should keep my character of valet, that in 
 the presence of strangers I should not know a word of English, 
 that I should keep a good look-out on the trumps when I was 
 serving the champagne and punch about ; and, having a remark- 
 ably fine eyesight, and a great natural aptitude, I was speedily 
 able to give my dear uncle much assistance against his opponents 
 at the green table. Some prudish persons may affect indignation 
 at the frankness of these confessions, but Heaven pity them ! Do 
 you suppose that any man who has lost or won a hundred 
 thousand pounds at play will not take the advantages which his 
 neighbour enjoys ? They are all the same. But it is only the 
 clumsy fool who cheats, who resorts to the vulgar expedients of 
 cogged dice and cut cards. Such a man is sure to go wrong some 
 time or other, and is not fit to play in the society of gallant 
 gentlemen ; and my advice to people who see such a vulgar 
 person at his pranks is, of course, to back him while he plays, 
 but never — never to have anything to do with him. Play grandly, 
 honourably. Be not, of course, cast down at losing ; but above 
 all, be not eager at winning, as mean souls are. And, indeed, 
 with all one's skill and advantages that winning is often problem- 
 atical ; I have seen a sheer ignoramus that knows no more of 
 play than of Hebrew, blunder you out of five thousand pounds in 
 a few turns of the cards. I have seen a gentleman and his con- 
 federate play against another and Ms confederate. One never is 
 secure in these cases : and when one considers the time and 
 
 VOL. III. I
 
 114 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 labour spent, the genius, the anxiety, the outlay of money 
 required, the multiplicity of bad debts that one meets with (for 
 dishonourable rascals are to be found at the play-table, as every- 
 where else in the world), I say, for my part, the profession is a 
 bad one ; and, indeed, have scarcely ever met a man who, in the 
 end, profited by it. I am writing now with the experience of a 
 man of the world. At the time I speak of I was a lad, dazzled 
 by the idea of wealth, and respecting, certainly too much, my 
 uncle's superior age and station in life. 
 
 There is no need to particularise here the little arrangements 
 made between us; the play-men of the present day want no 
 instruction, I take it, and the public have little interest in the 
 matter. But simplicity was our secret. Every thing successful 
 is simple. If, for instance, I wiped the dust off a chair with 
 my napkin, it was to show that the enemy was strong in 
 diamonds ; if I pushed it, he had ace, king ; if I said, " Punch or 
 wine, my lord ? " hearts was meant ; if " "Wine or punch ? " 
 clubs. If I blew my nose, it was to indicate that there was 
 another confederate employed by the adversary ; and then, I 
 warrant you, some pretty trials of skill would take place. My 
 Lord Deuceace, although so young, had a very great skill and 
 cleverness with the cards in every way ; and it was only from 
 hearing Frank Punter, who came with him, yawn three times 
 when the chevalier had the ace of trumps, that I knew we were 
 Greek to Greek, as it were. 
 
 My assumed dulness was perfect ; and I used to make 
 Monsieur de Potzdorff laugh with it, when I carried my little 
 reports to him at the Garden-house outside the town where he 
 gave me rendezvous. These reports, of course, were arranged 
 between me and my uncle beforehand. I was instructed (and it 
 is always far the best way) to tell as much truth as my story 
 would possibly bear. When, for instance he would ask me, 
 " "What does the chevalier do of a morning ? " 
 
 " He goes to church regularly (he waa very religious), and 
 after hearing mass comes home to breakfast. Then he takes an 
 airing in his chariot till dinner, which is served at noon. After 
 dinner he writes his letters, if he have any letters to write : but 
 he has very little to do in this way. His letters are to the Austrian
 
 
 THE MEMOIKS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 115 
 
 envoy, "with whom be corresponds, but who does not acknowledge 
 bini ; and being written in English, of course I look over bis 
 sboulder. He generally writes for money. He says he wants it 
 to bribe the secretaries of the treasury, in order to find out really 
 where the alloyed ducats come from ; but, in fact, he wants it to 
 play of evenings, when he makes his party with Calsabigi, the 
 lottery contractor, the Russian attaches, two from the English 
 embassy, my Lords Deuceace and Punter, who play a jeu d'enfer, 
 and a few more. The same set meet every night at supper : 
 there are seldom any ladies; those who come are chiefly French 
 ladies, members of the corps de ballet. He wins often, but not 
 always. Lord Deuceace is a very fine player. The Chevalier 
 Elliot, the English minister, sometimes comes, on which occasion 
 the secretaries do not play. Monsieur de Balibari dines at the 
 missions, but en petit comite, not on grand days of reception. 
 Calsabigi, I think, is his confederate at play. He has won 
 lately, but the week before last he pledged his solitaire for four 
 hundred ducats." 
 
 " Do he and the English attaches talk together in their own 
 language ? " 
 
 " Yes ; he and the envoy spoke yesterday for half-an-hour about 
 the new danseuse and the American troubles : chiefly about the 
 new danseuse^ 
 
 It will be seen that the information I gave was very minute 
 and accurate, though not very important. But such as it was, it 
 was carried to the ears of that famous hero and warrior the 
 Philosopher of Sans Souci ; and there was not a stranger who 
 entered the capital, but his actions were similarly spied and 
 related to Frederick the Great. 
 
 As long as the play was confined to the young men of the 
 different embassies, his majesty did not care to prevent it ; nay, 
 he encouraged play at all the missions, knowing full well that a 
 man in difficulties can be made to speak, and that a timely 
 rouleau of Frederics would often get him a secret worth many 
 thousands. He got some papers from the French house in this 
 way : and I have no doubt that my Lord Deuceace would have 
 supplied him with information at a similar rate, had his chief not 
 known the young nobleman's character pretty well ; and had (as 
 
 I 2
 
 116 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 is usually the case) the work of the mission performed by a 
 steady roturier, while the young brilliant bloods of the suite 
 sported their embroidery at the balls, or shook their Mechlin 
 ruffles over the green tables at faro. I have seen many scores of 
 these young sprigs since, of these and their principals, and mon 
 Diew ! what fools they are ! "What dullards, what fribbles, what 
 addle-headed simple coxcombs ! This is one of the lies of the 
 world, this diplomacy ; or how could we suppose, that were the 
 profession as difficult as the solemn red-box and tape-men would 
 have us believe, they would invariably choose for it little pink- 
 faced boys from school, with no other claim than mamma's title, 
 and able at most, to judge of a curricle, a new dance, or a neat 
 boot? 
 
 When it became known, however, to the officers of the garrison 
 that there was a faro-table in town, they were wild to be admitted 
 to the sport ; and, in spite of my entreaties to the contrary, my 
 uncle was not averse to allow the young gentlemen their fling, 
 and once or twice cleared a handsome sum out of their purses. It 
 was in vain I told him that I must carry the news to my captain, 
 before whom his comrades would not fail to talk, and who would 
 thus know of the intrigue even without my information. 
 
 " Tell him," said my uncle. 
 
 " They will send you away," said I, " then what is to become 
 of me?" 
 
 "Make your mind easy," said the latter, with a smile ; "you 
 shall not be left behind, I warrant you. Go take a last look at 
 your barracks, make your mind easy, say a farewell to your 
 friends in Berlin. The dear souls, how they will weep when 
 they hear you are out of the country, and, as sure as my name 
 is Barry, out of it you shall go ! " 
 
 " But how, sir," said I. 
 
 " Recollect, Mr. Fakenham of Fakenham," said he knowingly. 
 " 'Tis you yourself taught me how. Go get me one of my wigs. 
 Open my despatch-box yonder, where the great secrets of the 
 Austrian chancery lie ; put your hair back off your forehead ; 
 clap me on this patch and these mustachios, and now look in 
 the glass!" 
 
 " The Chevalier de Balibari," said I, bursting with laughter,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARKY LYNDON, ESQ. 117 
 
 and began walking the room in his manner with his stiff 
 knee. 
 
 The next day when I went to make my report to Monsieur de 
 Potsdorff, I told him of the young Prussian officers that had 
 been of late gambling ; and he replied, as I expected, that the 
 king had determined to send the chevalier out of the country. 
 
 " He is a stingy curmudgeon," I replied ; " I have had but 
 three Frederics from him in two months, and I hope you will 
 remember your promise to advance me ! " 
 
 " Why, three Frederics were too much for the news you have 
 picked up," said the captain, sneering. 
 
 " It is not my fault that there has been no more," I replied. 
 " When is he to go, sir ? " 
 
 " The day after to-morrow. Tou say he drives after breakfast 
 and before dinner. When he comes out to his carriage, a couple 
 of gendarmes will mount the box, and the coachman will get his 
 orders to move on." 
 
 '• And his baggage, sir ? " said I. 
 
 " Oh ! that will be sent after him. I have a fancy to look into 
 that red box which contains his papers, you say ; and at noon, 
 after parade, shall be at the inn. Tou will not say a word to 
 anyone there regarding the affair, and will wait for me at the 
 chevalier's rooms until my arrival. We must force that box. 
 Tou are a clumsy hound, or you would have got the key 
 long ago ! " 
 
 I begged the captain to remember me, and so took my leave of 
 liim. The next night I placed a couple of pistols under the 
 carriage-seat ; and I think the adventures of the following day 
 are quite worthy of the honours of a separate chapter.
 
 IIS THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 I APPEAR 117 A MANNER BECOMING- MT NAME AND LINEAGE. 
 
 Fortune, smiling at parting upon Monsieur de Balibari, 
 enabled him to win a handsome sum with his faro bank. 
 
 At ten o'clock the next morning, the carriage of the Chevalier 
 de Balibari drew up as usual at the door of his hotel ; and the 
 chevalier, who was at his window, seeing the chariot arrive, came 
 down the stairs in his usual stately manner. 
 
 "Where is my rascal Ambrose ? " said he, looking around and 
 not finding his servant to open the door. 
 
 " I will let down the steps for your honour," said a gendarme, 
 who was standing by the carriage ; and no sooner had the 
 chevalier entered, than the officer jumped in after him, another 
 mounted the box by the coachman, and the latter began to drive. 
 
 " Good gracious ! " said the chevalier, " what is this ? " 
 
 "You are going to drive to the frontier," said the gendarme, 
 touching his hat. 
 
 " It is shameful — infamous ! I insist upon being put down 
 at the Austrian ambassador's house ! " 
 
 "I have orders to gag your honour if you cry out," said the 
 gendarme. 
 
 "All Europe shall hear of this!" said the chevalier, in a 
 fury. 
 
 " As you please," answered the officer, and then both relapsed 
 into silence. 
 
 The silence was not broken between Berlin and Potzdam, 
 through which place the chevalier passed as his majesty was 
 reviewing his guards there, and the regiments of Biilow, Zitwitz, 
 and Ilenkel de Donnersmark. As the chevalier passed his 
 majesty, the king raised his hat and said, " Qu'il ne descende pas : 
 je lui souhaite un bon voyage." The Chevalier de Balibari 
 acknowledged this courtesy by a profound bow. 
 
 They had not got far beyond Potzdam, when, boom ! the alarm 
 cannon began to roar. 
 
 " It is a deserter ! " said the officer.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 119 
 
 " Is it possible ! " said the chevalier, and sunk back into bis 
 carriage again. 
 
 Hearing tbe sound of tbe guns, the common people came out 
 along the road with fowling-pieces and pitch-forks, in hopes to 
 catch the truant. Tbe gendarmes looked very anxious to be on 
 the look-out for him too. Tbe price of a deserter was fifty crowns 
 to those who brought him in. 
 
 " Confess, sir," said the chevalier to the police officer in the 
 carriage with him, "that you long to be rid of me from whom 
 you can get nothing, and to be on the look-out for the deserter 
 who may bring you in fifty crowns ? Why not tell the postilion 
 to push on ? Tou may land me at the frontier and get back to 
 your hunt all the sooner." The officer told tbe postilion to get 
 on, but the way seemed intolerably long to the chevalier. Once 
 or twice he thought he heard the noise of horse galloppiug 
 behind ; his own horses did not seem to go two miles an hour, 
 but they did go. The black and white barriers came in view at 
 last, hard by Briick, and opposite them the green and yellow of 
 Saxony. The Saxon custom-house officers came out. 
 
 "I have no luggage," said the chevalier. 
 
 " The gentleman has nothing contraband," said the Prussian 
 officers, grinning, and took their leave of their prisoner with much 
 respect. 
 
 The Chevalier de Balibari gave them a Frederic a-piece. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he, " I wish you a good day. "Will you 
 please to go to the bouse whence we set out tbis morning, and tell 
 my man there to send on my baggage to the Three Kings at 
 Dresden ? " Then ordering fresh horses, the chevalier set off on 
 his journey for that capital. I need not tell you that I was tbe 
 chevalier. 
 
 "FROM THE CHEVALIER DE BALIBARI TO REDMOND BARRY, 
 ESQUIRE, GENTILHOMME ANGLAIS. 
 
 " A TH&ttl des 3 Couronn.es, a Dresde, en Saxe. 
 
 " Nephew Redmoxd, — This comes to you by a sure hand, no other than 
 Mr. Lumpit of the English mission, who is acquainted, as all Berlin will be 
 directly, with our wonderful story. They only know half as yet ; they only 
 know that a deserter went off in my clothes, and all are in admiration of your 
 cleverness and valour.
 
 120 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYXDOX, ESQ. 
 
 " I confess that for two hours after your departure I lay in bed in no small 
 trepidation, thinking whether his majesty might have a fancy to send me to 
 Spandau, for the freak of which we had both been guilty. But in that case I 
 had taken my precautions ; I had written a statement of the case to my chief, 
 the Austrian minister, with the full and true story how you had been set to spy 
 upon me, how you turned out to be my very near relative, how you had been 
 kidnapped yourself into the service, and how we both had determined to 
 effect your escape. The laugh would have been so much against the king, 
 that he never would have dared to lay a finger upon me. What would 
 Monsieur de Voltaire have said to such an act of tyranny ? 
 
 "But it was a lucky day, and every thing has turned out to my wish. As 
 I lay in my bed two and a half hours after your departure, in comes your 
 ex-captain Potzdorff. 'Redinont ! ' says he, in his imperious High Dutch way, 
 'are you there V Xo answer. 'The rogue is gone out,' said he; and straight- 
 way makes for my red bos where I keep my love-letters, my glass eye which 
 I used to wear, my favourite lucky dice with which I threw the thirteen mains 
 at Prague ; my two sets of Paris teeth, and my other private matters that 
 you know of. 
 
 '■ He first tried a bunch of keys, but none of them would fit the little English 
 lock. Then my gentleman takes out of his pocket a chisel and hammer, and 
 falls to work like a professional burglar, actually bursting open my little box ! 
 
 " Xow was my time to act. I advance towards him anned with an immense 
 water-jug. I come noiselessly up to him just as he had broken the box, and, 
 with all my might, I deal him such a blow over the head as smashes the 
 water-jug to atoms, and sends my captain with a snort lifeless to the ground. 
 I thought I had killed him. 
 
 " Then I ring all the bells in the house ; and shout, and swear, and scream, 
 ' Thieves ! —thieves ! — landlord ! — murder ! — fire ! ' until the whole household 
 come tumbling up the stairs. ' Where is my servant?' roar I. ' Who dares 
 to rob me in open day ? Look at the villain whom 1 find in the act of break- 
 ing my chest open ! Send for the police, send for his Excellency the Austrian 
 minister ! all Europe shall know of this insult !' 
 
 " ' Dear heaven I ' says the landlord, ' we saw you go away three hours 
 ago!' 
 
 " ' Me I ' say I ; ' why, man, I have been in bed all the morning. I am ill — 
 I have taken physic — I have not left the house this morning ! Where is that 
 scoundrel Ambrose? But, stop ! where are my clothes and wig?' for I was 
 standing before them in my chamber-gown and stockings, with my night- 
 cap on. 
 
 '' ' I have it — I have it ! ' says a little chamber maid ; ' Ambrose is off in 
 your honour's dress.' 
 
 '"And my money — my money ! ' says I; "where is my purse with forty- 
 eight Frederics in it ? But we have one of the villains left. Officers, seize 
 him?' 
 
 " ' It's the young Ilcrr von Potzdorff ! ' says the landlord, more and more 
 astonished. 
 
 " ' What ! a gentleman breaking open my trunk with hammer and chisel — 
 impossible ! ' 
 
 "ilerr von Potzdorff was returning to life by this time, with a swelling on 
 his skull as big as a saucepan; and the officers carried him oif, and the judge 
 who was sent for dressed a procea verbal of the matter, and I demanded a copy 
 of it, which I sent forthwith to my ambassador. 
 
 "I was kept a prisoner to my room the next day, and a judge, a general, 
 and a host of lawyers, officers, and officials, were set upon me to bully, 
 perplex, threaten, and cajole me. I said it was true you had told me that 
 you had been kidnapped into the service, that 1 thought you were released
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 121 
 
 from it, and that I had you with the best recommendations. I appealed to 
 my minister, who was bound to come to my aid; aud, to make a long story 
 short, poor Potzdorff is now on his way to Spandau ; and his uncle, the elder 
 Potzdorff, has brought me five hundred louis, with a humble request that I 
 would leave Berlin forthwith, and hush up this painful matter. 
 
 " I shall be with you at the Three Crowns the day after you receive this. 
 Ask Mr. Lumpit to dinner. Do not spare your money — you are my son. 
 Every body in Dresden knows your loviug uncle, 
 
 " The Chevalier de Balibari." 
 
 Aud by these wonderful circumstances I was once more free 
 again, and I kept my resolution then made, never to fall more into 
 the hands of any recruiter, and thenceforth and for ever to be a 
 gentleman. 
 
 "With this sum of money, and a good run of luck which ensued 
 presently, we were enabled to make no ungenteel figure. My 
 uncle speedily joined me at the inn at Dresden, where, under 
 pretence of illness, I had kept quiet until his arrival ; and, as the 
 Chevalier de Balibari was in particular good odour at the court of 
 Dresden (having been an intimate acquaintance of the late monarch 
 the Elector, King of Poland, the most dissolute and agreeable of 
 European princes), I was speedily in the very best society of the 
 Saxon capital, where I may say that my own person and manners, 
 and the singularity of the adventures in which 1 had been a hero, 
 made me especially welcome. There was not a party of the 
 nobdity to which the two gentlemen of Balibari were not invited. 
 I had the honour of kissing hands and being graciously received 
 at court by the elector, and I wrote home to my mother such a 
 flaming description of my prosperity, that the good soul very 
 nearly forgot her celestial welfare and her confessor, the Rev. 
 Joshua Jowls, in order to come after me to Germany, but 
 travelling was very difficult in those days, and so we were spared 
 the arrival of the good lady. 
 
 I think the soul of Harry Barry, my father, who was always 
 so genteel in his turn of mind, must have rejoiced to see the 
 position which I now occupied. All the women anxious to 
 receive me, all the men in a fury ; hobnobbing with dukes and 
 counts at supper, dancing minuets with high well-born baronesses 
 (as they absurdly call themselves in Germany), with lovely excel- 
 lencies, nay, with highnesses and transparencies themselves, who 
 could compete with the gallant young Irish noble ? who would
 
 122 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 suppose that seven weeks before I had been a common — bah ! I 
 am ashamed to think of it ! One of the pleasantest momenta of 
 my life was at a grand gala at the electoral palace, where I had 
 the honour of walkiug a polonaise with no other than the Margra- 
 vine of Bayreuth, old Fritz's own sister ; old Fritz's whose hateful 
 blue baize livery I had worn, whose belts I had pipe-clayed, and 
 whose abominable rations of small beer and sauerkraut I had 
 swallowed for five years. 
 
 Having won an English chariot from an Italian gentleman at 
 play, my imcle had our arms painted en the panels in a more 
 splendid way than ever, surmounted (as we were descended from 
 the ancient kings) with an Irish crown of the most splendid size 
 and gilding. I had this crown in lieu of a coronet engraved on a 
 large amethyst signet-ring worn on my fore-finger ; and I don't 
 mind confessing that I used to say the jewel had been in my family 
 for several thousand years, having originally belonged to my direct 
 ancestor, his late Majesty King Brian Boru, or Barry. I warrant 
 the legends of the Herald's College are not more authentic than 
 mine was. 
 
 At Erst the minister and the gentlemen at the English hotel 
 used to be rather shy of us two Irish noblemen, and questioned 
 our pretensions to rank. The minister was a lord's son, it is true, 
 but he was likewise a grocer's grandson, and sol told him at Count 
 Lobkowitz's masquerade. My uncle, like a noble gentleman as 
 he was, knew the pedigree of every considerable family in Europe. 
 He said it was the only knowledge befitting a gentleman ; and 
 when we were not at cards, we would pass hours over Gwillim or 
 D'llozier, reading the genealogies, learning the blazons, and 
 making ourselves acquainted with the relationships of our class. 
 Alas ! the noble science is going into disrepute now ; so are cards, 
 without which studies and pastimes I can hardly conceive how a 
 man of honour can exist. 
 
 My first affair of honour with a man of undoubted fashion was 
 on the score of my nobility with young Sir llumford Bumford of 
 the English embassy, my uncle at the same time sending a cartel 
 to the minister, who declined to come. I shot Sir Rumford in 
 the leg, amidst the tears of joy of my uncle, who accompanied me 
 to the ground ; and I promise you that none of the young gentle-
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 123 
 
 men questioned the authenticity of my pedigree, or laughed at my 
 Irish crown again. 
 
 AY hat a delightful life did we now lead! I knew I was born a 
 gentleman, from the kindly way in which I took to the business, 
 as business it certainly is. For though it seems all pleasure, yet 
 I assure any low-bred persons who may chance to read this, that 
 we, their betters, have to work as well as they ; though I did not 
 rise until noon, yet had I not been up at play until long past 
 midnight ? Many a time have we come home to bed as the troops 
 were marching out to early parade ; and, oh ! it did my heart good to 
 hear the bugles blowiug the reveille before daybreak, or to see the 
 regiments marching out to exercise, and think that I was no 
 longer bound to that disgusting discipline, but restored to my 
 natural station. 
 
 I came into it at once, and as if I had never done anything else 
 all my life. I had a gentleman to wait upon me, a French friseur 
 to dress my hair of a morning : I knew the taste of chocolate as 
 by intuition almost, and could distinguish between the right 
 Spanish and the French before I had been a week in my new 
 position ; I had rings on all my fingers, watches in both my fobs, 
 canes, trinkets, and snuff-boxes of all sorts, and each outvying the 
 other in elegance ; I had the finest natural taste for lace and china 
 of any man I ever knew. I could judge a horse as well as any 
 Jew dealer in Germany ; in shooting and athletic exercises I was 
 unrivalled ; I could not spell, but I could speak German and 
 French cleverly ; I had at the least twelve suits of clothes ; three 
 ricbly embroidered with gold, two laced with silver, a garnet- 
 coloured velvet pelisse lined witli sable ; one of French grey, 
 silver-laced and lined with chinchilla. I had damask morning- 
 robes. I took lessons on the guitar, and sang French catches 
 exquisitely. Where, in fact, was there a more accomplished 
 gentleman than Eedmond de Balibari ? 
 
 All the luxuries becoming my station could not, of course, be 
 purchased without credit and money, to procure which, as our 
 patrimony had been wasted by our ancestors, and we were above 
 the vulgarity and slow returns and doubtful chances of trade, my 
 uncle kept a faro bank. We were in partnership with a Florentine, 
 well known in all the courts of Europe, the Count Alessandro
 
 124 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Pippi, as skilful a player as ever was seen, but he turned out a 
 sad knave latterly, and I have discovered that his countship was 
 a mere impostor. My uncle was maimed, as I have said ; Pippi, 
 like all impostors, was a coward ; it was my unrivalled skill with 
 the sword, and readiness to use it, that maintained the reputation 
 of the firm, so to speak, and silenced many a timid gambler who 
 might have hesitated to pay his losings. Y? e always played on 
 parole with any body ; any person, that is, of honour and noble 
 lineage. We never pressed for our winnings or declined to receive 
 promissory notes in lieu of gold. But woe to the man who did 
 not pay when the note became due ! Bedmond de Balibari was 
 sure to wait upon him with his bill, and I promise you there were 
 very few bad debts ; on the contrary, gentlemen were grateful to 
 us for our forbearance, and our character for honour stood unim- 
 peached. In later times a vulgar national prejudice has chosen to 
 cast a slur upon the character of men of honour engaged in the 
 profession of play ; but I speak of the good old days in Europe, 
 before the cowardice of the Prench aristocracy (in the shameful 
 Pevolution, which served them right) brought discredit and ruin 
 upon our order. They cry fie now upon men engaged in play ; 
 but I should like to know how much more honourable their modes 
 of livelihood are than ours. The broker of the Exchange who 
 bulls and bears, and buys and sells, and dabbles with lying loans, 
 and trades on state-secrets, what is he but a gamester ? The 
 merchant who deals in teas and tallow, is he any better ? His 
 bales of dirty indigo are his dice, his cards come up every year 
 instead of every ten minutes, and the sea is his green table. You 
 call the profession of the law an honourable one, where a man 
 will lie for any bidder, lie down poverty for the sake of a fee from 
 wealth, he down right because wrong is in his brief. You call a 
 doctor an honourable man, a swindling quack, who does not 
 believe in the nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea 
 for whispering in your ear that it is a fine morning; and yet, 
 forsooth, a gallant man who sets him down before the baize and 
 challenges all comers, his money against theirs, his fortune against 
 theirs, is proscribed by your modern moral world. It is a con- 
 spiracy of the middle-classes against gentlemen — it is only the 
 shopkeeper cant which is to go down nowadays. I say that play
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 125 
 
 was an institution of chivalry, it has been 'wrecked along with 
 other privileges of men of birth. When Seingalt engaged a man 
 for six-and-thirty hours without leaving the table, do you think he 
 showed no courage ? How have we had the best blood, and the 
 brightest eyes, too, of Europe throbbing round the table as I and 
 my uncle have held the cards and the bank against some terrible 
 player, who was matching some thousands out of his millions 
 against our all which was there on the baize ! When we engaged 
 that daring Alexis Kossloffsky, and won seven thousand louis in a 
 single coup, had we lost, we should have been beggars the next 
 day ; when he lost, he was only a village and a few hundred serfs 
 in pawn the worse. When at Toeplitz, the Duke of Courland 
 brought fourteen lacqueys each with four bags of florins, aud 
 challenged our bank to play against the sealed bags, what did we 
 ask? "Sir," said we, "we have but eighty thousand florins in 
 bank, or two hundred thousand at three months ; if your higlmess's 
 bags do not contain more than eighty thousand, we will meet 
 you;" and we did, and after eleven hours' play, in which our 
 bank was at one time reduced to two hundred and three ducats, 
 we won seventeen thousand florins of him. Is this not something 
 like boldness ? does this profession not require skill, and perse- 
 verance, and bravery? Four crowned heads looked on at the 
 game, and an imperial princess, when I turned up the ace of 
 hearts and made Paroli, burst into tears. No man on the Euro- 
 pean Continent held a higher position than Eedmond Barry then ; 
 and when the Duke of Courland lost, he was pleased to say that 
 we had won nobly : and so we had, and spent nobly what we won. 
 At this period my uncle, who attended mass every day regularly, 
 always put ten florins into the box. Wherever we went, the 
 tavern-keepers made us more welcome than royal princes. We 
 used to give away the broken meat from our suppers and dinners 
 to scores of beggars who blessed us. Every man who held my 
 horse or cleaned my boots got a ducat for his pains. I was, I 
 may say, the author of our common good fortune, by putting 
 boldness into our play. Pippi was a faint-hearted fellow, who 
 was always cowardly when he began to win. My uncle (I speak 
 with great respect of him) was too much of a devotee, and too 
 much of a martinet at play ever to win greatly. His moral
 
 12G THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 courage was un questionable, but his daring was not sufficient. 
 Both of these my seniors very soon acknowledged me to be their 
 chief, and hence the style of splendour I have described. 
 
 I have mentioned H. I. H. the Princess Frederica Amelia, who 
 was affected by my success, and shall always think with gratitude 
 of the protection with which that exalted lady honoured me. She 
 was passionately fond of play, as indeed were the ladies of almost 
 all the courts in Europe in those days, and hence would often 
 arise no small trouble to us ; for the truth must be told, that 
 ladies love to play, certainly, but not to pay. The point of honour 
 is not understood by the charming sex ; and it was with the greatest 
 difficulty, in our peregrinations to the various courts of northern 
 Europe, that we could keep them from the table, could get their 
 money if they lost, or, if they paid, prevent them from using the 
 most furious and extraordinary means of revenge. In those great 
 days of our fortune, I calculate that we lost no less than fourteen 
 thousand louis by such failures of payment. A princess of a 
 ducal house gave us paste instead of diamonds, which she had 
 solemnly pledged to us ; another organised a robbery of the crown 
 jewels, and would have charged the theft upon us, but for Pippi's 
 caution, who had kept back a note of hand " her High Tran- 
 sparency " gave us, and sent it to his ambassador, by which pre- 
 caution I do believe our necks were saved. A third lady of high 
 (but not princely) rank, after I had won a considerable sum in 
 diamonds and pearls from her, sent her lover with a band of cut- 
 throats to waylay me, and it was only by extraordinary courage, 
 skill, and good luck, that I escaped from these villains, wounded 
 myself, but leaving the chief aggressor dead on the ground. My 
 sword entered his eye and broke there, and the villains who were 
 witli him fled seeing their chief fall. They might have finished 
 me else, for I had no weapon of defence. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that our life, for all its splendour, was one 
 of extreme danger and difficulty, requiring high talents and 
 courage for success ; and often, when we were in a full vein of 
 success, we were suddenly driven from our ground on account of 
 some freak of a reigning prince, some intrigue of a disappointed 
 mistress, or some quarrel with the police minister. If the latter 
 personage were not bribed or won over, nothing was more com-
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYXDON, ESQ. 127 
 
 mon tliau. for us to receive a sudden order of departure, and so, 
 perforce, we lived a wandering and desultory life. 
 
 Though the gains of such a life are, as I have said, very great, 
 yet the expenses are enormous. Our appearance and retinue was 
 too splendid for the narrow mind of Pippi, who was always crying 
 out at my extravagance, though obliged to own that his own 
 meanness and parsimony would never have achieved the great 
 victories which my generosity had won. With all our success, 
 our capital was not very great. That speech to the Duke of 
 Courland, for instance, was a mere boast as far as the two hun- 
 dred thousand florins at three months were concerned. We had 
 no credit, and no money beyond that on our table, and should 
 have been forced to fly if his highness had won and accepted our 
 bills. Sometimes, too, we were hit very hard. A bank is a cer- 
 tainty, almost, but now and then a bad day will come ; and men 
 who have the courage of good fortune, at least, ought to meet bad 
 luck well : the former, believe me, is the harder task of the two. 
 
 One of these evil chances befell us in the Duke of Baden's 
 territory, at Mannheim. Pippi, who was always on the look-out 
 for business, offered to make a bank at the inn where we put up, 
 and where the officers of the duke's cuirassiers supped ; and some 
 small play accordingly took place, and some wretched crown3 and 
 louis changed hands, I trust rather to the advantage of these poor 
 gentlemen of the army, who are surely the poorest of all devils 
 under the sun. 
 
 But, as ill luck would have it, a couple of young students 
 from the neighbouring University of Heidelberg, who had come 
 to Mannheim for their quarter's revenue, and so had some hundred 
 of dollars between them, were introduced to the table, and, 
 having never played before (as is always the case), began to win. 
 As ill luck would have it, too, they were tipsy, and against 
 tipsiness I have often found the best calculations of play fail 
 entirely. They played in the most perfectly insane way, and yet 
 won always. Every card they backed turned up in their favour. 
 They had won a hundred louis from us in ten minutes ; and, 
 seeing that Pippi was growing angry and the luck against us, I 
 was for shutting up the bank for the night, saying the play was 
 only meant for a joke, and that now we had had enough.
 
 12S THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 But Pippi, who had quarrelled with me that day, was 
 determined to proceed, and the upshot was, that the students 
 played and won more ; then they lent money to the officers, who 
 began to win, too ; and in this ignoble way, in a tavern room thick 
 with tobacco-smoke, across a deal table besmeared with beer and 
 liquor, and, to a parcel of hungry subalterns and a pair of 
 beardless students, three of the most skilful and renowned 
 players in Europe lost seventeen hundred louis. I blush now 
 when I think of it. It was like Charles XII. or Eichard Coeur 
 de Lion falling before a petty fortress and an unknown hand 
 (as my friend Mr. Johnson wrote), and was, in fact, a most 
 shameful defeat. 
 
 Nor was this the only defeat. When our poor conquerors 
 had gone off, bewildered with the treasure which fortune had 
 flung in their way (one of these students was called the Baron 
 de Clootz, perhaps he who afterwards lost his head at Paris), 
 Pippi resumed the quarrel of the morning, and some exceedingly 
 high words passed between us. Among other things I l-ecollect 
 I knocked him down with a stool, and was for flinging him out 
 of window ; but my uncle, who was cool, and had been keeping 
 Lent with his usual solemnity, interposed between us, and a 
 reconciliation took place, Pippi apologising and confessing he had 
 been wrong. 
 
 I ought to have doubted, however, the sincerity of the 
 treacherous Italian ; indeed, as I never before believed a word 
 that he said in his life, I know not why I was so foolish as to 
 credit him now, and go to bed, leaving the keys of our cash-box 
 with him. It contained, after our loss to the cuirassiers, in bills 
 and money, near upon £8000 sterling. Pippi insisted that our 
 reconciliation should be ratified over a bowl of hot wine, and I 
 have no doubt put some soporific drug into the liquor, for my 
 uncle and I both slept till very late the next morning, and woke 
 with violent headaches and fever. We did not quit our beds till 
 noon. He had been gone twelve hours, leaving our treasury 
 empty ; and behind him a sort of calculation, by which he strove 
 to make out that this was his share of the profits, and that all the 
 losses had been incurred without his consent. 
 
 Thus, after eighteen months, we had to begin the world again.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 123 
 
 But was I cast down ? No. Our wardrobes still were worth a 
 very large sum of money, for gentlemen did not dress like parish- 
 clerks in those days, and a person of fashion would often wear a 
 suit of clothes and a set of ornaments that would be a shop-boy's 
 fortune ; and, without repining for one single minute, or saying 
 a single angry word (my uncle's temper in this respect was 
 admirable), or allowing the secret of our loss to be known to a 
 mortal soul, we pawned three-fourths of our jewels and clothes 
 to Moses Lowe the banker, and with produce of the sale, and 
 our private pocket-money, amounting in all to something less 
 than 800 louis, we took the field again. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MOEE ETJNS OF LUCK. 
 
 I am not going to entertain my readers with an account of my 
 professional career as a gamester any more than I did with 
 anecdotes of my life as a military man. I might fill volumes 
 with tales of this kind were I so minded, but, at this rate, my 
 recital would not be brought to a conclusion for years, and who 
 knows how soon I may be called upon to stop ? I have gout, 
 rheumatism, gravel, and a disordered liver. I have two or three 
 wounds in my body, which break out every now and then, and 
 give me intolerable pain, and a hundred more signs of breaking 
 up. Such are the effects of time, illness, and free-living, upon 
 one of the strongest constitutions and finest forms the world 
 ever saw. Ah! I suffered from none of these ills in the year 'G6, 
 when there was no man in Europe more gay in spirits, more 
 splendid in personal accomplishment, than young Eedmond 
 Barry. 
 
 Before the treachery of the scoundrel Pippi, I had visited 
 many of the best courts of Europe, especially the smaller ones, 
 where play was patronised, and the professors of that science 
 always welcome. Among the ecclesiastical principalities of the 
 Ehine we were particularly well received. I never knew finer 
 
 VOL. III. K
 
 130 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 or gayer courts than those of the Electors of Treves and Cologne, 
 where there was more splendour and gaiety than at Vienna, far 
 more than in the wretched barrack-court of Berlin. The court 
 of the Archduchess-Governess of the Netherlands was, likewise, 
 a royal place for us knights of the dice-box, and gallant votaries 
 of fortune ; whereas in the stingy Dutch, or the beggarly Swiss 
 republics, it was impossible for a gentleman to gain a livelihood 
 unmolested. 
 
 After our mishap at Mannheim, my uncle and I made for the 
 
 Duchy of X . The reader may find out the place easily 
 
 enough, but I do not choose to print at full the names of some 
 illustrious persons in whose society I then fell, and among 
 whom I was made the sharer in a very strange and tragical 
 adventure. 
 
 There was no court in Europe at which strangers were more 
 
 welcome than at that of the noble Duke of X , none where 
 
 pleasure was more eagerly sought after, and more splendidly 
 
 enjoyed. The prince did not inhabit his capital of S , but, 
 
 imitating in every respect the ceremonial of the court of 
 Versailles, built himself a magnificent palace at a few leagues from 
 his chief city, and round about his palace a superb aristocratic 
 town, inhabited entirely by his nobles, and the officers of his 
 sumptuous court. The people were rather hardly pressed, to be 
 sure, in order to keep up this splendour; for his highness's 
 dominions were small, and so he wisely lived in a sort of awful 
 retirement from them, seldom showing his face in his capital, or 
 seeing any countenances but those of his faithful domestics and 
 officers. His palace and gardens of Ludwigslust were exactly on 
 the Trench model. Twice a week there were court receptions, 
 and grand court galas twice a month. There was the finest opera 
 out of France, and a ballet unrivalled in splendour, on which his 
 highness, a great lover of music and dancing, expended prodigious 
 sums. It may be because I was then young, but I think I never 
 saw such an assemblage of brilliant beauty as used to figure there 
 on the stage of the court theatre, in the grand mythological 
 ballets which were then the mode, and in which you saw Mars in 
 red-heeled pumps and a periwig, and Venus in patches and a 
 hoop. They say the costume waa incorrect, and have changed it
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 131 
 
 since, but, for my part, I Lave never seen a Yenus more lovely 
 than the Coralie, who was the chief dancer, and found no fault 
 with the attendant nymphs, in their trains, and lappets, and 
 powder. These operas used to take place twice a week, after 
 which some great officer of the court would have his evening, and 
 his brilliant supper, and the dice-box rattled everywhere, and all 
 the world played. I have seen seventy play-tables set out in the 
 grand gallery of Ludwigslust, besides the faro bank, where the 
 duke himself would graciously come and piay, and win or lose 
 with a truly royal splendour. 
 
 It was hither we came after the Mannheim misfortune. The 
 nobility of the court were pleased to say our reputation had pre- 
 ceded us, and the two Irish gentlemen were made welcome. The 
 very first night at court we lost 740 of our 800 louis ; the next 
 evening, at the court-marshal's table, I won them back, with 1300 
 more. You may be sure we allowed no one to know how near we 
 were to ruin on the first evening, but, on the contrary, I endeared 
 every one to me by my gay manner of losing, and the finance- 
 minister himself cashed a note for 400 ducats, drawn by me upon 
 my steward of Ballybarry Castle in the kingdom of Ireland, which 
 very note I won from his excellency the next day, along with a 
 considerable sum in ready cash. In that noble court every body 
 was a gambler. You would see the lacqueys in the ducal ante- 
 rooms at work with their dirty packs of cards ; the coach and 
 chair-men playing in the court, while their masters were punting 
 in the saloons above ; the very cook-maids and scullions, I was 
 told, had a bank, where one of them, an Italian confectioner, made 
 a handsome fortune. He purchased afterwards a Roman marqui- 
 sate, and his son has figured as one of the most fashionable of the 
 illustrious foreigners then in London. The poor devils of soldiers 
 played away their pay, when they got it, which was seldom ; and 
 I don't believe there was an officer in any one of the Guard regi- 
 ments but had his cards in his pouch, and no more forgot his dice 
 than his sword-knot. Among such fellows it was diamond cut 
 diamond. "What you call fair play would have been a folly. The 
 gentlemen of Ballybarry would have been fools, indeed, to appear 
 as pigeons in such a hawk's nest. None but men of courage and 
 genius could live and prosper in a society where every one was 
 
 k 2
 
 132 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 bold and clever ; and here my uncle and I held our own, ay, and 
 more than our own. 
 
 His highness the duke was a widower, or rather since the death 
 of the reigning duchess, had contracted a Morganatic marriage 
 with a lady whom he had ennobled, and who considered it a com- 
 pliment (such was the morality of those days) to be called the 
 Northern Dubarry. He had been married very young, and his 
 son, the hereditary prince, may be said to have been the political 
 sovereign of the state, for the reigning duke was fonder of pleasure 
 than of politics, and loved to talk a great deal more with his grand 
 huntsman, or the director of his opera, than with ministers and 
 ambassadors. 
 
 The hereditary prince, whom I shall call Prince Victor, was of a 
 very different character from his august father. He had made the 
 "Wars of the Succession and Seven Years, with great credit in the 
 empress's service, was of a stern character, seldom appeared at 
 court, except when ceremony called him, but lived almost alone in 
 his wing of the palace, where he devoted himself to the severest 
 studies, being a great astronomer and chemist. He shared in 
 the rage, then common throughout Europe, of hunting for the 
 philosopher's stone ; and my uncle often regretted that he had 
 no smattering of chemistry, like Balsamo (who called himself 
 Cagliostro), St. Germain, and other individuals, who had obtained 
 very great sums from Duke Victor by aiding him in his search 
 after the great secret. His amusements were hunting and reviewing 
 the troops ; but for him, and if his good-natured father had not 
 had his aid, the army would have been playing at cards all 
 day, and so it was well that the prudent prince was left to 
 govern. 
 
 Duke Victor was fifty years of age, and his princess, the Prin- 
 cess Olivia, was scarce three-and-twenty. They had been married 
 seven years, and, in the first years of their union the princess had 
 borne him a son and a daughter. The stern morals and manners, 
 the dark and ungainly appearance, of the husband, w r ere little 
 likely to please the brilliant and fascinating young woman, who 
 had been educated in the south (she was connected with the ducal 
 
 house of S ), who had passed two years at Paris under the 
 
 guardianship of Mesdames, daughters of his most Christian
 
 THE MEMOIRS OE BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 133 
 
 Majesty, and -who was the life and soul of the court of X , 
 
 the gayest of the gay, the idol of her august father-in-law, and, 
 indeed, of the whole court. She was not beautiful, but charming: ; 
 not witty, but charming too, in her conversation as in her person. 
 She was extravagant beyond all measure ; so false, that you could 
 not trust her ; but her very weaknesses were more winning than 
 the virtues of other women, her selfishness more delightful than 
 others' generosity. I never knew a woman whose faults made 
 her so attractive. She used to ruin people, and yet they all loved 
 her. My old uncle has seen her cheating at ombre, and let her 
 win 400 louis without resisting in the least. Her caprices with 
 the officers and ladies of her household were ceaseless, but they 
 adored her. She was the only one of the reigning family whom 
 the people worshipped. She never went abroad but they followed 
 her carriage with shouts of acclamation, and, to be generous to 
 them, she would borrow the last penny from one of her poor maids 
 of honour, whom she would never pay. In the early days her 
 husband was as much fascinated by her as all the rest of the world 
 was ; but her caprices had caused frightful outbreaks of temper on 
 his part, and an estrangement which though interrupted by almost 
 mad returns of love, was still general. I speak of her royal high- 
 ness with perfect candour and admiration, although I might be 
 pardoned for judging her more severely, considering her opinion 
 of myself. She said the elder Monsieur de Balibari was a finished 
 old gentleman, and the younger one had the manners of a courier. 
 The world has given a different opinion, and I can afford to 
 chronicle this almost single sentence against me. Besides she 
 had a reason for her dislike to me, which you shall hear. 
 
 Five years in the army, long experience of the world had, ere 
 now, dispelled any of those romantic notions regarding love, with 
 which I commenced life ; and I had determined, as is proper with 
 gentlemen (it is only your low people who marry for mere affec- 
 tion), to consolidate my fortunes by marriage. In the course of 
 our peregrinations, my uncle and I had made several attempts to 
 carry this object into effect ; but numerous disappointments had 
 occurred, which are not worth mentioning here, and had prevented 
 me hitherto from making such a match as I thought was worthy 
 of a man of my birth, abilities, and personal appearance. Ladies are
 
 134 THE MEMOIRS OP BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 not in the habit of running away on the Continent, as is the 
 custom in England (a custom whereby many honourable gentle- 
 men of my country have much benefited) ; guardians and cere- 
 monies, and difficulties of all kinds intervene ; true love is not 
 allowed to have its course, and poor women cannot give away their 
 honest hearts to the gallant fellows who have won them. Now it 
 was settlements that were asked for ; now it was my pedigree and 
 title-deeds that were not satisfactory, though I had a plan and 
 rent roll of the Ballybany estates, and the genealogy of the family 
 up to King Brian Boru, or Barry, most handsomely designed on 
 paper ; now it was a young lady who was whisked off to a convent, 
 just as she was ready to fall into my arms ; on another occasion, 
 when a rich widow of the Low Countries was about to make me 
 lord of a noble estate in Flanders, comes an order of the police 
 which drives me out of Brussels at an hour's notice, and consigns 
 
 my mourner to her chateau. But at X I had an opportunity 
 
 of playing a great game, and had won it, too, but for the dreadful 
 catastrophe which upset my fortune. 
 
 In the household of the hereditary princess, there was a lady 
 nineteen years of age, and possessor of the greatest fortune in the 
 whole duchy. The Countess Ida, such was her name, was daughter 
 of a late minister and favourite of his highness the Duke of 
 
 X and his duchess, who had done her the honour to be her 
 
 sponsors at birth, and who, at the father's death, had taken her 
 under their august guardianship and protection. At sixteen she 
 was brought from her castle, where, up to that period, she had 
 been permitted to reside, and had been placed with the Princess 
 Olivia, as one of her highness's maids of honour. 
 
 The aunt of the Countess Ida, who presided over her house 
 during her minority, had foolishly allowed her to contract an 
 attachment for her cousin-german, a penniless sub-lieutenant in 
 one of the duke's foot regiments, who had flattered himself to be 
 able to carry off this rich prize ; and if he had not been a blunder- 
 ing, silly idiot indeed, with the advantage of seeing her constantly, 
 of having no rival near him, and the intimacy attendant upon close 
 kinsmanship, might easily, by a private marriage, have secured the 
 young countess and her possessions. But he managed matters so 
 foolishlv, that he allowed her to leave her retirement, to come to
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 135 
 
 court for a year, and take her place in the Princess Olivia's house- 
 hold, and then what does my young gentleman do, but appear 
 at the Duke's levee one day, in his tarnished epaulet and thread- 
 bare coat, and make an application in due form to his highness, as 
 the young lady's guardian, for the hand of the richest heiress in 
 his dominions ! 
 
 The weakness of the good-natured prince was such that, as the 
 Countess Ida herself was quite as eager for the match as her silly 
 cousin, his highness might have been induced to allow the match, 
 had not the Princess Olivia been induced to interpose, and to* 
 procure from the duke a peremptory veto to the hopes of the 
 young man. The cause of this refusal was as yet unknown, no 
 other suitor for the young lady's hand was mentioned, and the 
 lovers continued to correspond, hoping that time might effect a 
 change in his highness's resolutions, when, of a sudden, the lieu- 
 tenant was drafted into one of the regiments which the prince, was 
 in the habit of selling to the great powers then at war (this military 
 commerce was a principal part of his highness's and other princes' 
 revenues in those days), and their connection was thus abruptly 
 broken off. 
 
 It was strange that the Princess Olivia should have taken this 
 part against a young lady who had been her favourite ; for, at 
 first, with those romantic and sentimental notions which almost 
 every woman has, she had somewhat encouraged the Countess Ida 
 and her penniless lover, but now suddenly turned against them, 
 and, from loving the countess, as she previously had done, pursued 
 her with every manner of hatred which a woman knows how to 
 inflict ; and there was no end to the ingenuity of her tortures, the 
 venom of her tongue, the bitterness of her sarcasm and scorn. 
 
 When I first came to court at X , the young fellows there 
 
 had nicknamed the young lady the Dumme Gr'dfinn, the stupid 
 countess. She was generally silent, handsome, but pale, stolid- 
 looking, and awkward, taking no interest in the amusements of 
 the place, and appearing in the midst of the feasts as glum as 
 the death's head which, they say, the Eomans used to have at 
 their tables. 
 
 It was rumoured that a young gentleman of French extraction, 
 the Chevalier de Magny, equerry to the reigning duke, and present
 
 136 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 at Paris when the Princess Olivia was married to him bj proxy 
 there, was the intended of the rich Countess Ida ; but no official 
 declaration of the kind was yet made, and there were whispers 
 of a dark intrigue, which, subsequently, received frightful 
 confirmation. 
 
 This Chevalier de Magny was the grandson of an old general 
 officer in the duke's service, the Baron de Magny. The baron's 
 father had quitted Prance at the expulsion of Protestants, after 
 
 the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and taken service in X , 
 
 •where he died. The son succeeded him, and quite unlike most 
 Prench gentlemen of birth whom I have known, was a stern and 
 cold Calvinist, rigid in the performance of his duty, retiring in 
 his manners, mingling little with the court, and a close friend 
 and favourite of Duke Victor, whom he resembled in disposition. 
 
 The chevalier, his grandson, was a true Frenchman : he had 
 been born in Prance, where his father held a diplomatic appoint- 
 ment in the duke's service. He had mingled in the gay society 
 of the most brilliant court in the world, and had endless stories 
 to tell us of the pleasures of the petites maisons, of the secrets 
 of the Pare aux Cerfs, and of the wild gaieties of Richelieu and 
 his companions. He had been almost ruined at play, as his father 
 had been before him ; for, out of the reach of the stern old baron 
 in Germany, both son and grandson had led the most reckless of 
 lives. He came back from Paris soon after the embassy which 
 had been despatched thither on the occasion of the marriage of 
 the princess, was received sternly by his old grandfather, who, 
 however, paid his debts once more, and procured him the post in 
 the duke's household. The Chevalier de Magny rendered himself 
 a great favourite of his august master ; he brought with him the 
 modes and the gaieties of Paris ; he was the deviser of all the 
 masquerades and balls, the recruiter of the ballet-dancers, and 
 by far the most brilliant and splendid young gentleman of the 
 court. 
 
 After we had been a few weeks at Ludwigslust, the old Baron 
 de Magny endeavoured to have us dismissed from the duchy ; but 
 his voice was not strong enough to overcome that of the general 
 public, and the Chevalier de Magny especially stood our friend 
 with his highness when the question was debated before him.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 137 
 
 The chevalier's love of play had not deserted him. He was a 
 regular frequenter of our bank, where he played for some time 
 with pretty good luck, and where, when he began to lose, he paid 
 with a regularity surprising to all those who knew the sinalluess 
 of his means, aud the splendour of his appearance. 
 
 Her highness the Princess Olivia was also very fond of play. 
 On half-a-dozen occasions when we held a bank at court, I could 
 see her passion for the game. I could see — that is, my cool- 
 headed old uncle could see — much more. There was an intel- 
 ligence between Monsieur de Magny and this illustrious lady. 
 "If her highness be not in love with the little Frenchman," my 
 uncle said to me one night after play, " may I lose the sight of 
 my last eye !" 
 
 " And what then, sir ?" said I. 
 
 ""What then?" said my uncle, looking me hard in the face. 
 " Are you so green as not to know what then ? Tour fortune is 
 to be made, if vou choose to back it now ; and we mav have back 
 the Barry estates in two years, my boy." 
 
 " How is that ?" asked I, still at a loss. 
 
 My uncle dryly said, " Get Magny to play ; never mind his 
 paying ; take his notes of hand. The more he owes the better ; 
 but, above all, make him play." 
 
 "He can't pay a shilling," answered I. "The Jews Will not 
 discount his notes at cent, per cent." 
 
 " So much the better. Tou shall see we will make use of them," 
 answered the old gentleman. And I must confess that the plan 
 he laid was a gallant, clever, and fair one. 
 
 I was to make Magny play ; in this there was no great difficulty. 
 "We had an intimacy together, for he was a good sportsman as 
 well as myself; and we came to have a pretty considerable friend- 
 ship for one another ; and, if he saw a dice-box, it was impossible 
 to prevent him from handling it ; but he took to it as natural as 
 a child does to sweetmeats. 
 
 At first he won of me ; then he began to lose ; then I played 
 him money against some jewels that he brought, family trinkets, 
 he said, and indeed of considerable value. He begged me, how- 
 ever, not to dispose of them in the duchy, and I gave and kept 
 my word to him to this effect. From jewels he got to playing
 
 133 THE MEMOIRS OF BARKY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 upon promissory notes ; and, as they would not allow him to play 
 at the court tables and in public upon credit, he was very glad to 
 have an opportunity of indulging his favourite passion upon credit. 
 I have had him for hours at my pavilion (which I had fitted up in 
 the Eastern manner, very splendid) rattling the dice till it became 
 time to go to his service at court, and we would spend day after 
 day in this manner. He brought me more jewels, — a pearl neck- 
 lace, an antique emerald breast ornament, and other trinkets, as a 
 set-off against these losses, — for I need not say that I should not 
 have played with him all this time had he been winning : but, after 
 about a week, the luck set in against him, and he became my 
 debtor in a prodigious sum. I do not care to mention the 
 extent of it ; it was such as I never thought the young man 
 could pay. 
 
 "Why, then, did I play for it ? why waste days in private play 
 with a mere bankrupt, when business seemingly much more pro- 
 fitable was to be done elsewhere ? My reason, I boldly confess. 
 I wanted to win from Monsieur de Magny not his money, but his 
 intended wife, the Countess Ida. "Who can say that I had not a 
 right to use any stratagem in this matter of love ? Or, why say 
 love ? I wanted the wealth of the lady ; I loved her quite as 
 much as Magny did ; I loved her quite as much as yonder 
 blushing virgin of seventeen does who marries an old lord of 
 seventy. I followed the practice of the world in this, having 
 resolved that marriage should achieve my fortune. 
 
 I used to make Magny, after his losses, give me a friendly letter 
 of acknowledgment to some such effect as this, — 
 
 '• My dear Monsieur de Balibari, I acknowledge to have lost to you this day 
 at lansquenet [or picquet, or hazard, as the case may be : I was master of him 
 at any game that is played] the sum of three hundred ducats, and shall hold 
 it as a great kindness on your part if you will allow the debt to stand over 
 uutil a future day, when you shall receive payment from your very grateful, 
 humble servant." 
 
 "With the jewels he brought me I also took the precaution (but 
 this was my uncle's idea, and a very good one) to have a sort of 
 invoice, and a letter begging me to receive the trinkets as so much 
 part payment of a sum of money he owed me. 
 
 "When I had put him in such a position as I deemed favourable
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 139 
 
 to my intentions, I spoke to him candidly, and without any 
 reserve, as one man of the world should speak to another. " I 
 will not, my dear fellow," said I, " pay you so bad a compliment 
 as to suppose that you expect we are to go on playing at this rate 
 much longer, and that there is any satisfaction to me in possessing 
 more or less sheets of paper bearing your signature, and a series 
 of notes of hand which I know you never can pay. Don't look 
 fierce or angry, for you know Eedmond Barry is your master at 
 the sword ; besides, I would not be such a fool as to fight a man 
 who owes me so much money ; but hear calmly what I have to 
 propose. 
 
 " You have been very confidential to me during our intimacy of 
 the last month ; and I know all your personal affairs completely. 
 You have given your word of honour to your grandfather never 
 to play upon parole, and you know how you have kept it, and that 
 he will disinherit you if he hears the truth. 1ST ay, suppose he dies 
 to-morrow, his estate is not sufficient to pay the sum in which you 
 are indebted to me ; and, were you to yield me up all, you would 
 be a beggar, and a bankrupt too. 
 
 " Her Highness the Princess Olivia denies you nothing. I shall 
 not ask why ; but give me leave to say, I was aware of the fact 
 when we began to play together." 
 
 " Will you be made baron — chamberlain, with the grand cordon 
 of the order?" gasped the poor fellow. "The princess can do 
 any thing with the duke." 
 
 " I shall have no objection," said I, " to the yellow riband and 
 the gold key ; though a gentleman of the house of Ballybarry cares 
 little for the titles of the German nobility. But this is not what 
 I want. My good chevalier, you have hid no secrets from me. 
 You have told me with what difficulty you have induced the 
 Princess Olivia to consent to the project of your union with 
 the Grafinn Ida, whom you don't love. I know whom you love 
 very well." 
 
 '"Monsieur de Balibari!" said the discomfited chevalier; he 
 could get out no more. The truth began to dawn upon him. 
 
 " You begin to understand," continued I. " Her highness the 
 princess (I said this in a sarcastic way) will not be very angry, 
 believe, me, if you break off your connection with the stupid
 
 140 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 countess. I am no more an admirer of that lady than you are ; 
 but I want her estate. I played you for that estate, and have won 
 it; and I will give you your bills and five thousand ducats on the 
 day I am married to it." 
 
 "The day /am married to the countess," answered the chevalier, 
 thinking to have me, " I will be able to raise money to pay your 
 claim ten times over (tins was true, for the countess's property 
 may have been valued at near half a million of our money) ; and 
 then I will discharge my obligations to you. Meanwhile, if you 
 annoy me by threats, or insult me again as you have done, I will use 
 that influence, which, as you say, I possess, and have you turned 
 out of the duchy, as you were out of the Netherlands last year." 
 
 I rang the bell quite quietly. " Zamor," said I to a tall negro 
 fellow habited like a Turk, that used to wait upon me, "when 
 you hear the bell ring a second time, you will take this packet to 
 the marshal of the court, this to his Excellency the General de 
 Magny, and this you will place in the hands of one of the equerries 
 of his highness the hereditary prince. Wait in the anteroom, and 
 do not go with the parcels until I ring again." 
 
 The black fellow having retired, I turned to Monsieur de Magny 
 and said, " Chevalier, the first packet contains a letter from you 
 to me, declaring your solvency, and solemnly promising payment 
 of the sums you owe me ; it is accompanied by a document from 
 myself (for I expected some resistance on your part), stating that 
 my honour has been called in question, and begging that the 
 paper may be laid before your august master, his highness. The 
 second packet is for your grandfather, inclosing the letter from 
 you in which you state yourself to be his heir, and begging for a 
 confirmation of the fact. The last parcel for his highness the 
 hereditary duke," added I, looking most sternly, " contains the 
 Gustavus Adolphus emerald, which he gave to his princess, and 
 which you pledged to me as a family jewel of your own. Tour 
 influence with her highness must be great indeed," I concluded, 
 "when you could extort from her such a jewel as that, and when 
 you could make her, in order to pay your play-debts, give up a 
 secret upon which both your heads depend," 
 
 "Villain!" said the Frenchman, quite aghast with fury and 
 terror, " would you implicate the princess ? "
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 141 
 
 " Monsieur de Magny," I answered with a sneer ; " no, I will 
 say you stole the jewel." It was my belief be did, and tbat the 
 unhappy and infatuated princess was never privy to the theft 
 nntil lone; after it had been committed. How we came to know 
 the history of the emerald is simple enough. As we wanted money 
 (for my occupation with Magny caused our bank to be much 
 neglected), my uncle had carried Magny's trinkets to Mannheim 
 to pawn. The Jew who lent upon them knew the history of the 
 stone in question ; and when he asked how her highness came to 
 part with it, my uncle very cleverly took up the story where ho 
 fouud it, said that the princess was very fond of play, that it was not 
 always convenient to her to pay, and hence the emerald had come 
 
 into our hands. He brought it wisely back with him to S ; 
 
 and, as regards the other jewels which the chevalier pawned to us, 
 they were of no particular mark ; no inquiries have ever been made 
 about them to this day ; and I did not only not know then that 
 they came from her highness, but have only my conjectures upon 
 the matter now. 
 
 The unfortunate young gentleman must have had a cowardly 
 spirit, when I charged him Avith the theft, not to make use of my 
 two pistols that were lying by chance before him, and to send out 
 of the world his accuser and his own ruined self. With such 
 imprudence and miserable recklessness on his part and that of the 
 unhappy lady who had forgotten herself for this poor villain, he 
 must have known that discovery was inevitable. But it was 
 written that this dreadful destiny should be accomplished ; instead 
 of ending like a man, he now cowed before me quite spirit-broken, 
 and, flinging himself clown on the sofa, burst into tears, and calling 
 wildly upon all the saints to help him, as if they could be interested 
 in the fate of such a wretch as him ! 
 
 I saw that I had nothing to fear from him ; and, calling back 
 Zamor, my black, said I would myself carry the parcels, which I 
 returned to my escritoire; and, my point being thus gained, I 
 acted, as I always do, generously towards him. I said that, for 
 security's sake, I should send the emerald out of the country, but 
 that I pledged my honour to restore it to the duchess, without 
 any pecuniary consideration , on the day when she should procure 
 the sovereign's consent to my union with the Countess Ida.
 
 142 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 This will explain pretty clearly, I natter myself, the game I was 
 playing ; and, though some rigid moralist may ohject to its pro- 
 priety, I say that anything is fair in love, and that men so poor as 
 myself can't afford to be squeamish about their means of getting 
 on in life. The great and rich are welcomed, smiling, up the 
 grand staircase of the world ; the poor but aspiring must clamber 
 up the wall, or push and struggle up the back stair, or, pardi, 
 crawl through any of the conduits of the house, never mind how 
 foul and narrow, that lead to the top. The unambitious sluggard 
 pretends that the eminence is not worth attending, declines 
 altogether the struggle, and calls himself a philosopher. I 
 say he is a poor-spirited coward. What is life good for but 
 for honour ? and that is so indispensable, that we should attain it 
 any how. 
 
 The manner to be adopted for Magny's retreat was proposed by 
 myself, and was arranged so as to consult the feelings of delicacy 
 of both parties. I made Magny take the Countess Ida aside, 
 and say to her, " Madam, though I have never declared myself 
 your admirer, you and the count have had sufficient proof of my 
 regard for you ; and my demand would, I know, have been backed 
 by his highness, your august guardian. I know the duke's 
 gracious wish is, that my attentions should be received favourably; 
 but, as time has not appeared to alter your attachment elsewhere, 
 and as I have too much spirit to force a lady of your name and 
 rank to be united to me against your will, the best plan is, that 
 I should make you, for form's sake, a proposal ««authorised by 
 his highness : that you should reply, as I am sorry to think your 
 heart dictates to you, in the negative: on which I also will 
 •formally withdraw from my pursuit of you, stating that, after a 
 refusal, nothing, not even the duke's desire, should induce me to 
 persist in my suit." 
 
 The Countess Ida almost wept at hearing these words from 
 Monsieur de Magny, and tears came into her eyes, he said, as she 
 took his hand for the first time, and thanked him for the delicacy 
 of the proposal. She little knew that the Frenchman was in- 
 capable of that sort of delicacy, and that the graceful manner in 
 which he withdrew his addresses was of my invention.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OP BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 143 
 
 As soon as he withdrew, it became my business to step forward, 
 but cautiously and gently, so as not to alarm the lady, and yet 
 firmly, so as to convince her of the hopelessness of her designs of 
 uniting herself with her shabby lover, the sub-lieutenant. The 
 Princess Olivia was good enough to perform this necessary part 
 of the plan in my favour, and solemnly to warn the Countess Ida, 
 that though Monsieur de Magny had retired from paying his 
 addresses, his highness, her guardian, would still marry her as he 
 thought fit, and that she must for ever forget her out-at-elbowed 
 adorer. In fact, I can't conceive how such a shabby rogue as 
 that could ever have had the audacity to propose for her: his 
 birth was certainly good ; but what other qualifl cations had he ? 
 
 "When the Chevalier de Magny withdrew, numbers of other 
 suitors, you may be sure, presented themselves; and amongst 
 these your very humble servant, the cadet of Ballybarry. There 
 was a carrousel, or tournament, held at this period, in imitation of 
 the antique meetings of chivalry, in which the chevaliers tdted at 
 each other, or at the ring ; and on this occasion I was habited in 
 a splendid Rornan dress (viz. : a silver helmet, a flowing periwig, 
 a cuirass of gilt leather richly embroidered, a light blue velvet 
 mantle, and crimson morocco half-boots): and in this habit I rode 
 my bay horse Brian, and carried off three rings, and won the prize 
 over all the duke's gentry, and the nobility of surrounding 
 countries who had come to the show. A wreath of gilded laurel 
 was to be the prize of the victor, and it was to be awarded by the 
 lady he selected. So I rode up to the gallery where the Countess 
 Ida was seated behind the hereditary princess, and, calling her 
 name loudly, yet gracefully, begged to be allowed to be crowned 
 by her, and thus proclaimed myself to the face of all Germany, 
 as it were, her suitor. She turned very pale, and the princess red 
 I observed : but the Countess Ida ended by crowning me : after 
 which, putting spurs into my horse, I galloped round the ring, 
 saluting his highness the duke at the opposite end, and perform- 
 ing the most wonderful exercises with my bay. 
 
 My success did not, as you may imagine, increase my popu- 
 larity with the young gentry. They called me adventurer, bully, 
 dice-loader, impostor, and a hundred pretty names ; but I had a 
 way of silencing these gentry. I took the Count de Schmetter-
 
 144 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ, 
 
 ling, the richest and bravest of the young men who seemed to 
 have a hankering for the Countess Ida, and publicly insulted him 
 at the Eidotto, flinging my cards into his face. The next day I 
 
 rode thirty- five miles into the territory of the Elector of B , 
 
 and met Monsieur de Schraetterling, and passed my sword twice 
 through his body ; and rode back with my second, the Chevalier 
 de Magny, and presented myself at the duchess's whist that 
 evening. Magny was very unwilling to accompany me at first ; 
 but I insisted upon his support, and that he should countenance 
 my quarrel. Directly after paying my homage to her highness, I 
 went up to the Countess Ida, and made her a marked and low 
 obeisance, gazing at her steadily in the face until she grew crimson 
 red ; and then staring round at every man who formed her circle, 
 until, mafoi, I stared them all away. I instructed Magny to say, 
 everywhere, that the countess was madly in love with me ; which 
 commission, along with many others of mine, the poor devil was 
 obliged to perform. He made rather a sotte figure, as the French 
 say, acting the pioneer for me, praising me everywhere, accom- 
 panying me always ! he who had been the pink of the mode 
 until my arrival ; he who thought his pedigree of beggarly barons 
 of Maguy was superior to the race of great Irish kings from 
 which I descended ; who had sneered at me a hundred times as 
 a spadassin, a deserter, and had called me a vulgar Irish 
 upstart. Now I had my revenge of the gentleman, and took 
 it too. 
 
 I used to call him, in the choicest societies, by his Christian 
 name of Maxime. I would say, " Bon jour, Maxime ; comment 
 vas iu ? " in the princess's hearing, and could see him bite his 
 lips for fury and vexation. But I had him under my thumb, and 
 her highness too — I, poor private of Billow's regiment. And this 
 is a proof of what genius and perseverance can do, and should 
 act as a warning to great people never to have secrets, if they can 
 help it. 
 
 1 knew the princess hated me, but what did I care ? She knew 
 I knew all, and indeed, I believe, so strong was her prejudice 
 against me, that she thought I was an indelicate villain, capable 
 of betraying a lady, which I would scorn to do ; so that she 
 trembled before mo as a child before its schoolmaster. She
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 145 
 
 would, in her woman's way, too, make all sorts of jokes and 
 sneers at me on reception days, and ask about my palace in 
 Ireland, and the kings, my ancestors, and whether, when I was 
 a private in Biilow's foot, my royal relatives had interposed to 
 rescue me, and whether the cane was smartly administered there, 
 — anything to mortify me. But Heaven bless you ! I can make 
 allowances for people, and used to laugh in her face. Whilst 
 her gibes and jeers were continuing, it was my pleasure to look 
 at poor Magny and see how he bore them. The poor devil was 
 trembling lest I should break out under the princess's sarcasms 
 and tell all ; but my revenge Avas, when the princess attacked me, 
 to say something bitter to him, — to pass it on as boys do at 
 school. And that was the thing which used to make her highness 
 feel. She would wince just as much when I attacked Magny as 
 if I had been saying anything rude to herself. And, though she 
 hated me, she used to beg my pardon in private ; and though her 
 pride would often get the better of her, yet her prudence obliged 
 this magnificent princess to humble herself to the poor penniless 
 Irish boy. 
 
 As soon as Magny had formally withdrawn from the Countess 
 Ida, the princess took the young lady into favour again, and 
 pretended to be very fond of her. To do them justice I don't 
 know which of the two disliked me most, — the princess, who was 
 all eagerness, and fire, and coquetry, or the countess, who was 
 all state and splendour. The latter, especially, pretended to be 
 disgusted by me ; and yet, after all, I have pleased her betters, 
 was once one of the handsomest men in Europe, and would defy 
 any heyduc of the court to measure a chest or a leg with me ; but 
 I did not care for any of her silly prejudices, and determined to 
 win her and wear her in spite of herself. "Was it on account of 
 her personal charms or qualities ? No. She was quite white, 
 thin, short-sighted, tall, and awkward, and my taste is quite the 
 contrary ; and as for her mind, no wonder that a poor creature 
 who had a hankering after a wretched rasped ensign could never 
 appreciate me. It was her estate I made love to ; as for herself, 
 it would be a reflection on my taste as a man of fashion to own 
 that I liked her. 
 
 VOL. III.
 
 146 THE MEMOIRS OE BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 CHAPTEIl XI. 
 
 137 -WHICH THE LUCK GOES AGAINST BAEET. 
 
 j\It hopes of obtaining the hand of one of the richest heiresses 
 in Germany were now, as far as all human probability went, and 
 as far as my own merits and prudence could secure my fortuue, 
 pretty certain of completion. I was admitted whenever I pre- 
 sented myself at tbe princess's apartments, and had as frequent 
 opportunities as I desired of seeing the Countess Ida there. I 
 cannot say that she received me with any particular favour; the 
 silly young creature's affections were, as I have said, engaged 
 ignobly elsewhere ; and, however captivating my own person and 
 manners may have been, it was not to be expected that she 
 should all of a sudden forget her lover for the sake of the young 
 Irish gentleman who was paying his addresses to her. But such 
 little rebuffs as I got were far from discouraging me. I had very 
 powerful friends, who were to aid me in my undertaking ; and 
 knew that, sooner or later, the victory must be mine. In fact, 
 I only waited my time to press my suit. "Who could tell the 
 dreadful stroke of fortune which was impending over my 
 illustrious protectress, and which was to involve me partially in 
 her ruin ? 
 
 All things seemed for awhile quite prosperous to my wishes ; 
 and, in spite of the Countess Ida's disinclination, it was much easier 
 to bring her to her senses than, perhaps, may be supposed in a 
 silly, constitutional country like England, where people are 
 brought up with those wholesome sentiments of obedience to 
 royalty, which were customary in Europe at the time when I was 
 a young man. 
 
 I have stated how, through Magny, I had the princess, as it 
 were, at my feet. Her highness had only to press the match 
 upon the old duke, over whom her influence was unbounded, and 
 to secure the good-will of the Countess of Liliengarten (which 
 was the romantic title of his highness's morganatic spouse), and 
 the easy old man would give an order for the marriage, which his 
 ward would perforce obey. Madame do Liliengarten was too,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 147 
 
 from her position, extremely anxious to oblige the Princess Olivia, 
 who might be called upon any day to occupy the throne. The 
 old duke was tottering, apoplectic, and exceedingly fond of good 
 living. When he was gone, his relict would find the patronage 
 of the Duchess Olivia most necessary to her. Hence there was 
 a close mutual understanding between the two ladies, and the 
 world said that the hereditary princess was already indebted to 
 the favourite for help on various occasions. Her highness had 
 obtained, through the countess, several large grants of monev for 
 the payment of her multifarious debts ; and she was now good 
 enough to exert her gracious influence over Madame de Lilien- 
 garten in order to obtain for me the object so near my heart. It 
 is not to be supposed that my end was to be obtained without 
 continual unwillingness and refusals on Magny's parr, but I 
 pushed my point resolutely and had means in my hands of over- 
 coming the stubbornness of that feeble young gentleman. Also, 
 I may say, without vanity, that if the high and mighty princess 
 detested me, the countess (though she was of extremely low origin, 
 it is said) had better taste and admired me. She often did us 
 the honour to go partners with us in one of our faro banks, and 
 declared that I was the handsomest man in the duchy. All I 
 was required to prove was my nobility, and I got at Vienna such 
 a pedigree as would satisfy the most greedy in that way. In fact, 
 what had a man descended from the Barrys and the Bradys to '' 
 before any von in Germany? By way of making assurance 
 doubly sure, I promised Madame de Liliengarten ten thousand 
 louis on the day of my marriage, and she knew that as a playman 
 I had never i'ailed in my word, and I vow, that had I paid fifty 
 per cent, for it, I would have got the money. 
 
 Thus by my talents, honesty, and acuteness, I had, considering 
 I was a poor patronless outcast, raised for myself very powerful 
 protectors. Even his Highness the Duke Yictor was favourably 
 inclined to me, for, his favourite charger falling ill of the staggers, 
 I gave him a ball such as my uncle Brady used to administer, 
 and cured the horse, after which his highness was pleased to notice 
 me frequently. He invited me to his hunting and shooting parties, 
 where I showed myself to be a good sportsman, and once or twice 
 he condescended to talk to me about my prospects in life, lamenting 
 
 l 2
 
 148 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 that I had taken to gambling, and that I had not adopted a 
 more regular means of advancement. "Sir," said I, "if you will 
 allow me to speak frankly to your highness, play with me is only 
 a means to an end. Where should I have been without it ? A 
 private still in King Frederic's grenadiers. I come of a race 
 which gave princes to my country ; but persecutions have deprived 
 them of their vast possessions. My uncle's adherence to his 
 ancient faith drove him from our countiy. I too resolved to seek 
 advancement in the military service ; but the insolence and ill- 
 treatment which I received at the hands of the English were net 
 bearable by a high-born gentleman, and I fled their service. It 
 was only to fall into another bondage to all appeax*ance still more 
 hopeless, when my good star sent a preserver to me in my uncle, 
 and my spirit and gallantry enabled me to take advantage of the 
 means of escape afforded me. Since then we have lived, I do not 
 disguise it, by play ; but who can say I have done him a wrong ? 
 Yet, if I could find myself in an honourable post, and with an 
 assured maintenance, I would never, except for amusement, such 
 as every gentleman must have, touch a card again. I beseech 
 your highness to inquire of your resident at Berlin if I did not 
 on every occasion act as a gallant soldier. I feel that I have 
 talents of a higher order, and should be proud to have occasion 
 to exert them, if, as I do not doubt, my fortune shall bring them 
 into play." 
 
 The candour of this statement struck his highness greatly, and 
 impressed him in my favour, and he was pleased to say that he 
 believed me, and would be glad to stand my friend. 
 
 Having thus the two dukes, the duchess, and the reigning 
 favourite enlisted on my side, the chances certainly were that I 
 should carry off the great prize ; and I ought, according to all 
 common. calculations, to have been a prince of the empire at this 
 present writing, but that my ill luck pursued me in a matter in 
 which I was not the least to blame, — the unhappy duchess's attach, 
 ment to the weak, silly, cowardly Frenchman. The display of this 
 love was painful to witness, as its end was frightful to think of. 
 The princess made no disguise of it. If Magny spoke a word to 
 a lady of her household, she would be jealous, and attack with all 
 the fury of her tongue the unlucky offender. She would send him
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 149 
 
 a half-dozen of note3 in the day : at his arrival to join her circle 
 or the courts which she held, she would brighten up, so that all 
 might perceive. It was a wonder that her husband had not long 
 ere this been made aware of her faithlessness, but the Prince 
 Victor was himself of so high and stern a nature that he could 
 not believe in her stooping so far from, her rank as to forget her 
 virtue ; and I have heard say, that when hints were given to him 
 of the evident partiality which the princess showed for the equerry, 
 his answer was a stern command never more to be troubled on 
 the subject. "The priucess is light-minded," he said, " she was 
 brought up at a frivolous court ; but her folly goes not beyond 
 coquetry, crime is impossible; she has her birth, and my name, 
 and her children; to defend her." And he would ride off to his 
 military inspections and be absent for weeks, or retire to his suite 
 of apartments, and remain closeted there whole days, only appear- 
 ing to make a bow at her highness's levee, or to give her his hand 
 at the court galas, where ceremony required that he should appear. 
 He was a man of vulgar tastes, and I have seen him in the private 
 garden, with his great ungainly figure, running races, or playing 
 at ball with his little son and daughter, whom he would find a 
 dozen pretexts daily for visiting. The serene children were brought 
 to their mother every morning at her toilette, but she received 
 them very indifferently, except on one occasion, when the young 
 Duke Ludwig got his little uniform as colonel of hussars, being 
 presented with a regiment by his godfather, the Emperor Leopold. 
 Then, for a day or two, the Duchess Olivia was charmed with the 
 little boy ; but she grew tired of him speedily, as a child does of 
 a toy. I remember one day, in the morning-circle, some of the 
 princess's rouge came off on the arm of her son's little white military 
 jacket ; on which she slapped the poor child's face, and sent him 
 sobbing away. Oh the woes that have been worked by women in 
 this world ! the misery into which men have lightly stepped with 
 smiling faces, often not even with the excuse of passion, but from 
 mere foppery, vanity, and bravado ! Men play with these dreadful 
 two-edged tools, as if no harm could come to them. I, who have 
 seen more of life than most men, if I had a son, would go on my 
 knees to him and beg him to avoid woman, who is worse than 
 poison. Once intrigue, and your whole life is endangered ; you
 
 150 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 never know when the evil may fall upon you, and the woe of 
 whole families, and the ruin of innocent people perfectly dear to 
 you, may be caused by a moment of your folly. 
 
 When I saw how entirely lost the unlucky Monsieur de Magny 
 seemed to be, iu spite of all the claims I had against him, I urgqd 
 him to fly. He had rooms in the palace, in the garrets over the 
 princess's quarters (the building was a huge one, and accommodated 
 almost a city of noble retainers of the family) ; but the infatuated 
 young fool would not budge, although he had not even the excuse 
 of love for staying. " How she squints," he woidd say of the 
 princess, " and how crooked she is ! She thinks no one can per- 
 ceive her deformity. She writes me verses out of Gresset or 
 Crebillon, and fancies I believe them to be original. Bah ! they 
 are no more her own than her hair is !" It was in this way that 
 the wretched lad was dancing over the ruin that was yawning under 
 him. I do believe that his chief pleasure in making love to the 
 princess was, that he might write about his victories to his friends 
 of the petit es maisons at Paris, where he longed to be considered 
 as a wit and a vainqaeur de dames. 
 
 Seeing the young man's recklessness, and the danger of his 
 position, I became very anxious that my little scheme should be 
 brought to a satisfactory end, and pressed him warmly on the 
 matter. 
 
 My solicitations with him were, I need not say, from the nature 
 of the connection between us, generally pretty successful ; and, 
 in fact, the poor fellow could refuse me nothing, as I used often 
 laughingly to say to him, very little to his liking. But I used 
 more than threats, or the legitimate influence I had over him. 
 I used delicacy and generosity ; as a proof of which, I may mention 
 that I promised to give back to the princess the family emerald, 
 which I mentioned in the last chapter, that I had won from her 
 unprincipled admirer at play. 
 
 This was done by my uncle's consent, and was one of the usual 
 acts of prudence and foresight which distinguish that clever man. 
 " Press the matter now, Redmond, my boy," he would urge. 
 " This affair between her highness and Magny must end ill for 
 both of them, and that soon, and where will be your chance to 
 win the countess then ? Now is your time ! win her and wear
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 151 
 
 her before the month is over, and we will give up the punting 
 business, and go live like noblemen at our castle in Swabia. Get 
 rid of that emerald, too," he added ; " should an accident happen, 
 it will be an ugly deposit found in our hand." This it was that 
 made me agree to forego the possession of the trinket, which, I 
 must confess, I was loth to part with. It was lucky for U3 both 
 that I did, as you shall presently hear. 
 
 Meanwhile, then, I urged Magny : I myself spoke strongly to 
 the Countess of Liliengarten, who promised formally to back my 
 claim with his highness the reigning duke ; and Monsieur de 
 Magny was instructed to induce the Princess Amalia to make a 
 similar application to the old sovereign in my behalf. It was done. 
 The two ladies urged the prince ; his highness (at a supper of 
 oysters and champagne) was brought to consent, and her highness 
 the hereditary princess did me the honour of notifying personally 
 to the Countess Ida that it was the prince's will that she should 
 marry the young Irish nobleman, the Chevalier Eedmond de 
 Balibari. The notification was made in my presence ; and though 
 the young countess said " Never!" and fell down in a swoon at 
 her lady's feet, I was, you may be sure, entirely unconcerned at 
 this little display of mawkish sensibility, and felt, indeed, now 
 that my prize was secure. 
 
 That evening I gave the Chevalier de Magny the emerald, which 
 he promised to restore to the princess ; and now the only difficulty 
 in my way lay with the hereditary prince, of whom his father, his 
 wife, and the favourite, were alike afraid. He might not be dis- 
 posed to allow the richest heiress in his duchy to be carried off" 
 by a noble, though not a wealthy foreigner. Time was necessary 
 in order to break the matter to Prince Victor. The princess 
 must find him at some moment of good humour. He had days of 
 infatuation still, when he could refuse his wife nothing ; and our 
 plan was to wait for one of these, or for any other chance which 
 might occur. 
 
 But it w-as destined that the princess should never see her 
 husband at her feet, as often as he had been. Pate was preparing 
 a terrible ending to her follies, and my own hope. In spite of his 
 solemn promises to me, Magny never restored the emerald to the 
 Princess Amalia.
 
 152 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYXDON, ESQ. 
 
 He Lad heard, in casual intercourse with me, that rny uncle and 
 I had been beholden to Mr. Moses Lowe, the banker of Heidel- 
 berg, who had given us a good price for our valuables ; and the 
 infatuated young man took a pretext to go thither, and offered the 
 jewel for pawn. Moses Lowe recognised the emerald at once, gave 
 Magny the sum the latter demanded, which the chevalier lost 
 presently at play ; never, you may be sure, acquainting us with 
 the means by which he had made himself master of so much 
 capital. "We, for our parts, supposed that he had been supplied 
 by his usual banker, the princess ; and many rouleaux of his gold 
 pieces found their way into our treasury, when at the court galas, 
 at our own lodgings, or at the apartments of Madame de Liliengarten 
 (who on these occasions did us the honour to go halves with us) 
 we held our bank of faro. 
 
 Thus Magny's money was very soon gone. But though the 
 Jew held his jewel, of thrice the value no doubt, of the sums he 
 had lent upon it, that was not all the profit which he intended to 
 have from his unhappy creditor, over whom he began speedily to 
 
 exercise his authority. His Hebrew connections at X , 
 
 money-brokers, bankers, horse-dealers, about the court there, must 
 have told their Heidelberg brother what Magny's relations with 
 the princess were ; and the rascal determined to take advantage of 
 these, and to press to the utmost both victims. My uncle and I 
 were, meanwhile, swimming upon the high tide of fortune, pros- 
 pering with our cards, and with the still greater matrimonial game 
 which we were playing ; and we were quite unaware of the mine 
 under our feet. 
 
 Before a month was passed, the Jew began to pester Magny. 
 
 He presented himself at X , and asked for further interest — 
 
 hush-money, otherwise he must sell the emerald. Magny got 
 money for him ; the princess again befriended her dastardly lover. 
 The success of the first demand only rendered the second more 
 exorbitant. I know not how much money was extorted and 
 paid on this unlucky emerald ; but it was the cause of the ruin 
 of us all. 
 
 One night we were keeping our table as usual at the Countess 
 of Liliengarten's, and Magny being in cash somehow kept drawing
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 153 
 
 out rouleau after rouleau, and playing with his common ill-success. 
 In the middle of the play a note was brought in to him, which he 
 read, and turned very pale on perusing ; but the luck was against 
 him, and looking up rather anxiously at the clock, he waited for a 
 lew more turns of the cards, and having, I suppose, lost his last 
 rouleau, he got up with a wild oath that scared some of the polite 
 company assembled, and left the room. A great trampling of 
 horses was heard without, but we were too much encased with 
 our business to heed the noise, and continued our play. 
 
 Presently some one came into the play-room and said to the 
 countess, " Here is a strange story ! A Jew has been murdered 
 in the Kaiserwald. Magny was arrested when he went out of 
 the room." All the party broke up hearing this strange news, 
 and we shut up our bank for the night. Magny had been sitting 
 by me during the play (my uncle dealt and I paid and took the 
 money), and, looking under the chair there was a crumpled paper, 
 which I took up and read. It was that which had been delivered 
 to him and ran thus : 
 
 "If you have done it, take the orderly's horse who brings this. It is the best of 
 my stable. There are a hundred louis in each holster, and the pistols are loaded. 
 Either course lies open to you ; you know what I 'men. In a quarter of an hour 
 I shall know our fate — whether I am to be dishonoured and survive you, whether 
 you are guilty and a coward, or whether you are still worthy of the name of 
 
 M." 
 
 This was in the hand-writing of the old General de Magny ; and 
 my uncle and I, as we walked home at night, having made and 
 divided with the Countess Liliengarten no inconsiderable profits 
 that night, felt our triumphs greatly dashed by the perusal of the 
 letter. "Has Magny," we asked, " robbed the Jew, or has his 
 intrigue been discovered ? " In either case, my claims on the 
 Countess Ida were likely to meet with serious drawbacks ; and I 
 began to feel that my " great card " was played and perhaps lost. 
 
 Well it teas lost ; though I say, to this day, it was well and 
 gallantly played. After supper (which we never for fear of con- 
 sequences took during play), I became so agitated in my mind as 
 to what was occurring that I determined to sally out about mid- 
 night into the town, and inquire what was the real motive of 
 Mngny's apprehension. A sentry was at the door, and signified 
 to me that I and my uncle were under arrest.
 
 154 THE MEMOIRS OF BAERY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 "We were left in our quarters for sis weeks so closely watched 
 that escape was impossible, had we desired it ; but, as innocent 
 men, we had nothing to fear. Our course of life was open to all, 
 and we desired and courted inquiry. Great and tragical events 
 happened during those six weeks, of which, though we heard the 
 outline, as all Europe did, when we were released from our cap- 
 tivity we were yet far from understanding all the particulars, which 
 were not much known to me for many years after. Here they 
 are as they were told me by the lady, who of all the world, perhaps 
 was most likely to know them. But the narrative had best form 
 the contents of another chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONTAINS THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF TIIE PRINCESS OE X- 
 
 Moke than twenty years after the events described in the past 
 chapters I was walking with my Lady Lyndon, in the Eotunda, 
 at Kanelagh. It was in the year 1790 ; the emigration from 
 Prance had already commenced, the old counts and marquises 
 were thronging to our shores, not starving and miserable as one 
 saw them a few years afterwards, but unmolested as yet, and 
 bringing with them some token of their national splendour. I was 
 walking with Lady Lyndon, who proverbially jealous and always 
 anxious to annoy me, spied out a foreign lady who was evidently 
 remarking me, and of course asked who was the hideous fat 
 Dutchwoman who was lcerinc: at me so ? I knew her not in the 
 least. I felt I had seen the lady's face somewhere (it was now, as 
 my wife said, enormously fat and bloated), but I did not recognise 
 in the bearer of that face one who had been among the most 
 beautiful women in Germany in her day. 
 
 It was no other than Madame de Liliengarten, the mistress, or 
 
 as some said the morganatic wife, of the old Duke of X , 
 
 Duke Victor's father. She had left X a few months after 
 
 the elder duke's demise, had gone to Paris, as I heard, where some
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 155 
 
 ■unprincipled adventurer had married her for her money; but, 
 however, had always retained her quasi-royal title, and pretended, 
 amidst the great laughter of the Parisians who frequented her 
 house, to the honours and ceremonial of a sovereign's widow. 
 She had a throne erected in her state-room, and was styled by her 
 servants and those who wished to pay court to her, or borrow 
 money from her, " Altesse." Eeport said she drank rather 
 copiously — certainly her face bore every mark of that habit, and 
 had lost the rosy, frank, good-humoured beauty which had charmed 
 the sovereign who had ennobled her. 
 
 Although she did not address me in the circle at Banelagh, I 
 was at this period as well known as the Prince of "Wales, and she 
 had no difficulty in finding my house in Berkeley Square, whither 
 a note was next morning despatched to me. " An old friend of 
 Monsieur de Balibari," it stated (in extremely bad French), "is 
 anxious to see the Chevalier again and to talk over old happy 
 times. Eosina de Liliengarten (can it be that Redmond Balibari 
 has forgotten her ?) will be at her house in Leicester Fields all 
 the morning looking for one who would never have passed her by 
 twenty years ago." 
 
 Eosina of Liliengarten it was, indeed — such a full-blown 
 Eosina I have seldom seen. I found her in a decent first-floor 
 in Leicester Fields (the poor soul fell much lower after- 
 wards) drinking tea, which had somehow a very strong smell of 
 brandy in it ; and after salutations, which would be more tedious 
 to recount than they were to perform, and after farther straggling 
 conversation, she gave me briefly the following narrative of the 
 
 events in X , which I may well entitle the " Princess's 
 
 Tragedy." 
 
 " Tou remember Monsieur de Geldern, the police minister. 
 He was of Dutch extraction, and, what is more, of a family of 
 Dutch Jews. Although every body was aware of this blot in his 
 scutcheon, he was mortally angry if ever his origin was sus- 
 pected ; and made up for his father's errors by outrageous pro- 
 fessions of religion, and the most austere practices of devotion. 
 He visited church, every 'morning, confessed once a-week, and 
 hated Jews and Protestants as much as an inquisitor could do.
 
 156 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDOX, ESQ. 
 
 H e never lost an opportunity of proving his sincerity, by perse- 
 cuting one or the other whenever occasion fell in his way. 
 
 " He hated the princess mortally ; for her highness in some 
 whim had insulted him with his origin, caused pork to be removed 
 from before him at table, or injured him in some such silly way ; 
 and he had a violent animosity to the old Baron de Magny, both 
 in his capacity of Protestant, and because the latter in some 
 haughty mood had publicly turned his back upon him as a 
 sharper and a spy. Perpetual quarrels were taking place between 
 them in council, where it was only the presence of his august 
 masters that restrained the baron from publicly and frequently 
 expressing the contempt which he felt for the officer of police. 
 
 " Thus Greldern had hatred as one reason for ruining the 
 princess, and it is my belief he had a stronger motive still — 
 interest. You remember whom the duke married, after the 
 
 death of his first wife ? — a princess of the house of P . 
 
 Geldern built his fine palace two years after, and, as I feel 
 
 convinced, with the money which was paid to him by the P 
 
 family for forwarding the match. 
 
 " To go to Prince Victor, and report to his highness a case 
 which every body knew, was not by any means Geldern's desire. 
 He knew the man would be ruined for ever in the prince's 
 estimation who carried him intelligence so disastrous. His 
 aim, therefore, was, to leave the matter to explain itself to his 
 highness; and, when the time was ripe, he cast about for a means 
 of carrying his point. He had spies in the houses of the elder 
 and younger Magny ; but this you know, of course, from your 
 experience of Continental customs. "We had all spies over each 
 other. Tour black (Zamor, I think, was his name) used to give 
 me reports every morning; and I used to entertain the dear old 
 duke with stories of you and your uncle practising picquet and 
 dice in the morning, and with your quarrels and intrigues. Tv r e 
 
 levied similar contributions on every body in X , to amuse 
 
 the dear old man. Monsieur de Magny's valet used to report 
 both to me and Monsieur de Geldern. 
 
 " I knew of the fact of the emerald being in pawn ; and it was 
 out of my exchequer that the poor princess drew the funds 
 which were spent upon the odious Lowe, and the still more
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDOX, ESQ. 157 
 
 worthless young chevalier. How the princess could trust the 
 latter as she persisted in doing, is beyond my comprehension ; 
 but there is no infatuation like that of a woman in love : and vou 
 will remark, my dear Monsieur de Balibari, that our sex gene- 
 rally fix upon a bad man." 
 
 " ]NTot always, madam," I interposed; "your humble servant 
 has created many such attachments." 
 
 "I do not see that that affects the truth of the proposition," 
 said the old lady dryly, and continued her narrative. " The Jew 
 who held the emerald had had many dealings with the princess, 
 and at last was offered a bribe of such magnitude, that he 
 determined to give up the pledge. He committed the inconceiv- 
 able imprudence of bringing the emerald with him to X , 
 
 and waited on Magny, who was provided by the princess with 
 the money to redeem the pledge, and was actually ready to 
 pay it. 
 
 " Their interview took place in Magny's own apartments, 
 when his valet overheard every word of their conversation. The 
 young man, who was always utterly careless of money when it 
 was in his possession, was so easy in offering it, that Lowe rose 
 in his demands, and had the conscience to ask double the sum for 
 which he bad previously stipulated. 
 
 " At this the chevalier lost all patience, fell on the wretch, and 
 was for killing him, when the opportune valet rushed in and 
 saved him. The man had heard every word of the con- 
 versation between the disputants, and the Jew ran flying with 
 terror into his arms ; and Magny, a quick and passionate, but 
 not a violent man, bade the servant lead the villain down stairs, 
 and thought no more of him. 
 
 " Perhaps he was not sorry to be rid of him, and to have in his 
 possession a large sum of money, four thousand ducats, with 
 which he could tempt fortune once more, as you know he did at 
 your table that night." 
 
 " Tour ladyship went halves, madam," said I ; " and you know 
 how little I was the better for my winnings." 
 
 " The man conducted the trembling Israelite out of the palace, 
 and no sooner had seen him lodged at the house of one of his 
 brethren, where he was accustomed to put up, than he went away
 
 158 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 to the office of his excellency the minister of police, and narrated 
 every word of the conversation which had taken place between 
 the jew and his master. 
 
 " Geldern expressed the greatest satisfaction at his spy's 
 prudence and fidelity. He gave him a purse of twenty ducats, 
 and promised to provide for him handsomely, as great men do 
 sometimes promise to reward their instruments ; but you. 
 Monsieur de Babbari, know how seldom those promises are 
 kept. 'Now, go and find out,' said Monsieur de Geldern, 'at 
 what time the Israelite proposes to return home again, or whether 
 he will repent, and take the money.' The man went on this 
 errand. Meanwhile, to make matters sure, Geldern arranged a 
 play-party at my house, inviting you thither with your bank, as 
 you may remember; and finding means, at the same time, to 
 let Maxime de Magny know that there was to be faro at 
 Madame de Liliengarten's. It was an invitation the poor fellow 
 never neglected." 
 
 I remembered the facts, and listened on, amazed at the artifice 
 of the infernal minister of police. 
 
 " The spy came back from his message to Lowe, and stated 
 that he had made inquiries among the servants of the house 
 where the Heidelberg banker lodged, and that it was the latter's 
 
 intention to leave W that afternoon. He travelled by 
 
 himself, riding an old horse, exceedingly humbly attired, after the 
 manner of his people. 
 
 " ' Johann,' said the minister, clapping the pleased spy upon 
 the shoulder, i I am more and more pleased with you. I hare 
 been, thinking, since you left me, of your intelligence, and the 
 faithful manner in which you have served me ; and shall soon 
 find an occasion to place you according to your merits. Which 
 way does this Israelitish scoundrel take ? ' 
 
 " ' He goes to li to-night.' 
 
 " ' And must pass by the Kaiserwald. Are you a man of 
 courage, Johann Kerner ? ' 
 
 " "Will your excellency try me ? ' said the man, his eyes glitter- 
 ing; C I served through the Seven Years' War, and was never 
 known to fail there.' 
 
 " ' Now, listen. The emerald must be taken from that Jew ;
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ, 159 
 
 in the very keeping it the scoundrel has committed high treason. 
 To the man who brings me that emerald I swear I will give five 
 hundred louis. Toil understand why it is necessary that it 
 should be restored to her highness. I need say no more.' 
 
 "'You shall have it to-night, sir,' said the man. ' Of course 
 your excellency will hold me harmless in case of accident.' 
 
 " ' Psha ! ' answered the minister ; ' I will pay you half the 
 money beforehand ; such is my confidence in you. Accident's 
 impossible, if you take your measures properly. There are 
 four leagues of wood ; the Jew rides slowlv. It will be ni<rht 
 before he can reach, let us say, the old Powder-Mill in the wood. 
 "What's to prevent you from putting a rope across the road, and 
 dealing with him there ? Be back with me this evening at 
 supper. If you meet any of the patrol, say " foxes are loose," 
 — that's the word for to-night. They will let you pass them 
 without questions.' 
 
 " The man went off quite charmed with his commission ; and 
 when Magny was losing his money at our faro-table, his servant 
 waylaid the Jew at the spot named the Powder-Mill, in the 
 Kaiserwald. The Jew's horse stumbled over a rope which had 
 been placed across the road ; and, as the rider fell groaning to the 
 ground, Johann Kerner rushed out on him, masked, and pistol 
 in hand, and demanded his money. He had no wish to kill 
 the Jew, I believe, unless his resistance should render extreme 
 measures necessary. 
 
 " Nor did he commit any such murder ; for, as the yelling Jew 
 roared for mercy, and his assailant menaced him with the pistol, a 
 squad of patrol came up, and laid hold of the robber and the 
 wounded man. 
 
 " Kerner swore an oath. ' You have come too soon,' said he to 
 the sergeant of the police. ' Foxes are loose.' ' Some are caught,' 
 said the sergeant, quite unconcerned ; and bound the fellow's 
 hands with the rope which he had stretched across the road to 
 entrap the Jew. He was placed behind a policeman on a horse ; 
 Lowe was similarly accommodated, and the party thus came back 
 into the town as the night fell. 
 
 " They were taken forthwith to the police quarter ; and, as the 
 chief happened to be there, they were examined by his excellency
 
 1G0 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 in person. Both were rigorously searched ; the Jew's papers and 
 cases taken from him ; the jewel was found in a private pocket. 
 As for the spy, the minister, looking at him angrily, said, ' Why, 
 this is the servant of the Chevalier de Magny, one of her 
 highness' s equerries!' and, without hearing a word in excul- 
 pation from the poor frightened wretch, ordered him into close 
 confinement. 
 
 " Calling for his horse, he then rode to the prince's apartments 
 at the palace, and asked for an instant audience. When admitted, 
 lie produced the emerald. ' This jewel,' said he, ' has been found 
 on the person of a Heidelberg Jew, who has been here repeatedly 
 of late, and has had many dealings with her highness's equerry, 
 the Chevalier de Magny. This afternoon the chevalier came from 
 his master's lodgings, accompanied by the Hebrew ; was heard to 
 make inquiries as to the route the man intended to take on his 
 way homewards ; followed him, or preceded him rather, and was 
 found in the act of rifling his victim bj my police in the Kaiser- 
 wald. The man will confess nothing; but, on being searched, a 
 large sum in gold was found on his person ; and though it is with 
 the utmost pain that I can bring myself to entertain such an 
 opinion, and to implicate a gentleman of the character and name 
 of Monsieur de Magny, I do submit that our duty is to have the 
 chevalier examined relative to the affair. As Monsieur de Magny 
 is in her highness's private service, and in her confidence, I have 
 heard, I would not venture to apprehend him without your 
 highness's permission.' 
 
 " The prince's master of the horse, a friend of the old Baron de 
 Magny, who was present at the interview, no sooner heard the 
 strange intelligence, than he hastened away to the old general with 
 the dreadful news of his grandson's supposed crime. Perhaps his 
 highness himself wa j not unwilling that his old friend and tutor- 
 in-arms should have the chance of saving his family from disgrace; 
 at all events, Monsieur de Hengst, the master of the horse, was 
 permitted to go off to the baron undisturbed, and break to him 
 the intelligence of the accusation pending over the unfortunate 
 chevalier. 
 
 " It is possible that he expected some such dreadful catastrophe, 
 for, after hearing Hengst's narrative (as the latter afterwards told
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 161 
 
 me), lie only said, ' Heaven's will be done !' for some time refused 
 to stir a step in the matter, and then only by the solicitation of his 
 friend was induced to write the letter which Maxime de Magnv 
 received at our play-table. 
 
 " Whilst he was there, squandering the princess's money, a 
 police visit was paid to his apartments, and a hundred proofs, not 
 of his guilt with respect to the robbery, but of his guilty connection 
 with the princess, were discovered there, — tokens of her giving, 
 passionate letters from her, copies of his own correspondence to 
 his young friends at Paris, — all of which the police minister 
 perused, and carefully put together under seal for his highness, 
 Prince Victor. I have no doubt he perused them, for, on deliver- 
 ing them to the hereditary prince, Geldern said that, in ohedience 
 to his highnesss orders, he had collected the chevalier's papers, but 
 he need not say that, on his honour, he (Geldern) himself had 
 never examined the documents. His difference with Messieurs de 
 Alagny was known ; he begged his highness to employ any other 
 official person in the judgment of the accusation brought against 
 the young chevalier. 
 
 " All these things were going on while the chevalier was 
 at play. A run of luck — you had great luck in those days, 
 Monsieur de Balibari — was against him. He stayed and lost his 
 4000 ducats ; he received his uncle's note, and, such was the 
 infatuation of the wretched gambler, that, ou receipt of it, he went 
 down to the court-yard, where the horse was in waiting, absolutely 
 took the money which the poor old gentleman had placed in the 
 saddle-holsters, brought it up stairs, played it, and lost it, and 
 when he issued from the room to fly, it was too late ; he was 
 placed in arrest at the bottom of my staircase, as you were upon 
 entering your own home. 
 
 "Even when he came in under the charge of the soldiery sent 
 to arrest him, the old general, who was waiting, was overjoyed to 
 see him, and flung himself into the lad's arms, and embraced him, 
 it was said, for the first time in many years. ' He is here, gentle- 
 men,' he sobbed out, — 'thank God he is not guilty of the 
 robbery!' and then sank back in a chair in a burst of emotion, 
 painful, it was said by those present, to witness on the part ot a 
 man so brave, and known to be so cold and stern. 
 
 vol. in. h
 
 162 THE MEMOIRS OF BAKttY LYNBQH, ESQ. 
 
 " ' Kobbery ! ' said tlie young man, ' I swear before Heaven I 
 am guilty of none !' and a scene of almost touching reconciliation 
 ■was passed between them, before the unhappy young man was led 
 from the guardhouse into the prison which he was destined never 
 to quit. 
 
 " That night the duke looked over the papers which Gelderu 
 had brought to him. It was at a very early stage of the perusal, 
 no doubt, that he gave orders for your arrest ; for you were taken 
 at midnight, Magny at ten o'clock, after which time the old Baron 
 de Magny had seen his highness, protesting of his grandson's 
 innocence, and the prince had received him most graciously and 
 kindly. His highness said he had no doubt the young man 
 ■was innocent, his birth and his blood rendered such a crime 
 impossible ; but suspicion -was too strong against him ; he 
 was known to have been that day closeted with the Jew; to 
 have received a very large sum of money which he squandered 
 at p!av, and of which the Hebrew had, doubtless, been the 
 lender, — to have despatched his servant after him, who inquired 
 the hour of the Jew's departure, lay in wait for him, and 
 rifled him. Suspicion was so strong against the chevalier, that 
 common justice required his arrest, and, meanwhile, until he 
 cleared himself, he should be kept in not dishonourable durance, 
 and every regard had for his name, and the services of his 
 honourable grandfather. With this assurance, and with a warm 
 grasp of the hand, the prince left old General de Magny that 
 niglit, and the veteran retired to rest, almost consoled and confident 
 in Maxime's eventual and immediate release. 
 
 " But in the morning, before daybreak, the prince, who had 
 been reading papers all night, wildly called to the page, who slept 
 in the next room across the door, bade him get horses, which \ 
 always kept in readiness in the stables, and, flinging a parcel of 
 letters into a box, told the page to follow him on horseback with 
 these. The young man (Monsieur de W( issenborn) told this to 
 a young lady who Avas then of my household, and who is now 
 Madame de Weissenborn, and a mother of a score, of children. 
 
 "The page described that never was such a change seen as in 
 his august master in the course of that single nigbt. His eyes 
 were bloodshot, his face livid, his clothes were hanging loose about
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BAERT LYNDON, ESQ. 163. 
 
 him, and he who had always made his appearance on parade as 
 precisely dressed as any sergeant of his troops, might have been 
 seen galloping through the lonely streets at early dawn without 
 a hat, his unpowdered hair streaming behind him like a madman. 
 
 " The page, with the box of papers, clattered after his master, — 
 it was no easy task to follow him ; and they rode from the palace 
 to the town, and through it to the general's quarter. The sentinels 
 at the door were scared at the strange figure that rushed up to 
 the general's gate, and, not knowing him, crossed bayonets, and 
 refused him admission. 'Fools,' said Yfeissenborn, 'it is the 
 prince!' And, jangling at the bell as if for an alarm of fire, it 
 was at length opened by the porter, and his highness ran up to 
 the general's bed-chamber followed by the page with the box. 
 
 " ' Magny — Magny,' roared the prince, thundering at the 
 closed door, ' get up ! ' And to the queries of the old man from 
 within, answered, ' It is I — Yictor — the prince ! — get up !' And 
 presently the door was opened by the general in his rdbe-de-clmriibre, 
 and the prince entered. The page brought in the bos, and was 
 bidden to wait without, which he did ; but there led from 
 Monsieur de Magny's bed-room into his ante-chamber two doors, 
 the great one which formed the entrance into his room, and a 
 smaller one which led, as the fashion is with our houses abroad, 
 into the closet which communicates with the alcove where the 
 bed is. The door of this was found by M. de Weissenborn to be 
 open, and the young man was thus enabled to hear and see every 
 thing which occurred within the department. 
 
 " The general, somewhat nervously, asked what was the reason 
 of so early a visit from his highness ; to which the prince did not 
 for a while reply, farther than by staring at him rather wildly, and 
 pacing up and down the room. 
 
 " At last he said, ' Here is the cause ! ' dashing his fist on thi 
 box ; and, as he had forgotten to bring the key with him, he went 
 to the door for a moment, saying, ' Y/eissenborn, perhaps, has it ; ' 
 but, seeing over the stove one of the general's couteaux de cliassc, 
 he took it down, and said, ' That will do,' and fell to work to 
 burst the red trunk open with the blade of the forest-knife. The 
 point broke, and he gave an oath, but continued haggling on with 
 the broken blade, which was better suited to his purpose than the 
 
 u 2
 
 lGi THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 long, pointed knife, and finally succeeded in wrenching open the 
 lid of the chest. 
 
 " ' What is the matter ? ' said he, laughing, — ' Here's the 
 matter ; — Eead that ! — here's more matter, read that ! — here's 
 more — no, not that ; that's somebody else's picture — but here's 
 hers! — Do you know that, Magny ? — My wife's — the princess's! 
 — "Why did you and your cursed race ever come out of France, to 
 plant your infernal wickedness wherever your foot fell and to ruin 
 honest German homes ? What have you and yours ever had from 
 my family but confidence and kindness ? We gave you a home 
 when you had none, and here's our reward !' and he flung a parcel 
 of papers down before the old general, who saw the truth at once, 
 — he had known it long before, probably, and sunk down on his 
 chair, covering his face. 
 
 " The prince went on gesticulating and shrieking almost. ' If 
 a man injured you so, Magny, before you begot the father of that 
 gambling, lying villain yonder, you would have known how to 
 revenge yourself. You would have killed him ! Yes, would have 
 killed him. But who's to help me to my revenge ? I've no 
 equal. I can't meet that dog of a Frenchman, — that pimp from 
 Versailles, — and kill him as if he had played the traitor to one of 
 his own degree.' 
 
 " ' The blood of Maxime de Magny,' said the old gentleman, 
 proudly, ' is as good as that of any prince in Christendom.' 
 
 " ' Can I take it ? ' cried the prince ; ' you know I can't. I 
 ean't have the privilege of any other gentleman of Europe. What 
 am I to do ? Look here, Magny ; I was wild when I came here, 
 I didn't know what to do. You've served me for thirty years, 
 you've saved my life twice ; they are all knaves and harlots about 
 my poor old father here — no honest men or women — you are the 
 only one — you saved my life ; tell me what am I to do ? ' Thus, 
 from insulting Monsieur de Magny, the poor distracted prince 
 fell to supplicating him, and, at last, fairly fluug himself down, 
 and burst out in an agony of tears. 
 
 " Old Magny, one of the most rigid and cold of men on common 
 occasions, when he saw this outbreak of passion on the prince's 
 part, became, as my informant has described to me, as much 
 affected as his master. The old man from being cold and high,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 165 
 
 suddenly fell, as it were, into the whimpering querulousness of 
 extreme old age. He lost all sense of dignity ; he went down on 
 his knees, and broke out into all sorts of wild, incoherent attempts 
 at consolation ; so much so, that "Weissenborn said he could not 
 bear to look at the scene, and actually turned away from the 
 contemplation of it. 
 
 " But, from what followed in a few days, we may guess the 
 results of the long interview. The prince, when he came away 
 from the conversation with his old servant, forgot his fatal box 
 of papers and sent the page back for them. The general was on 
 his knees praying in the room when the young man entered, and 
 only stirred and looked round wildly as the other removed the 
 packet. The prince rode away to his hunting-lodge at three 
 
 leagues from X , and three days after that Maxime de 
 
 Magny died in prison, having made a confession that he was 
 engaged in an attempt to rob the Jew, and that he had made 
 away with himself, ashamed of his dishonour. 
 
 " But it is not known that it was the general himself who took 
 his grandson poison ; it was said even, that he shot him in the 
 prison. This, however, was not the case. General de Magny 
 carried his grandson the draught which was to carry him out of 
 the world, represented to the wretched youth that his fate was 
 inevitable, that it would be public and disgraceful unless he 
 chose to anticipate the punishment, and so left him. But it was 
 not of Ms own accord, and not until he had used every means of 
 escape, as you shall heai', that the unfortunate being's life was 
 brought to an end. 
 
 " As for General de Magny, he quite fell into imbecility a short 
 time after his nephew's death, and my honoured duke's demise. 
 After his highness the prince married the Princess Mary of 
 
 F , as they were walking in the English park together they 
 
 once met old Magny riding in the sun in the easy chair, in which 
 he was carried commonly abroad after his paralytic fits. ' This is 
 my wife, Magny,' said the prince, affectionately, taking the 
 veteran's hand ; and he added, turning to his princess, ' General 
 de Magny saved my life during the Seven Years' "War.' 
 
 " ' What, you've taken her back again ? ' said the old man. 
 ' I wish you'd send me back my poor Maxime.' He had quite
 
 166 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYXDON, ESQ. 
 
 forgotten the death of the poor Priucess Olivia, and the prince, 
 looking very dark indeed, passed away. 
 
 " And now," said Madame de Liliengarten, ''I have only one 
 more gloomy story to relate to you — the death of the Princess 
 Olivia. It is even more horrible than the tale I have just 
 told you." With which preface the old lady resumed her 
 narrative. 
 
 " Tne kind, weak princess's fate was hastened, if not occasioned, 
 by the cowardice of Magny. He found means to communicate 
 with her from his prison, and her highness, who was not in open 
 disgrace yet (for the duke, out of regard to the family, persisted 
 in charging Magny with only robber}'), made the most desperate 
 efforts to relieve him and to bribe the gaolers to effect his escape. 
 She was so wild that she lost all patience and prudence in the 
 conduct of any schemes she may have had for Maguy's liberation, 
 for her husband was inexorable, and caused the chevalier's prison 
 to be too strictly guarded for escape to be possible. She offered 
 the state jewels in pawn to the court banker, who of course was 
 obliged to decline the transaction. She fell down on her knees, 
 it is said, to Geldern, the police minister, and offered him 
 Heaven knows what as a bribe. Finally, she came screaming to 
 my poor dear duke, who, with his age, diseases, and easy habits, 
 was quite unfit for scenes of so violent a nature, and who, in con- 
 sequence of the excitement created in his august bosom by her 
 frantic violence and grief, had a fit in which I very nigh lost him. 
 That his dear life was brought to an untimely end by these 
 transactions I have not the slightest doubt, for the Strasbourg 
 pie, of which they said he died, never, I am sure, could have 
 injured him, but for the injury which his dear gentle heart 
 received from the unusual occurrences in which he was forced to 
 take a share. 
 
 " All her highness' s movements were carefully, though not 
 ostensibly, watched by her husband, Prince Victor, who, waiting 
 upon his august father, sternly signified to him that if his 
 highness (my duke) should dare to aid the princess in her efforts 
 to release Magny, he, Prince Victor, would publicly accuse the 
 princess and her paramour of high treason, and take measures 
 with the Diet for removing his father from the throne as incapa-
 
 THE MEMOISS OP BA11RY LYNDON, ESQ. 167 
 
 citated to reign. Hence interposition on our part was vain, and 
 Magny was left to his fate. 
 
 " It came, as you are aware, very suddenly. Geldern, police 
 minister, Hengst, master of the horse, and the colonel of the 
 prince's guard, waited upon the young man in his prison two days 
 after his grandfather had visited him there and left behind him the 
 phial of poison which the criminal had not the courage to use. 
 And Geldern signified to the young man that unless he took of 
 his own accord the laurel-water provided by the elder Magny, 
 more violent means of death would be instantly employed upon 
 him, and that a file of grenadiers was in waiting in the court-yard 
 to despatch hitn. Seeing this, Magny, with the most dreadful 
 self-abasement, after dragging himself round the room on his 
 knees from one officer to another, weeping and screaming with 
 terror, at last desperately drank oft* the potion and was a corpse 
 m a few minutes. Thus ended this wretched young man. 
 
 " His death was made public in the ' Court Gazette ' two days 
 
 after, the paragraph stating that Monsieur de M , struck 
 
 with remorse for having attempted the murder of the Jew, had 
 put himself to death by poison in prison, and a warning was 
 added to all young noblemen of the duchy to avoid the dreadful 
 sin of gambling, which had been the cause of the young man's 
 ruin, and had brought upon the grey hairs of one of the noblest 
 and most honourable of the servants of the duke irretrievable 
 sorrow. 
 
 "The funeral was conducted with decent privacy, the General 
 de Magny attending it. The carriage of the two dukes and all 
 the first people of the court made their calls upon the general 
 afterwards. He attended parade as usual the next day on the 
 Arsenal- Place, and Duke Victor, who had been inspecting the 
 building, came out of it leaning on the brave old warrior's arm. 
 He was particularly gracious to the old man, and told his officers 
 the oft-repeated story how at Bosbach, when the X con- 
 tingent served with the troops of the unlucky Soubise, the 
 general had thrown himself in the way of a French dragoon who 
 was pressing hard upon his highness in the rout, had received the 
 blow intended for his master and killed the assailant. And he 
 alluded to the family motto of ' Magny sans tache,' and said
 
 168 THK MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 'It had been always so with his gallant friend and tutor in arms.' 
 This speech affected all present very much, with the exception 
 of the old general, who only bowed and did not speak: but when 
 he went home he was heard muttering, ' Magny sans tache, Magny 
 sans tache ! ' and was attacked with paralysis that night, from 
 which he never more than partially recovered. 
 
 " The news of Maxime's death had somehow been kept from the 
 priucess until now, a ' Gazette ' even being printed without the 
 paragraph containing the account of his siiicide ; but it was at 
 length, I know not how, made known to her. And when she 
 heard it, her ladies tell me, she screamed and fell as if struck dead, 
 then sat up wildly and raved like a mad woman, and was then 
 carried to her bed, where her physician attended her, and where 
 she lay of a brain-fever. All this while the prince used to send 
 to m;ike inquiries concerning her, and from his giving orders that 
 his Castle of Schlangenfeis should be prepared and furnished, I 
 make no doubt it was his intention to send her into confinement 
 thither, as had been done with the unhappy sister of his Britannic 
 majesty at Zell. 
 
 " She sent- repeatedly to demand an interview with his highness, 
 which the latter declined, saying that he would communicate with 
 her highness when her health was sufficiently recovered. To one 
 of her passionate letters he sent back for reply a packet, which, 
 when opened, was found to contain the emerald that had been the 
 cause round which all this dark intrigue moved. 
 
 "Her highness at this time became quite frantic, vowed in the 
 presence of all her ladies that one lock of her darling Maxime's 
 hair was more precious to her than all the jewels in the world ; 
 rang for her carriage, and said she would go and kiss his tomb ; 
 proclaimed the murdered martyr's innocence, and called down the 
 punishment of Heaven, the wrath of her family, upon his assassin. 
 The prince, on hearing these speeches (they were all, of course, 
 regularly brought to him), is said to have given one of his dreadful 
 looks (which I remember now), and to have said, 'This cannot 
 last much longer.' 
 
 " All that day and the next the Princess Olivia passed in 
 dictating the most passionate letters to the prince her father, to 
 the kings of France, Naples, and Spain, her kinsmen, and to all
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 169 
 
 other branches of her family, calling upon them in the most 
 incoherent terms to protect her against the butcher and assassin, 
 her husband, assailing his person in the maddest terms of re- 
 proach, and at the same time confessing her love for the murdered 
 Magny. It was in vain that those ladies who were faithful to her 
 pointed out to her the inutility of these letters, the dangerous 
 folly of the confessions which they made ; she insisted upon 
 writing them, and used to give them to her second robe-woman, a 
 Frenchwoman (her highness always affectioned persons of that 
 nation), who had the key of her cassette, and carried every one of 
 these epistles to Geldern. 
 
 " With the exception that no public receptions were held, the 
 ceremony of the princess's establishment went on as before. Her 
 ladies were allowed to wait upon her and perform their usual 
 duties about her person. The only men admitted were, however, 
 her servants, her physician and chaplain ; and one day when she 
 wished to go into the garden, a heyduke, who kept the door, 
 intimated to her highness that the prince's orders were that she 
 should keep her apartments. 
 
 " They abut, as you remember, upon the landing of the marble 
 
 staircase of Schloss X , the entrance to Prince Victor's suite 
 
 of rooms being opposite the princess's on the same landiug. This 
 space is large, filled with sofas and benches, and the gentlemen 
 and officers who waited upon the duke used to make a sort of 
 ante-chamber of the landing-place, and pay their court to his 
 highness there, as he passed out, at eleven o'clock, to parade. At 
 such a time, the heydukes within the princess's suite of rooms 
 used to turn out with their halberts and present to Prince Victor 
 — the same ceremony being performed on his own side, when 
 pages came out and announced the approach of his highness. 
 The pages used to come out and say, ' The prince, gentlemen ! ' 
 and the drums beat in the hall, and the gentlemen rose who were 
 waiting on the benches that ran along the balustrade. 
 
 " As if fate impelled her to her death, one day the princess, as 
 her guards turned out, and she was aware that the prince was 
 standing, as was his wont, ou the landing, conversing with his 
 gentlemen (in the old days, he used to cross to the princess's 
 apartment and kiss her hand), the princess, who had been anxious
 
 170 THE MEMOIRS OF BAERY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 all the morning, complaining of beat, insisting that all the doors 
 of the apartments should be left open, and giving tokens of an 
 insanity, which I think was now evident, rushed wildly at the 
 doors when the guards passed out, flung them open, and before a 
 word could be said, or her ladies could follow her, was in presence 
 of Duke Victor, who was talking as usual on the landing, and 
 placing herself between him and the stair, began apostrophising 
 him with frantic vehemence : — 
 
 " 'Take notice, gentlemen! ' she screamed out, 'that this man 
 is a murderer and a liar ; that he lays plots for honourable gentle- 
 men, and kills them in prison ! Take notice, that I too am in prison, 
 and fear the same fate ; the same butcher who killed Maxime de 
 Magny may, any night, put the knife to my throat. I appeal to 
 you, and to all the kings of Europe, my royal kinsmen. I 
 demand to be set free from this tyrant and villain, this liar and 
 traitor! I adjure you all, as gentlemen of honour, to carry these 
 letters to my relatives, and say from whom you had them ! ' and 
 with this the unhappy lady began scattering letters about among 
 the astonished crowd. 
 
 " ' Let no man sloop ! ' cried the prince, in a voice of thunder. 
 'Madame de Gieim, you should have watched your patient better. 
 Call the princess's physicians : her highness's brain is afiected. 
 Gentlemen, have the goodness to retire.' And the prince stood 
 on the landing as the gentlemen went down the stairs, saying 
 fiercely to the guard, ' Soldier, if she moves, strike with your 
 halbcrt! ' on which the man brought the point of his weapon to 
 the princess's breast ; and the lady, frightened, shrank back and 
 re-entered her apartments. ' Now, Monsieur de Weissenborn,' 
 said the prince, ' pick up all those papers ;' and the prince went 
 into Ins own apartments, preceded by his pages, and never quitted 
 them until he had seen every one of the papers burnt. 
 
 " The next day the Court Gazette contained a bulletin signed 
 by the three physicians, stating that ' Her highness the hereditary 
 princess laboured under inflammation of the brain, and had passed 
 a restless and disturbed night.' Similar notices were issued day 
 after day. The services of all her ladies, except two, were dis- 
 pensed with. Guards were placed within and without her doors; 
 her windows were secured, so that escape from them was impos-
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 171 
 
 sible, and you know what took place ten days after. The church- 
 bells were ringing all night, and the prayers of the faithful asked 
 for a person in extremis. A ' Gazette ' appeared in the morning, 
 edged with black, and stating that the High nnd mighty Princess 
 Olivia Maria Ferdinanda, consort of His Serene Highness Victor 
 
 Louis Emanuel, Hereditary Prince of X , had died in the 
 
 evening of the 24th of January, 1769. 
 
 " But do you know how she died, sir ? That, too, is a mystery. 
 "Weissenborn, the page, was concerned in this dark tragedy; and 
 the secret was so dreadful that never, believe me, till Prince 
 Victor's death did I reveal it. 
 
 " And after the fatal esclandre which the princess had made, the 
 prince sent for Weissenborn, and binding him by the most solemn 
 adjuration to secrecy (he only broke it to his wife many years 
 after ; indeed there is no secret in the world that women cannot 
 know if they will), despatched him on the following mysterious 
 ■commission. 
 
 " ' There lives,' said his highness, ' on the K"ehl side of the 
 river, opposite to Strasbourg, a man whose residence you will 
 easily find out from his name, which is Monsieur de Strasbourg. 
 Tou will make jour inquiries concerning him quietly, and without 
 occasioning any remark ; perhaps you had better go into Stras- 
 bourg for the purpose, where the person is quite well known. 
 Tou will take with you any comrade on whom you can perfectly 
 rely ; the lives of both, remember, depend on your secrecy. Tou 
 will find out some period when Monsieur de Strasbourg is alone, 
 or only in company of the domestic who lives with him (I myself 
 visited the man by accident on my return from Paris five years 
 since, and hence am induced to send for him now, in my present 
 emergency). Tou will have your carriage waiting at bis door at 
 night ; and you and your comrade will enter his house masked, 
 and present him with a purse of a hundred louis, promising him 
 double that sum on his return from his expedition. If he refuse, 
 you must use force and bring him, menacing him with instant 
 death should he decline to follow you. Tou will place him iu the 
 carriage with the blinds drawn, one or other of you never losing 
 sight of him the whole way, and threatening him with death if he 
 discover himself or cry out. Tou will lodge him in the old Tower
 
 172 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 here, where a room shall he prepared for him ; and his work being 
 done, you will restore him to his home in the same speed and 
 secrecy with which you brought him from it.' 
 
 " Such were the mysterious orders Prince Victor gave his page ; 
 and Weissenborn, selecting for bis comrade in the expedition 
 Lieutenant Bartenstein, set out on his strange journey. 
 
 " All this while the palace was hushed as if in mourning, the 
 bulletins in the ' Court Gazette ' appeared announcing the con- 
 tinuance of the princess's malady ; and though she had but few 
 attendants, strange and circumstantial stories were told regarding 
 the progress of her complaint. She was quite wild. She had 
 tried to kill herself. She had fancied herself to be I don't know 
 how many different characters. Expresses were sent to her 
 family informing them of her state, and couriers despatched 
 publicly to Vienna and Paris to procure the attendance of phy- 
 sicians skilled in treating diseases of the brain. That pretended 
 anxiety was all a feint, it was never intended that the princess 
 should recover. 
 
 " The dav on which "Weissenborn and Bartenstein returned 
 from their expedition, it was announced that her highness the 
 princess was much worse ; that night the report through the town 
 was that she was at the agony, and that night the unfortunate 
 creature was endeavouring to make her escape. 
 
 " She had unlimited confidence in the French chamber-woman 
 who attended her, and between her and this woman the plan of 
 escape was arranged. The princess took her jewels in a casket ; 
 a private door, opening from one of her rooms and leading into 
 the outer gate, it was said, of the palace, was discovered for her ; 
 and a letter was brought to her purporting to be from the duke, 
 her father-in-law, and stating that a carriage and horses had been 
 
 provided, and would take her to B , the territory where she 
 
 might communicate with her family and be safe. 
 
 " The unhappy lady, confiding in her guardian, set out on the 
 expedition. The passages wound through the walls of the modern 
 part of the palaces and abutted in effect at the old Owl Tower, as 
 it was called, on the outer wall ; the tower was pulled down 
 afterwards, and for good reason. 
 
 " At a certain place the candle, which the chamber-woman was
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 170 
 
 carrying, went out; and the princess -would have screamed with 
 terror, but her hand was seized, and a voice cried, ' Rush ! ' and 
 the next minute a man in a mask (it was the duke himself) 
 rushed forward, gagged her with a handkerchief, her hands and 
 legs were bound, and she was carried swooning with terror into 
 a vaulted room, where she was placed by a person there waiting, 
 and tied in an arm-chair. The same mask who had gagged 
 her, came and bared her neck and said, ' It had best be done now 
 she has fainted.' 
 
 " Perhaps it would have been as well ; for though she recovered 
 from her swoon, and her confessor, who was present, came for- 
 ward and endeavoured to prepare her for the awful deed which 
 was about to be done upon her, and for the state into which she 
 was about to enter; when she came to herself it was only to 
 scream like a maniac, to curse the duke as a butcher and tyrant, 
 and to call upon Magny, her dear Magny. 
 
 " At this the duke said, quite calmly, ' May God have mercy 
 on her sinful soul ! ' He, the confessor, and Geldern, who were 
 present, went down on their knees ; and, as his highness dropped 
 his handkerchief, Weissenborn fell down in a fainting-fit, while 
 Monsieur de Strasbourg, taking the back hair in his hand, separated 
 the shrieking head of Olivia from the miserable, sinful body. 
 May Heaven have mercy upon her soul ! " 
 
 This was the story told by Madame de Liliengarten, and the 
 reader will have no difficulty in drawing from it that part which 
 affettel myself and my uncle; who, after six weeks of arrest, were 
 set at liberty, but with orders to quit the duchy immediately ; 
 indeed, with an escort of dragoons to conduct us to the frontier. 
 What property we had we were allowed to sell and realise in 
 money, but none of our play debts were paid to us, and all of my 
 hopes of the Countess Ida were thus at an end. 
 
 When Duke Victor came to the throne, which he did when six 
 months after, apoplexy carried off" the old sovereign his father, all 
 
 the good old usages of X were given up, — play forbidden; 
 
 the opera and ballet sent to the right-about ; and the regiments 
 which the old duke had sold recalled from their foreign service ; 
 with them came my countess's beggarly cousin, the ensign, and
 
 174 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 he married her. I don't know whether they were happy or not. 
 It is certain that a woman of such a poor spirit did not merit any 
 very high degree of pleasure. 
 
 The now reigning Duke of X himself married four years 
 
 after his first wife's demise ; and Geldern, though no longer 
 police-minister, built the grand house of which Madame de 
 Liliengarten spoke. What became of the minor actors in the 
 great tragedy, who knows ? Only Monsieur de Strasbourg was 
 restored to his duties. Of the rest, — the Jew, the chamber- 
 woman, the spy on Magny, I know nothing. Those sharp tools 
 with which great people cut out their enterprises, are generally 
 broken in the using; nor did I ever hear that their employers 
 had much regard for them in their ruin. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 I CONTINUE MY CAKEEB AS A MAN OE EASHION. 
 
 I find I have already filled up many scores of pages, and yet a 
 vast deal of the most interesting portion of my history remains 
 to be told, viz., that which describes my sojourn in the kingdoms 
 of England and Ireland, and the great part I played there, 
 moving among the most illustrious of the land, myself not the 
 least distinguished of the brilliant circle. In order to give due 
 justice to this portion of my memoirs, then, — which is more 
 important than my foreign adventures can be (though I could 
 fill volumes with interesting descriptions of the latter), — I shall 
 cut short the account of my travels in Europe, and of my success 
 at the Continental courts, in order to speak of what befell me 
 at home. Suffice it to say that there is not a capital in Europe, 
 except the beggarly one of Berlin, where the young Chevalier de 
 Balibari was not known and admired, and where he has not made 
 the brave, the high-born, and the beautiful, talk of him. I won 
 80,000 roubles from Potemkin at the winter palace at Petersburg, 
 which the scoundrelly favourite never paid me; I have had the 
 honour of seeing his Royal llighuess the Chevalier Charles
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BAEEY LYNDON, ESQ. 175 
 
 Edward as drunk as any porter at Borne ; my uncle played 
 
 several matches at billiards against the celebrated Lord C 
 
 at Spa, and I promise you did not come off" a loser. In fact, by 
 a neat stratagem of ours, we raised the laugh against his lord- 
 ship, and something a great deal more substantial. My lord did 
 not know that the Chevalier Barry had a useless eye, and when, 
 one day, my uncle playfully bet him odds at billiards that he 
 would play him with a patch over one eye, the noble lord, 
 thinking to bite us (he was one of the most desperate gamblers 
 that ever lived), accepted the bet, and we won a very considerable 
 amount of him. 
 
 Nor need I mention my successes among the fairer portion of 
 the creation. One of the most accomplished, the tallest, the 
 most athletic, and the handsomest gentlemen of Europe, as I was 
 then, a young fellow of my figure could not fail of having advan- 
 tages, which a person of my spirit knew very well how to use. 
 But upon these subjects I am dumb. Charming SchuvalofT, 
 black-eyed Sczotarska, dark Yaldez, tender Hegeuheim, brilliant 
 Langeac ! — ye gentle hearts that knew how to beat in old times 
 for the warm young Irish gentleman, where are ye now ? Though 
 my hair has grown gray now, and my sight dim, and my heart 
 cold with years, and ennui, and disappointment, and the treachery 
 of friends, yet I have but tolean back in my arm-chair and think, 
 and those sweet figures come rising up before me out of the past, 
 with their smiles, and their kindnesses, and their bright tender 
 eyes ! There are no women like them now — no manners like 
 theirs ! Look you at a bevy of women at the prince's, stitched 
 up in tight white satin sacks, with their waists under their arms, 
 and compare them to the graceful figures of the old time ! W hy, 
 when I danced with Coralie de Langeac at the fetes on the birth 
 of the first dauphin at Yersailles, her hoop was eighteen feet in 
 circumference, and the heels of her lovely little mules were three 
 inches from the ground ; the lace of my jabot was worth a 
 thousand crowns, and the buttons of my amaranth-velvet coat 
 alone cost eighty thousand livres. Look at the difference now ! 
 The gentlemen are dressed like boxers, quakers, or hackney- 
 coach men ; and the ladies are not dressed at all. There is no 
 elegance, no refinement, none of the chivalry of the old world,
 
 176 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 of which I form a portion. Think of the fashion of London 
 being led by a Br-mm-11 ! * a nobody's son ; a low creature, who 
 can no more dance a minuet than I can talk Cherokee ; who 
 cannot even crack a bottle like a gentleman ; who never showed 
 himself to be a man with his sword in his hand, as we used to 
 approve ourselves in the good old times, before that vulgar 
 Corsican upset the gentry of the world ! Oh, to see the Valdez 
 once again as on that day I met her first driving in state, with 
 her eight mules, and her retinue of gentlemen by the side of 
 yellow Mancanares ! Oh, for another drive with Hegenheim, in 
 the gilded sledge, over the Saxon snow ! False as Schuvaloff 
 was, 'twas better to be jilted by her than to be adored by any 
 other woman. I can't think of any one of them without tender- 
 ness. I have ringlets of all their hair in my poor little museum 
 of recollections. Do you keep mine, you dear souls that sur- 
 vive the turmoils and troubles of near half a hundred years ? 
 How changed its colour is now, since the day Sczotarska 
 wore it round her neck, after my duel with Count Bjernaski, 
 at Warsaw ! 
 
 I never kept any beggarly books of accounts in those days. 
 I had no debts. I paid royally for every thing I took, and I 
 took every thing I wanted. My income must have been very 
 large. My entertainments and equipages were those of a gentle- 
 man of the highest distinction ; nor let any scoundrel presume 
 to sneer because I carried off and married my Lady Lyndon 
 (as you shall presently hear), and call me an adventurer, or 
 say I was penniless, or the match unequal. Penniless ! I had 
 the wealth of Europe at my command. Adventurer! So is a 
 meritorious lawyer or a gallant soldier; so is every man who 
 makes his own fortune an adventurer. My profession was play, 
 in which I was then unrivalled. No man could play with me 
 through Europe on the square; and my income was just as 
 certain (during health and the exercise of my profession) as that 
 of a man who draws on his three-per-cents, or any fat squire 
 whose acres bring him revenue. Harvest is not more certain 
 than the effect of skill is: a crop is a chance as much as a 
 
 * This manuseript must have heen written at the time when Mr. Bnimmell 
 was the leader of the London fashion.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYXDOX, ESQ. 177 
 
 prime of cards greatly played by a fine player ; there may be a 
 drought, or a i'rost, or a hail-storm, and your stake is lost : but 
 one man is just as much an adventurer as another. 
 
 In evoking the recollection of these kind and fair creatures 
 I have nothing but pleasure. I would I could say as much of 
 the memory of another lady, who will henceforth play a con- 
 siderable part in the drama of my life, — I mean the Countess 
 of Lyndon, whose fatal acquaintance I made at Spa, verv soon 
 after the events described in the last chapter had caused me to 
 quit Germany. 
 
 Honoria, Countess of Lyndon, Viscountess Bullingdon in 
 England, Baroness Castle Lyndon of the kingdom of Ireland, 
 was so well known to the great world in her day, that I have 
 little need to enter into her family history, which is to be had 
 in any peerage that the reader may lay his hand on. She was, 
 as I need not say, a countess, viscountess, and baroness in her 
 own right. Her estates in Devon and Cornwall were among the 
 most extensive in those parts ; her Irish possessions not less 
 magnificent, and they have been alluded to, in a very early part 
 of these memoirs, as lying near to my own paternal property in 
 the kingdom of Ireland : indeed, unjust confiscations in the 
 time of Elizabeth and her father went to diminish my acres, 
 while they added to the already vast possessions of the Lyndon 
 family. 
 
 The countess, when I first saw her at the assembly at Spa, 
 was the wife of her cousin, the Eight Hon. Sir Charles Reginald 
 Lyndon, Knight of the Bath, and minister to George II. and 
 George III. at several of the smaller courts of Europe. Sir 
 Charles Lyndon was celebrated as a wit and Ion vivant ; he could 
 write love-verses against Hanbury Williams, and make jokes 
 with George Selwyn ; he was a man of vertu, like Horry Walpole, 
 "with whom and Mr. Grey he had made a part of the grand tour, 
 and was cited, in a word, as one of the most elegant and accom- 
 plished men of his time. 
 
 I made this gentleman's acquaintance as usual at the play- 
 table, of which he was a constant frequenter. Indeed, one 
 could not but admire the spirit and gallantry with which he 
 pursued his favourite pastime ; for, though worn out by gout 
 
 VOL. III. N
 
 178 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 and a myriad of diseases, a cripple wheeled about iu a chair, and 
 suffering pangs of agony, yet you would see him every morning 
 and every evening at his post behind the delightful green cloth ; 
 and if, a.s it would often happen, his own hands were too feeble 
 or inflamed to hold the box, he would call the mains, neverthe- 
 less, and have his valet or a friend to throw for him. I like this 
 courageous spirit in a man ; the greatest successes in life have 
 been won by such indomitable perseverance. 
 
 I was by this time one of the best-known characters in 
 Europe ; and the fame of my exploits, my duels, my courage at 
 play, would bring crowds around me in any public society where 
 I appeared. I could show reams of scented paper to prove that 
 this eagerness to make my acquaintance was not confined to the 
 gentlemen only, but that I hate boasting, and only talk of myself 
 in so far as it is necessary to relate myself s adventures, the most 
 singular of any man's in Europe. Well, Sir Charles Lyndon's 
 first acquaintance with me originated in the right honourable 
 knight's winning 700 pieces of me at picquet (for which he 
 was almost my match) ; and I lost them with much good humour, 
 and paid them : and paid them, you may be sure, punctually. 
 Indeed, I will say this for myself, that losing money at play never 
 in the least put me out of good-humour with the winner, and that 
 wherever I found a superior, I was always ready to acknowledge 
 and hail him. 
 
 Lyndon was very proud of winning from so celebrated a 
 person, and we contracted a kind of intimacy, which, however, 
 did not for awhile go beyond pump-room attentions, and con- 
 versations over the supper-table at play, but which gradually 
 increased, until I was admitted into his more private friendship. 
 He was a very free-spoken man (the gentry of those days wire 
 much prouder than at present), and used to say to me in his 
 haughty, easy way, " Hang it, Mr. Barry, you have no more 
 manners than a barber, and I think my black footman haa been 
 better educated than you ; but you are a young fellow of origi- 
 nality and pluck, and I like you, sir, because you seem deter- 
 mined to go to the deuce by a way of your own." 1 would 
 thank him laughingly, for this compliment, and say, that as lie 
 was bound to the next world much sooner than I was, I would be
 
 THE MBMOIES OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 179 
 
 obliged to him to get comfortable quarters arranged there for me. 
 He used also to be immensely amused with my stories about the 
 splendour of my -family and the magnificence of Castle Brady; 
 he would never tire of listening or laughing at those histories. 
 
 "Stick to the trumps, however, my lad," he would say y when 
 I told him of my misfortunes in the conjugal line, and how near 
 I had been winning the greatest fortune in Germany. " Do any 
 thing but marry, my artless Irish rustic " (he called me by a 
 multiplicity of queer names). " Cultivate your great talents 
 in the gambling line, but mind this, that a woman will beat 
 
 you." 
 
 That I denied, mentioning several instances in which I had 
 conquered the most intractable tempers among the sex. 
 
 " They will beat you in the long run, my Tipperary Alei- 
 biades. As soon as you are married, take my word of it, you are 
 conquered. Look at me. I married my cousin, the noblest and 
 greatest heiress in England — married her in spite of herself 
 almost " (here a dark shade passed over Sir Charles Lyndon's 
 countenance). " She is a weak woman. You shall see her, sir, 
 how weak she is ; but she is my mistress. She has embittered 
 my whole life. She is a fool, but she has got the better of one 
 of the best heads in Christendom. She is enormously rich, but 
 somehow I have never been so poor as since I married her. I 
 thought to better myself, and she has made me miserable and 
 killed me. And she will do as much for my successor when I am 
 gone." 
 
 " Has her ladyship a very large income ? " said I. At which 
 Sir Charles burst out into a yelling laugh, and made me blush 
 not a little at my gauclierie ; for the fact is, seeing him in the 
 condition in which he was, I could not help speculating upon 
 the chance a man of spirit might have with his widow. 
 
 "No, no!" said he, laughing. " Waugh hawk, Mr. Barry, 
 don't think, if you value your peace of mind, to stand in my 
 shoes when they are vacant. Besides, I don't think my Lady 
 Lyndon would quite condescend to marry a " 
 
 " Marry a what, sir ? " said I, in a rage. 
 
 " Never mind what ; but the man who gets her will rue it, 
 take my word on't. A plague on her ! had it not been for my 
 
 »2
 
 180 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 father's ambition and mine (be was ber uncle and guardian, and 
 we wouldn't let such a prize out of the family), I might have died 
 peaceably, at least, carried my gout down to my grave in quiet, 
 lived in my modest tenement in May Fair, had every house in 
 England open to me, and now, now I have six of my own, and 
 every one of them is a hell to me. Beware of greatness, Mr. 
 Barry. Take warning by me. Ever since I have been married 
 and have been rich, I have been the most miserable wretch in 
 the world. Look at me. I am dying, a worn-out cripple at the 
 age of fifty. Marriage has added forty years to my life. When 
 I took off Lady Lyndon, there was no man of my years who 
 looked so young as myself. Eool that I was ! I had enough 
 with my pensions, perfect freedom, the best society in Europe; 
 and I gave up all these, and married, and was miserable. Take a 
 warning by me, Captain Barry, and stick to the trumps." 
 
 Though my intimacy with the knight was considerable, for a 
 long time I never penetrated into any other apartments of his 
 hotel but those which he himself occupied. His lady lived 
 entirely apart from him, and it is only curious how they came to 
 travel together at all. She was a goddaughter of old Mary Wort- 
 ley Montague, and, like that famous old woman of the last century, 
 made considerable pretensions to be a blue-stocking, and a lei 
 esprit. Lady Lyndon wrote poems in English and Italian, which 
 still may be read by the curious in the pages of the magazines of 
 the day. She entertained a correspondence with several of the 
 European savans, upon history, science, and ancient languages, 
 and especially theology. Her pleasure was to dispute controversial 
 points with abbes and bishops, and her flatterers said she rivalled 
 Madame Dacier in learning. Every adventurer, who had a dis- 
 covery in chemistry, a new antique bust, or a plan for discovering 
 the philosopher's stone, was sure to find a patroness in her. She 
 had numberless works dedicated to her, and sonnets without end 
 addressed to her by all the poetasters of Europe under the name 
 of Lindonira or Calista. Her rooms were crowded with hideous 
 China magots, and all sorts of objects of vertu. 
 
 No woman piqued herself more upon her principles, or allowed 
 love to be made to her more profusely. There was a habit of 
 courtship practised by the fine gentlemen of those days, which is
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 1S1 
 
 little understood in cur coarse, downright times ; and young aud 
 old fellows would pour out floods of compliments in letters and 
 madrigals, such as would make a sober lady stare were they 
 addressed to her now-a-days, so entirely has the gallantry of the 
 last century disappeared out of our manners. 
 
 Lady Lyndon moved about with a little court of her own. She 
 had half-a-dozen carriages in her progresses. In her own she 
 would travel with her companion (some shabby lady of quality), 
 her birds, and poodles, and the favourite savant for the time being. 
 In another would be her female secretary and her waiting-women, 
 who, in spite of their care, never could make their mistress look 
 much better than a slattern. Sir Charles Lyndon had his own 
 chariot, and the domestics of the establishment would follow in 
 other vehicles. 
 
 Also must be mentioned the carriage in which rode her lady- 
 ship's chaplain, Mr. Hunt, who acted in capacity of governor to 
 her son, the little A 7 iscount Bullingdon,— a melancholy, deserted 
 little boy, about whom his father was more than indifferent, and 
 whom his mother never saw, except for two minutes at her levee, 
 when she would put to him a few questions of history or Latin 
 grammar, after which he was consigned to his own amusements, 
 or the care of his governor, for the rest of the day. 
 
 The notion of such a Minerva as this, whom I saw in the public 
 places now and then, surrounded by swarms of needy abbes and 
 schoolmasters, who flattered her, frightened me for some time, and 
 I had not the least desire to make her acquaintance. I had no 
 desire to he one of the beggarly adorers in the great lady's train, 
 — fellows, half friend, half lackey, who made verses, and wrote 
 letters, and ran errands, content to be paid by a seat in her lady- 
 ship's box at the comedy, or a cover at her dinner-talle at noon. 
 "Don't be afraid," Sir Charles Lyndon would say, whose great 
 subject of conversation and abuse was his lady, " my Lindonira 
 will have nothing to do with you. She likes the Tuscan brogue, 
 not that of Kerry. She says you smell too much of the stable to 
 be admitted to ladies' society ; aud, last Sunday fortnight, when 
 she did me the honor to speak to me last, said, ' I wonder, Sir 
 Charles Lyndon, a gentleman who has been the king's ambassador 
 can demean himself by gambling and boozing with low Irish black-
 
 182 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 legs!' Don't fly iu a fury, I'm a cripple, and it was Lindonira 
 aaid it, not I." 
 
 This piqued me, and I resolved to become acquainted with Lady 
 Lyndon, if it were but to show her ladyship that the descendant 
 of those Barrys, whose property she unjustly held, was not an 
 unworthy companion for any lady, were she ever so high. Besides, 
 my friend the knight was dying, his widow would be the richest 
 prize in the three kingdoms. Why should I not win her, and, 
 with her, the means of making in the world that figure which my 
 genius and inclination desired ? I felt I was equal in blood and 
 breeding to any Lyndon in Christendom, and determined to bend 
 this haughty lady. "When I determine, I look upon the thing 
 as done. 
 
 My uncle and I talked the matter over, and speedily settled 
 upon a method for making our approaches upon this stately lady 
 of Castle Lyndon. Mr. Runt, young Lord Bullingdon's governor, 
 was fond of pleasure, of a glass of Rhenish in the garden-houses 
 in the summer evenings, and of a sly throw of the dice when the 
 occasion offered ; and I took care to make friends with this person, 
 who, being a college tutor and an Englishman, was ready to go on 
 his knees to any one who resembled a man of fashion. Seeing 
 me with my retinue of servants, my vis-a-vis and chariots, my 
 valets, my hussar, and horses, dressed in gold, and velvet, and 
 sables, saluting the greatest people in Europe as we met on the 
 course or a?fc the Spas, Runt was dazzled by my advances, and was 
 mine by a beckoning of the finger. I shall never forget the poor- 
 wretch's astonishment when I asked him to dine, with two counts, 
 off gold plate, at the little room in the casino ; he was made happy 
 by being allowed to win a few pieces of us, became exceedingly 
 tipsy, sung Cambridge songs, and recreated the company by telling 
 us, in his horrid Yorkshire French, stories about the gyps and all 
 the lords that had ever been in his college. I encouraged him to 
 come and see me oftener and bring with him his little viscount, 
 for whom, though the boy always detested me, I took care to have 
 a good stock of sweetmeats, toys, and picture-books, when he came. 
 
 I then began to enter into a controversy with Mr. Bunt, and 
 confided to him some doubts which I had, and a very, very earnest 
 leaning towards the Church of Borne. I made a certain abbe
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. ISO 
 
 whom I knew, write me letters upon transubstantiation, &c, 
 ■which the honest tutor was rather puzzled to answer, and I knew 
 that they would be communicated to his lady, as they were ; for, 
 asking have to attend the English service which was celebrated in 
 her apartments, and frequented by the best English then at the 
 Spa, on the second Sunday she condescended to look at me, on 
 the third she was pleased to reply to my profound bow by a curtsey, 
 the next day I followed up the acquaintance by another obeisance 
 iu the publie walk, and, to make a long story short, her ladyship 
 and I were in full correspondence on transubstantiation before six 
 weeks were over. My lady came to the aid of her chaplain, and 
 then I began to see the prodigious weight of his arguments, a3 
 was to be expected. The progress of this harmless little intrigue 
 need not be detailed. I make no doubt every one of my readers 
 has practised similar stratagems when a lair lady was iu the case. 
 
 I shall never forget the astonishment of Sir Charles Lyndon 
 when, on one summer evening, as he was issuing out to the play- 
 table in his sedan-chair, according to his wont, her ladyship's 
 barouche and four, with her outriders in the tawny livery of the 
 Lvndon familv, came drivins; into the court-vard of the house 
 which they inhabited, and in that carriage, by her ladyship's side, 
 sat no other than " the vulgar Irish adventurer," as she was pleased 
 to call him, I mean lledmond Barry, Esquire. 
 
 He made the most courtly of his bows, and grinned and waved 
 his hat in as graceful a manner as the gout permitted, and her 
 ladyship and I replied to the salutation with the utmost politeness 
 and elegance on our parts. 
 
 I could not go to the play-table for some time afterwards, for 
 Lady Lyndon and I had an argument on transubstantiation, which 
 lasted for three hours, in which she was, as usual, victorious, and 
 in which her companion, the Honourable Miss Flint Skinner, fell 
 asleep ; but when, at last, I joined Sir Charles at the casino, he 
 received me with a yell of laughter, as his wont was, and intro- 
 duced me to all the company as Lady Lyndon's interesting young 
 convert. This was his way. He laughed and sneered at every 
 thing. He laughed when he was in a paroxysm of pain ; he 
 laughed when he won money, or when he lost it; his laugh was 
 not jovial or agreeable, but rather painful and sardonic.
 
 1S4 THE MEMOIBS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said he to Punter, Colonel Loder, Count du 
 Carreau, and several jovial fellows with whom he used to discuss a 
 ilask of champagne and a Rhenish trout or two after play, " see 
 this amiable youth ! He has been troubled by religious scruples, 
 and has flown for refuge to my chaplain, Mr. Runt, who has ashed 
 for advice from my wife, Lady Lyndon ; and, between them both, 
 they are confirming my ingenious young friend in his faith. Did 
 you ever hear of such doctors and such a disciple ?" 
 
 " Faith, sir," said I, " if I want to learn good principles it's 
 surely better I should apply for them to your lady and your 
 chaplain than to you ! " 
 
 " He wants to step into my shoes ! " continued the knight. 
 
 "The man would be happy who did so," responded I, "pro- 
 vided there were no chalk-stones included ! " at which reply Sir 
 Charles was not very well pleased, and went on with increased 
 rancour. He was always free-spoken in his cups, and, to say the 
 truth, he was in his cups many more times in a week than his 
 doctors allowed. 
 
 " Is it not a pleasure, gentlemen," said he, " for me, as I am 
 drawing near the goal, to find my home such a happy one ; my 
 wife so fond of me, that she is even now thinking of appointing a 
 successor ? (I don't mean you precisely, Mr. Lyndon ; you are 
 only taking your chance with a score of others whom I could 
 mention.) Isn't it a comfort to see her, like a prudent housewife, 
 getting everything ready for her husband's departure? " 
 
 " I hope you are not thinking of leaving us soon, knight ? " 
 said I, with perfect sincerity, for I liked him as a most amusing 
 companion. 
 
 " Not so soon, my dear, as you may fancy, perhaps," continued 
 he. " Why, man, I have been given over any time these four 
 years, and there was always a candidate or two waiting to apply 
 for the situation. "Who knows how long I may keep you 
 waiting?" and he did keep me waiting some little time longer 
 than at that period there was any reason to suspect. 
 
 As I declared myself pretty openly, according to my usual way, 
 and authors are accustomed to describe the persons of the ladies 
 with whom their heroes fall in love ; in compliance with this 
 fashion, I perhaps should say a word or two respecting the charms
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 185 
 
 of my Lady Lyndon. But though I celebrated them m many 
 copies of verses of my own and other persons' writing, and though 
 I filled reams of paper in the passionate style of those days with 
 compliments to every one of her beauties and smiles, in which I 
 compared her to every flower, goddess, or famous heroine ever 
 heard of; truth compels me to say, that there was nothing divine 
 about her at all. She was very well, but no more. Her shape 
 was fine, her hair dark, her eyes good, and exceedingly active ; she 
 loved singing, but performed it as so great a lady should, very 
 much out of tune. She had a smattering of half-a-dozen modern 
 languages, and, as I have said before, of many more sciences than 
 I even knew the name of. She piqued herself on knowing Greek 
 and Latin, but the truth is, that Mr. Runt used to supply her 
 with the quotations which she introduced into her voluminous 
 correspondence. She had as much love of admiration, as strong, 
 uneasy a vanity, and as little heart, as any woman I ever knew. 
 Otherwise, when her son, Lord Bullingdon, on account of his 
 differences with me, ran — but that matter shall be told in its 
 proper time. Finally, my Lady Lyndon was about a year older 
 than myself", though, of course, she would take her Bible oath that 
 she was three years younger. 
 
 Pew men are so honest as I am, for few will own to their real 
 motives, and I don't care a button about confessing mine. AVhat Sir 
 Charles Lyndon said was perfectly true. I made the acquaintance 
 with Lady Lyndon with ulterior views. " Sir," said I to him, 
 when after the scene described and the jokes he made upon me, 
 we met alone, " let those laugh that win. You were very pleasant 
 upon me a few nights since, and on my intentions regarding your 
 lady. Well, if they are what you think they are, — if I do wish to 
 step into your shoes, what then ? I have no other intentions 
 than you had yourself. I'll be sworn to muster just as much 
 regard for my Lady Lyndon as you ever showed her ; aud if I win 
 ' her aud wear her when you're dead and gone, corbleu, knight, do 
 you think it will be the fear of your ghost will deter me ? " 
 
 Lyndon laughed as usual, but somewhat disconcertedly ; indeed 
 I had clearly the best of him in the argument, and had just as 
 much right to hunt my fortune as he had. 
 
 But one day, he said, " If you marry such a woman as my Lady
 
 186 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Lyndon, mark my -words, you will regret it. Tou will pine after 
 the liberty you once enjoyed. By George ! Captain Barry," he 
 added with a sigh, "the thing that I regret most in life, perhaps it 
 is because I am old, Mase, and dying, is, that I never had a 
 virtuous attachment." 
 
 "Ha, ha! a milkmaid's daughter!" said I, laughing at the 
 absurdity. 
 
 ""Well, why not a milkmaid's daughter? My good fellow, I 
 was in love hi youth, as most gentlemen are, with my tutor's 
 daughter, Helena, a bouncing girl, of course older than myself 
 (this made me remember my own little love passages with Nora 
 Brady, in the days of my early life), and do you know sir, I 
 heartily regret I didn't marry her ? There's nothing like having 
 a virtuous drudge at home, sir, depend upon that. It gives a zest 
 to one's enjoyments in the world, take my word for it. No man 
 of sense need restrict himself, or deny himself a single amusement 
 for his wife's sake; on the contrary, if he select the animal 
 properly, he will choose such a one as shall be no bar to his 
 pleasure, but a comfort in his hours of annoyance. For instance, 
 I have got the gout : who tends me ? A hired valet, who robs me 
 whenever he has the power. My wife never comes near me. 
 "What friend have I ? None in the wide world. Men of the 
 world, as you and I are, don't make friends, and we are fools for 
 our pains. Get a friend, sir, and that friend a woman — a good 
 household drudge, who loves you. That is the most precious sort 
 of friendship, for the expense of it is all on the woman's side. 
 The man needn't contribute anything. If he's a rogue, she'll vow 
 he's an angel ; if he is a brute, she will like hi in all the better for 
 his ill-treatment of her. They like it, sir, these women. They 
 are born to be our greatest comforts and conveniences ; our — our 
 moral boot-jacks, as it were ; and, to men in your Avay of life, 
 believe me such a person would be invaluable. I'm only speaking 
 for your bodily and mental comfort's sake, mind. Why didn't I 
 marry poor Helena Flower, the curate's daughter ? " 
 
 I thought these speeches the remarks of a weakly, disappointed 
 man, although since, perhaps, I have had reason to find the truth 
 of Sir Charles Lyndon's statements. The fact is, in my opinion^ 
 that we often buy money very much too dear. To purchase a few
 
 THE MEMOIES OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 187 
 
 thousands a-year at the expense of an odious wife, is very bad 
 economy for a young fellow of any talent and spirit ; and there 
 have been moments of my life when, in the midst of my greatest 
 splendour and opulence, with half-a-dozen lords at my levee, with 
 the finest horses in my stables, the grandest house over my head, 
 with unlimited credit at my banker's and — Lady Lyndon to boot, 
 I have wished myself back a private of Billow's or anything so as 
 to get rid of her. To return, however, to the story. Sir Charles, 
 with his complication of ills, was dying before us by inches; and 
 I've no doubt it could not have been very pleasant to him to see a 
 young handsome fellow paying court to his widow before his own 
 face, as it were. After I once got into the house on the transub- 
 stantiation dispute, I found a dozen more occasions to improve 
 my intimacy, and was scarcely ever out of her ladyship's doors. 
 The world talked and blustered, but what cared I ? The men 
 cried fie upon the shameless Irish adventurer, but I have told my 
 way of silencing such envious people ; and my sword had by this 
 time got such a reputation through Europe, that few people cared 
 to encounter it. If I can once get my hold of a place, I keep it. 
 Many's the house I have been to where I have seen the men avoid 
 me. " Faugh ! the low Irishman," they would say. " Bah ! 
 the coarse adventurer ! " " Out on the insufferable blackleg 
 and puppy ! " and so forth. This hatred has been of no 
 inconsiderable service to me in the world ; for when I fasten 
 on a man, nothing can induce me to release my hold; and 
 I am left to myself, which is all the better. As I told Lady 
 Lyndon in those days with perfect sincerity, " Calista " (I used 
 to call her Calista in my correspondence) — •" Calista, I swear to 
 thee, by the spotlessness of thy own soul, by the brilliancy of thy 
 immitigable eyes, by every thing pure and chaste in heaven and in 
 thy own heart, that I will never cease from following thee ! Scorn 
 I can bear, and have borne at thy hands. Indifference I can sur- 
 mount ; 'tis a rock which my energy will climb over, a magnet 
 which attracts the dauntless iron of my soul ! " and it was true, I 
 wouldn't have left her — no, though they had kicked me down- 
 stairs every day I presented myself at her door. 
 
 That is my way of fascinating women. Let the man who has to 
 make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his
 
 188 THE MEMOIBS OF BAKRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 only secret. Dare, and the world always yields ; or, if it beat yon 
 sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb. In those days my 
 spirit was so great, that if I had set my heart upon marrying a 
 princess of the blood, I would have had her ! 
 
 I told Calista my story, and altered very, very little of the truth. 
 My object was to frighten her, to show her that what I wanted 
 that I dared, that what I dared that I won ; and there were 
 striking passages enough in my history to convince her of my iron 
 will and indomitable courage. " Never hope to escape me, 
 madam," I would say : ' : offer to marry another man, and he dies 
 upon this sword, which never yet met its master. Fly from me, 
 and I will follow you, though it were to the urates of Hades." I 
 promise you this was very different language to that she had been 
 in the habit of hearing from her Jemmyjessamy adorers. You 
 should have seen how I scared the fellows from her ! 
 
 When I said in this energetic way that I would follow Lady 
 Lyndon across the Styx if necessary, of course I meant that I 
 would do so, provided nothing more suitable presented itself in 
 the interim. If Lyndon would not die, where was the use of my 
 pursuing the countess ? And somehow, towards the end of the 
 Spa season, very much to my mortification I do confess, the knight 
 made another rally, it seemed as if nothing would kill him. " I 
 am sorry for you, Captain Barry," he would say, laughing as 
 usual. " I'm grieved to keep you, or any gentleman, waiting. 
 Had you not better arrange with my doctor, or get the cook to 
 flavour mv omelette with arsenic? What are the odds, gentle- 
 men," he would add, " that I dou't live to see Captain Barry 
 hanged yet ? " 
 
 In fact the doctors tinkered him up for a year. £: It's my usual 
 luck," I could not help saying to my uncle, who was my confi- 
 dential and most excellent adviser in all matters of the heart ; " I've 
 been wasting the treasures of my affections upon that flirt of a 
 countess, and here's her husband restored to health and likely to 
 live I don't know how mauy years ! " And as if to add to my 
 mortification, there came just at this period to Spa, an English 
 tallow-ehandler's heiress, with a plum to her fortune, and Madame 
 Cornu, the widow of a Xorman cattle-dealer and fanner-general, 
 with a dropsy and two hundred thousand livres a-year.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 1S9 
 
 "What's the use of my following the Lyndons to England," 
 saya I, " if the knight won't die r " 
 
 " Don't follow them, my dear simple child," replied my uncle. 
 " Stop here and pay court to the new arrivals." 
 
 " Tes, and lose Calista for ever, and the greatest estate in all 
 England." 
 
 " Pooh, pooh ! youths like you easily fire and easily despond. 
 Keep up a correspondence with Lady Lyndon. You know there's 
 nothing she likes so much. There's the Irish abbe, who will 
 write you the most charming letters for a crown a-piece. Let her 
 go, write to her, and meanwhile look out for anything else which 
 may turn up. W ho knows ? you might marry the Xorman 
 widow, bury her, take her money, and be ready for the countess 
 against the knight's death." 
 
 And so with vows of the most profound respectful attachment, 
 and having given twenty louis to Lady Lyndon's waiting-woman 
 for a lock of her hair (of which fact, of course, the woman informed 
 her mistress), I took leave of the countess, when it became 
 necessary for her return to her estates in England, swearing I 
 would follow her as soon as an affair of honour I had in my hands 
 could be brought to an end. 
 
 I shall pass over the events of the year that ensued before I 
 again saw her. She wrote to me according to promise, with much 
 regularity at first, with somewhat less frequency afterwards. My 
 affairs, meanwhile, at the play-table went on not unprosperously, 
 and I was just on the point of marrying the widow Cornu (we 
 were at Brussels by this time, and the poor soul was madly in love 
 with me), when the London Gazette was put into my hands, and 
 I read the following announcement : — 
 
 " Died at Castle-Lyndon, in the kingdom of Ireland, the Right Honourable 
 Sir Ch;irles Lyndon, Knight of the Bath, Member of Parliament for Lyndon in 
 Devonshire, and many years his majesty's representative at various European 
 courts. He hath left behind him a name which is endeared to all his friends 
 for his manifold virtues and talents, a reputation justly acquired in the service 
 of his majesty, and an inconsolable widow to deplore his loss. Her ladyship, 
 the bereived Countess of Lyndon, was at the Bath when the horrid intelli- 
 gence reached her of her husband's demise, and hastened to Ireland imme- 
 diately in order to pay her last sad duties to his beloved remains." 
 
 That very night I ordered my chariot and posted to Ostend, 
 whence I freighted a vessel to Dover, and travelling rapidly into
 
 190 THE rdEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 the West, readied Bristol, from which port I embarked for "Water- 
 ford, and found myself, after an absence of eleven years, in my 
 native country. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 I RETURN TO IRELAND, AND EXHIBIT MT SPLENDOUR AND 
 GENEROSITY IN THAT KINGDOM. 
 
 How were times changed with me now ! I had left my country 
 a poor penniless boy — a private soldier in a miserable marching 
 regiment. I returned an accomplished man, with property to the 
 amount of five thousand guineas in my possession, with a splendid 
 wardrobe and jewel-case worth two thousand more, having mingled 
 in all the scenes of life a not undistinguished actor in them, 
 hnving shared in war and in love, having by my own genius and 
 energy won my way from poverty and obscurity to competence 
 and splendour. As I looked out from my chariot windows as it 
 rolled along over the bleak, bare roads, by the miserable cabins of 
 the peasantry, who came out in their rags to stare as the splendid 
 equipage passed, and huzzaed for his lordship's honour as they 
 saw the magnificent stranger in the superb gilded vehicle, my 
 huge body servant Fritz lolling behind with curling moustaches 
 and long queue, his green livery barred with silver lace, I could 
 not help thinking of myself with considerable complacency, and 
 thanking my stars that had endowed me with so many good 
 qualities. But for my own merits I should have been a raw Irish 
 squireen, such as those I saw swaggering about the wretched 
 towns through which my chariot passed on its road to Dublin. I 
 M: have married Nora Brady ("and though, thank Heaven, I 
 did not, I have never thought of that girl but with kindness, and 
 ' .11 ivi;i"inber the bitterness of losing her more clearly at this 
 moment than any other incident of my lii">), I might have been 
 be lather of ten children by this time, or a farmer on my own 
 account, or an agent to a squire, or a ganger, or an attorney, and 
 here I was one of the most famous gentlemen of Europe ! I bade 
 my fellow irci a bag of copper money and throw it among the
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARKY LYNDON, ESQ. 191 
 
 crowd as we changed horses, and I warrant me there was as much 
 shouting set up in praise of my honour as if my Lord Townsend, 
 the ] oid-lieutenant himself, had been passing. 
 
 My second day's journey, for the Irish roads were rough in 
 those days, and the progress of a gentleman's chariot terribly 
 slow, brought me to Carlow, where I put up at the very inn which 
 I had used eleven years back when flying from home after the 
 supposed murder of Quia iu the duel. How well I remember 
 every moment of the scene ! The old landlord was gone who had 
 served me ; the inn that I then thought so comfortable looked 
 wretched and dismantled, but the claret was as good as in the old 
 davs, and I had the host to partake of a jug of it and hear the 
 news of the country. 
 
 He was as communicative as hosts usually are ; the crops and 
 the markets, the price of beasts at last Castle-Dermot fair, the last 
 story about the vicar, and the last joke of Father Hogau the 
 priest; how the White Boys had burned Squire Scanlan's ricks, 
 and the highwavmen had been beaten off in their attack upon Sir 
 Thomas's house ; who was to hunt the Kilkenny hounds next 
 season,, and the wonderful run entirely they had last March ; what 
 troops were in the town, and how Miss Biddy Toole had run off 
 with Ensign Mullins ; all the news of sport, assize, and quarter- 
 sessions were detaded by this worthy chronicler of small-beer, who 
 wondered that my honour hadn't heard of them in England or in 
 foreign parts, where he seemed to think the world was as interested 
 as he was about the doings of Kilkenny and Carlow. I listened 
 to these tales with, I own, a considerable pleasure, for evexy now 
 and then a name would come up in the conversation which I re- 
 membered in old days, and bring with it a hundred associations 
 connected with them. 
 
 I had received many letter from my mother, which informed 
 me of the doings of the Brady's Town family. My uncle was 
 dead, and Mick, his eldest son, had followed him too to the grave. 
 The Brady girls had separated from their paternal roof as soon as 
 their elder brother came to rule over it. Some were married, some 
 gone to settle with their odious old mother in out-of-the-way 
 watering-places. TTlick, though he had succeeded to the estate, 
 had come in for a bankrupt property, and Castle Brady was now
 
 192 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 inhabited only by the bats and owls, and the old gamekeeper. My 
 mother, Mrs. Harry Barry, had gone to live at Bray, to sit under 
 Mr. Jowls, her favourite preacher, who had a chapel there ; and, 
 finally, the landlord told me, that Mrs. Barry's son had gone to 
 foreign parts, enlisted in the Prussian service, and had been shot 
 there as a deserter. 
 
 I don't care to own that I hired a stout nag from the landlord's 
 stable after dinner, and rode back at night-fall, twenty miles to 
 my old home. My heart beat to see it. Barryville had got a 
 pestle and mortar over the door, and was called " The Esculapian 
 Repository," by Doctor Macshane ; a red-headed lad was spread- 
 ing a plaster in the old parlour ; the little window of my room, 
 once so neat and bright, was cracked in many places, and stuffed 
 with rags here and there; the flowers had disappeared from the 
 trim garden-beds which my good orderly mother tended. In the 
 churchyard there were two more names put into the stone over 
 the family vault of the Bradys ; they were those of my cousin, 
 for whom my regard was small, and my uncle, whom I had always 
 loved. 1 asked my old companion the blacksmith, who had beaten 
 me so often in old days, to give my horse a feed and a litter : he 
 was a worn, weary-looking man now, with a dozen dirty, ragged 
 children paddling about his smithy, and had no recollection of the 
 fine gentleman who stood before him. I did not seek to recall 
 myself to his memory till the next day, when I put ten guineas 
 into his hand, and bade him drink the health of English 
 Redmond. 
 
 As for Castle Brady, the gates of the park were still there, 
 but the old trees were cut down in the avenue, a black stump 
 jutting out here and there, and casting long shadows as I passed 
 in the moon-light over the worn, grass-grown, old road. A few 
 cows were at pasture there. The garden-gate was gone, and the 
 place a tangled wilderness. I sat down on the old bench, where 
 I. had sat on the day when Nora jilted me; and I do believe my 
 feelings were as strong then as they had been when I was a bov, 
 eleven years before ; and I caught myself almost crying again, 
 to think that Nora Brady had deserted me. I believe a man 
 forgets nothing. I've seen a (lower, or heard some trivial word 
 or two, which have awakened recollections that somehow had
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 193 
 
 lain dormant for scores of years ; and when I entered the house 
 in Clarges Street, where I was born (it was used as a gambling- 
 house when I first visited London), all of a sudden the memory 
 of my childhood came back to me — of my actual infancy ; I 
 recollected my father in green and gold, holding me up to look 
 at a gilt coach which stood at the door, and my mother in a 
 flowered sack, with patches on her face. Some day, I wonder, 
 will everything we have seen and thought and done come and 
 flash across our minds in this way ? I had rather not. I felt so 
 as I sat upon the bench at Castle Brady, and thought of the 
 by-gone times. 
 
 The hall-door was open — it was always so at that house ; the 
 moon was flaring in at the long old windows, and throwing 
 ghastly chequers upon the floors ; and the stars were looking in 
 on the other side, in the blue of the yawning window over the 
 great stair ; from it you could see the old stable-clock, with the 
 letters glistening on it still. There had been jolly horses in those 
 stables once ; and I could see my uncle's honest face, and hear 
 him talking to his dogs as they came jumping and whining and 
 barking round about him of a gay winter morning. "We used to 
 mount there ; and the girls looked out at us from the hall-window, 
 where I stood and looked at the sad, mouldy, lonely old place. 
 There was a red light shining through the crevices of a door at 
 one corner of the building, and a dog presently came out baying 
 loudly, and a limping man followed with a fowling-piece. 
 
 " "Who's there ? " said the old man. 
 
 " Phtl Puecell, don't you know me ? " shouted I ; " it's 
 Redmond Barry." 
 
 I thought the old man would have fired his piece at me at 
 first, for he pointed it at the window ; but I called to him to hold 
 his hand, and came down and embraced him. * * * 'Pslia ! 
 I don't care to tell the rest : Phil and I had a long night, and 
 talked over a thousand foolish old things that have no interest for 
 any soul alive now ; for what soul is there alive that cares for 
 Barry Lyndon ? 
 
 I settled a hundred guineas on the old man when I got to 
 Dublin, and made him an annuity which enabled him to pass 
 his old days in comfort. 
 
 VOL. III. o
 
 194 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Poor Phil Purcell was amusing himself at a game of exceedingly 
 dirty cards with an old acquaintance of mine, no other than Tim, 
 who was called my " valet " in the days of yore, and whom the 
 reader may remember as clad in my father's old liveries. They used 
 to hang about him in those times, and lap over his wrists and down 
 to his heels ; but Tim, though he protested he had nigh killed 
 himself with grief when I went away, had managed to grow 
 enormously fat in my absence, and would have fitted almost into 
 Daniel Lambert's coat, or that of the vicar of Castle Brady, whom 
 he served in the capacity of clerk. I would have engaged the 
 fellow in my service but for his monstrous size, which rendered him 
 quite unfit to be the attendant of any gentleman of condition ; and 
 so I presented him with a handsome gratuity, and promised to 
 stand godfather to his next child, the eleventh since my absence. 
 There is no country in the world where the work of multiplying 
 is carried on so prosperously as in my native island. Mr. Tim 
 had married the girls' waiting-maid, who had been a kind friend 
 of mine in the early times ; and I had to go salute poor Molly 
 next day, and found her a slatternly wench in a mud hut, sur- 
 rounded by a brood of children almost as ragged as those of my 
 friend the blacksmith. 
 
 From Tim and Phil Purcell, thus met fortuitously together, 
 I got the very last news respecting my family. My mother 
 was well. 
 
 " Faith, sir," says Tim, "and you're come in time mayhap from 
 preventing an addition to your family." 
 
 " Sir ! " exclaimed I, in a fit of indignation. 
 
 "In the shape of father-in-law, I mane, sir," says Tim: 
 "the misthress is going to take on with Mister Jowles the 
 praacher." 
 
 Poor Nora, he added, had made many additions to the 
 illustrious race of Quin; and my cousin TJlick was in Dublin, 
 coming to little good, both my informants feared, and having 
 managed to run through the small available remains of property 
 which my good old uncle had left behind him. 
 
 I saw I should have no small family to provide for ; and then, 
 to conclude the evening, Phil, Tim, and I, had a bottle of 
 usquebaugh, the tasto of which I had remembered for eleven good
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 195 
 
 years, and did not part except with, the warmest terms of fellow- 
 ship, and until the sun had been some time in the sky. I am 
 exceedingly affable : that has always been one of my charac- 
 teristics. I have no false pride, as many men of high lineage 
 like my own have, and, in default of better company, will hob and 
 nob with a ploughboy or a private soldier just as readily as with 
 the first noble in the land. 
 
 I went back to the village in the morning, and found a pretext 
 for visiting Barryville under a device of purchasing drugs. The 
 hooks were still in the wall were my silver-hilted sword used to 
 hang ; a blister was lying on the window-sill, where my mother's 
 "Whole Duty of Man" had its place; and the odious Doctor 
 Macshane had found out who I was (my countrymen find out 
 everything, and a great deal more besides), and sniggering, 
 asked me how I left the King of Prussia, and whether my friend 
 the Emperor Joseph was as much liked as the Empress Maria 
 Theresa had been. The bell-ringers would have had a ring of 
 bells for me, but there was but one, Tim, who was too fat to pull, 
 and I rode off before the vicar, Doctor Bolter (who had suc- 
 ceeded old Mr. Texter, who had the living in my time), had 
 time to come out to compliment me ; but the rapscallions of the 
 beggarly village had assembled in a dirty army to welcome me, 
 and cheered " Hurrah for Masther Bedmond ! " as I rode away. 
 
 My people were not a little anxious regarding me by the time 
 I returned to Carlow, and the landlord was very much afraid, he 
 said, that the highwaymen had gotten hold of me. There, too, 
 my name and station had been learned from my servant Fritz, 
 who had not spared his praises of his master, and had invented 
 some magnificent histories concerning me. He said it was the 
 truth that I was intimate with half the sovereigns of Europe, 
 and the prime favourite with most of them. Indeed I had made 
 my uncle's Order of the Spur hereditary, and travelled under the 
 name of the Chevalier Barry, chamberlain to the Duke of Hohen- 
 zollern Sigmaringen. 
 
 They gave me the best horses the stable possessed to carry me 
 on my road to Dublin, and the strongest ropes for harness ; and 
 we got on pretty well, and there was no rencontre between the 
 highwaymen and the pistols with which Fritz and I were provided. 
 
 o 2
 
 196 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 "We lay that night at Kilcullen, and the next day I made my 
 entry into the city of Dublin, with four horses to my carriage, 
 five thousand guineas in my purse, and one of the most brilliant 
 reputations in Europe, having quitted the city a beggarly boy, 
 eleven years before. 
 
 The citizens of Dublin have as great and laudable a desire for 
 knowing their neighbours' concerns as the country people have ; 
 and it is impossible for a gentleman, however modest his desires 
 may be (and such mine have notoriously been through life), to 
 enter the capital without having his name printed in every news- 
 paper town and mentioned in a number of societies. My name 
 and titles were all over the town the day after my arrival. A 
 great number of polite persons did me the honour to call at my 
 lodgings, when I selected them ; and this was a point very 
 necessary of immediate care, for the hotels in the town were 
 but vulgar holes, unfit for a nobleman of my fashion and ele- 
 gance. I had been informed of the fact by travellers on the 
 continent ; and determining to fix on a lodging at once, I bade 
 the drivers go slowly up and down the streets with my chariot, 
 until I had selected a place suitable to my rank. This proceeding, 
 and the uncouth questions and behaviour of my German Fritz, 
 who was instructed to make inquiries at the different houses until 
 convenient apartments could be lighted upon, brought an immense 
 mob round my coach ; and by the time the rooms were chosen 
 you might have supposed I was the new general of the forces, so 
 great was the multitude following us. 
 
 I fixed at length upon a handsome suite of apartments in Capel 
 Street, paid the ragged postilions who had driven me a splendid 
 gratuity, and establishing myself in the rooms with my baggage 
 and Fritz, desired the landlord to engage me a second fellow to 
 wear my liveries, a couple of stout reputable chairmen and their 
 machine, and a coachman who had handsome job-horses to hire 
 for my chariot, and serviceable riding horses to sell. I gave him 
 a handsome sum in advance ; and I promise you the effect of my 
 advertisement was such, that next day I had a regular levee in 
 my antechamber; grooms, valets, and maitres-d'hotel, offered 
 themselves without number ; I had proposals for the purchase of 
 horses sufficient to mount a regiment, both from dealers and
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 197 
 
 gentlemen of the first fashion. Sir Lawler Gavder came to 
 propose to me the most elegant bay mare ever stepped ; my Lord 
 Dundoodle had a team of four that wouldn't disgrace my friend 
 the imperor ; and the Marquis of Ballyragget sent his gentleman 
 and his compliments, stating that if I would step up to his stables, 
 or do him the honour of breakfasting with him previously, he 
 would show me the two finest greys in Europe. I determined 
 to accept the invitations of Dundoodle and Ballyragget, bat to 
 purchase my horses from the dealers. It is always the best way. 
 Besides, in those days, in Ireland, if a gentleman warranted his 
 horse, and it was not sound, or a dispute arose, the remedy you 
 had was the offer of a bullet in your waistcoat. I had played at 
 the bullet game too much in earnest to make use of it heedlesslv: 
 and I may say, proudly for myself, that I never engaged in a 
 duel unless I had a real, available, and prudent reason for it. 
 
 There was a simplicity about this Irish gentry which amused 
 and made me wonder. If they tell more fibs tban their downright 
 neighbours across the water, on the other hand they believe more ; 
 and I made myself in a single week such a reputation in Dublin 
 as would take a man ten years and a mint of money to acquire in 
 London. I had won five hundred thousand pounds at play; I 
 was the favourite of the Empress Catherine of Bussia ; tbe con- 
 fidential agent of Frederick of Prussia ; it was I won the battle of 
 Hochkirchen; I was the cousin of Madame Du Barry, the French 
 king's favourite, and a thousand things beside. Indeed, to tell 
 the truth, I hinted a number of these stories to my kind friends 
 Ballyragget and Gawler, when they were not slow to improve the 
 hints I gave them. 
 
 After having witnessed the splendours of civilised life abroad, 
 the sight of Dublin in the year 1771, when I returned thither, 
 struck me with anything but respect. It was as savage as 
 AVarsaw almost, without the regal grandeur of the latter city. 
 The people looked more ragged than any race I have ever seen, 
 except the gipsy hordes along the banks of the Danube. There 
 was, as I have said, not an inn in the town fit for a gentleman of 
 condition to dwell in. Those luckless fellows who could not keep 
 carriage, and walked the streets at night, ran imminent risks of 
 the knives of the women and ruffians who lay in wait there, — of a
 
 198 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 pet of ragged, savage villains who neither knew the use of shoe 
 nor razor ; and as a gentleman entered his chair or his chariot, to 
 be carried to his evening rout, or the play, the flambeaux of the 
 footmen would light up such a set of wild, gibbering, Milesian 
 faces as would frighten a genteel person of average nerves. I was 
 luckily endowed with strong ones ; besides, had seen my amiable 
 countrymen before. 
 
 I know this description of them will excite anger among some 
 Irish patriots, who don't like to have the nakedness of our land 
 abused, and are angry if the whole truth be told concerning it. 
 But, bah ! it was a poor provincial place, Dublin, in the old days 
 of which I speak, and many a tenth-rate German residence is 
 more genteel. There were, it is true, near three hundred 
 resident peers at the period ; and a house of commons ; and my 
 lord-mayor and his corporation ; and a roystering, noisy uni- 
 versity, whereof the students made no small disturbances nightly, 
 patronised the roundhouse, ducked obnoxious printers and 
 tradesmen, and gave the law at the Crow Street Theatre. But I 
 had seen too much of the first society of Europe to be much 
 tempted by the society of these noisy gentry, and was a little too 
 much of a gentleman to mingle with the disputes and politics of 
 my lord-mayor and his aldermen. In the House of Commons 
 there were some dozen of right pleasant fellows. I never heard in 
 the English parliament better speeches than from Flood and 
 Daly, of Galway. Dick Sheridan, though not a well-bred person, 
 was as amusing and ingenious a table-companion as ever I met ; 
 and, though during Mr. Edmund Burke's interminable speeches 
 in the English house, I used always to go to sleep, I yet have 
 heard from well-informed parties that Mr. Burke was a person of 
 considerable abilities, and even reputed to be eloquent in his more 
 favourable moments. 
 
 I soon began to enjoy to the full extent the pleasures that the 
 wretched place affords, and which were within a gentleman's 
 reach ; Banelagh and the Bidotto ; Mr. Mossop, at Crow Street ; 
 my lord-lieutenant's parties, where there was a great deal too 
 much boozing, and too little play, to suit a person of my elegant 
 and refined habits; Daly's coffee-house, and the houses of the 
 nobility, were soon open to me; and I remarked with astonish-.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 199 
 
 ment in the higher circles, what I had experienced in the lower 
 on my first unhappy visit to Dublin, an extraordinary want of 
 money, and a preposterous deal of promissory notes flying about, 
 for which I was quite unwilling to stake my guineas. The ladies, 
 too, were mad for play, but exceeding unwilling to pay when they 
 lost. Thus, when the old Countess of Trumpington lost ten pieces 
 to me at quadrille, she gave me, instead of the money, her lady- 
 ship's note of hand on her agent in Galway ; which I put, with a 
 great deal of politeness, into the candle. But when the countess 
 made me a second proposition to play, I said, that as soon as her 
 ladyship's remittances were arrived, I would be the readiest person 
 to meet her ; but till then was her very humble servant. And I 
 maintained this resolution and singular character throughout the 
 Dublin society : giving out at Daly's that I was ready to play any 
 man, for any sum, at any game ; or to fence with him, or to ride 
 with him (regard being had to our weight), or to shoot flying, or 
 at a mark ; and in this latter accomplishment, especially if the 
 mark be a live one, Irish gentlemen of that day had no ordinary 
 skill. 
 
 Of course, I despatched a courier in my liveries to Castle Lyndon 
 with a private letter for Eunt, demanding from him full particulars 
 of the Countess of Lyndon's state of health and mind ; and a 
 touching and eloquent letter to her ladyship, in which I bade her 
 remember ancient days, which I tied up with a single hair from 
 the lock which I had purchased from her woman, and in which I 
 told her that Svlvander remembered his oath, and could never 
 forget his Calista. The answer I received from her was exceed- 
 ingly unsatisfactory and inexplicit ; that from Mr. Eunt explicit 
 enough, but not at all pleasant in its contents. My lord George 
 Poynings, the Marquess of Tiptoff's younger son, was paying 
 very marked addresses to the widow, being a kinsman of the 
 family, and having been called to Ireland relative to the will of 
 the deceased Sir Charles Lyndon. 
 
 Now, there was a sort of rough-and-ready law in Ireland in 
 those days which was of great convenience to persons desirous of 
 expeditious justice, and of which the newspapers of the time 
 contain a hundred proofs. Fellows with the nicknames of 
 Captain Fireball, Lieutenant Buficoat, and Ensign Steele, were
 
 200 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 repeatedly sending warning letters to landlords, and murdering 
 thetn if the notes were unattended to. The celebrated Captain 
 Thunder ruled in the southern counties, and his business seemed 
 to be to procure wives for gentlemen who had not sufficient 
 means to please the parents of the young ladies, or, perhaps, had 
 not time for a long and intricate courtship. 
 
 I had found my cousin Ulick at Dublin, grown very fat, and 
 very poor ; hunted up by Jews and creditors ; dwelling in all 
 sorts of queer corners, from which he issued at nightfall to the 
 castle, or to his card-party at his tavern ; but he was always the 
 courageous fellow : and I hinted to him the state of my affections 
 regarding Lady Lyndon. 
 
 " The Countess of Lyndon ! " said poor TJlick ; " well, that is a 
 wonder. I myself have been mightily sweet upon a young lady, 
 one of the Kiljoys of Ballyhack, who has ten thousand pounds to 
 her fortune, and to whom her ladyship is guardian ; but how is a 
 poor fellow without a coat to his back to get on with an heiress 
 in such company as that ? I might as well propose for the 
 countess myself." 
 
 "You had better not," said I, laughing; " the man who tries 
 runs a chance of going out of the world first." And I explained to 
 him my own intention regarding Lady Lyndon ; and honest TJlick, 
 whose respect for me was prodigious when he saw how splendid 
 my appearance was, and heard how wonderful my adventures and 
 great my cxpei-ience of fashionable life had been, was lost in 
 admiration of my daring and energy, when I confided to him my 
 intention of marrying the greatest heiress in England. 
 
 I bade Ulick go out of town on any pretext he chose, and put a 
 letter into a post-office near Castle Lyndon, which I prepared in 
 a feigned hand, and in which I gave a solemn warning to Lord 
 George Poynings to quit the country, saying that the great prize 
 was never meant for the likes of him ; and that there were 
 heiresses enough in England, without coming to rob them out of 
 the domains of Captain Fireball. The letter was written on a 
 dirty piece of paper, in the worst of spelling ; it came to my lord 
 by the post-conveyance, and, being a high-spirited young man, he 
 of course, laughed at it. 
 
 As ill-luck would have it for him, he appeared in Dublin a very
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 201 
 
 short time afterwards ; was introduced to the Chevalier Eedmond 
 .Barry, at the lord-lieutenant's table ; adjourned with him and 
 several other gentlemen to the club at Daly's, and there, iu a 
 dispute about the pedigree of a horse, in which everybody said I 
 was in the right, words arose, and a meeting was the consequence. 
 I had had no affair in Dublin since my arrival, and people were 
 anxious to see whether I was equal to my reputation. I make no 
 boast about these matters, but always do them when the time 
 comes ; and poor Lord George, who had a neat hand and a quick 
 eye enough, but was bred in the clumsy English school, only 
 stood before my point until I had determined where I should 
 hit him. 
 
 My sword went in under his guard, and came out at his back. 
 "When he fell, he good-naturedly extended his hand to me, and 
 said, " Mr. Barry, I teas wrong I " I felt not very well at ease, 
 when the poor fellow made this confession, for the dispute had 
 been of my making, and, to tell the truth, I had never intended 
 it should end in any other way than a meeting. 
 
 He lay on his bed for four months with the effects of that 
 wound ; and the same post which conveyed to Lady Lyndon the 
 news of the duel, carried her a message from Captain Fireball to 
 say, " This is otitbee one ! " 
 
 " Tou, Ulick," said I, " shall be number two." 
 
 " Faith," said my cousin, " one's enough ! " but I had my plan 
 regarding him, and determined at once to benefit this honest 
 fellow, and to forward my own designs upon the widow. 
 
 CHAPTER XV, 
 
 I PAT COTJBT TO MY LADT LT5D05". 
 
 As my uncle's attainder was not reversed for being out with 
 the Pretender, in 1745, it would have been inconvenient for him 
 to accompany his nephew to the land of our ancestors, where, if 
 not hanging, at least a tedious process of imprisonment, and a 
 doubtful pardon, would have awaited the good old gentleman. la 
 any important crisis of my life, his advice was always of importance
 
 202 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 to me, and I did not fail to seek it at this juncture, and to implore 
 his counsel as regarded my pursuit of the widow ; I told him the 
 situation of her heart, as I have described it in the last chapter, 
 of the progress that young Pojnings had made in her affections, 
 and of her forgetfulness of her old admirer, and I got a letter, in 
 reply, full of excellent suggestions, by which I did not fail to 
 profit. 
 
 The kind chevalier prefaced it by saying, that he was for the 
 present boarding in the Minorite convent at Brussels, that he had 
 thoughts of making his salut there, and retiring for ever from the 
 world, devoting himself to the severest practices of religion. 
 Meanwhile he wrote with regard to the lovely widow. It was 
 natural that a person of her vast wealth and not disagreeable 
 person should have many adorers about her ; and that, as in her 
 husband's lifetime, she had shown herself not at all disinclined to 
 receive my addresses, I must make no manner of doubt I was not 
 the first person whom she had so favoured;, nor was I likely to be 
 the last. 
 
 "I would, my dear child," he added, "that the ugly attainder 
 round my neck, and the resolution I have formed of retiring from 
 a world of sin and vanity altogether, did not prevent me from 
 coming personally to your aid in this delicate crisis of your 
 affairs ; for, to lead them to a good end, it requires not only the 
 indomitable courage, swagger, and audacity, which you possess 
 beyond any young man I have ever known (as for the ' swagger,' 
 as the chevalier calls it, I deny it in toto, being always most modest 
 in my demeanour), but though you have the vigour to execute, 
 you have not the ingenuity to suggest plans of conduct for the 
 following out of a scheme that is likely to be long and difficult of 
 execution. Would you have ever thought of the brilliant scheme 
 of the Countess Ida, which so nearly made you the greatest 
 fortune in Europe, but for the advice and experience of a poor old 
 man, now making up his accounts with the world, and about to 
 retire from it for good and all ? 
 
 " Well, with regard to the Countess of Lyndon, your manner of 
 winning her is quite en Voir at present to me, nor can I advise 
 day by day as I would I could, according to circumstances as they
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 203 
 
 arise. But your general scheme should be this. If I remember 
 the letters you used to have from her during the period of the 
 correspondence which the silly woman entertained you with, much 
 high-flown sentiment passed between you, and especially was 
 written by her ladyship herself; she is a blue-stocking, and fond 
 of writing ; she used to make her griefs with her husband the 
 continual theme of her correspondence (as women will do). I 
 recollect several passages in her letters bitterly deploring her fate 
 in being united to one so unworthy of her. 
 
 " Surely, in the mass of billets you possess from her, there must 
 be enough to compromise her. Look them well over, select 
 passages, and threaten to do so. Write to her at first in the 
 undoubting tone of a lover who has every claim upon her. Then, 
 if she is silent, remonstrate, alluding to former promises from her, 
 producing proofs of her former regard for you, vowing despair, 
 destruction, revenge, if she prove unfaithful. Frighten her — 
 astonish her by some daring feat, which will let her see your 
 indomitable resolution ; you are the man to do it. Tour sword 
 has a reputation in Europe, and you have a character for boldness, 
 which was the first thing that caused my Lady Lyndon to turn 
 her eyes upon you. Make the people talk about you at Dublin. 
 Be as splendid, and as brave, and as odd as possible. How I wish 
 I were near you! You have no imagination to invent such a 
 character as I would make for you — but why speak ; have I not 
 enough of the world and its vanities ? " 
 
 There was much practical good sense in this advice, which 1 
 quote, unaccompanied with the lengthened description of his 
 mortifications and devotions which my uncle indulged in, finishing 
 his letter, as usual, with earnest prayers for my conversion to the 
 true faith. But he was constant to his form of worship ; and I, 
 as a man of honour and principle, was resolute to mine, and have 
 no doubt that the one, in this respect, will be as acceptable as the 
 other. 
 
 Under these directions it was, then, I wrote to Lady Lyndon, 
 to ask on my arrival when the most respectful of her admirers 
 might be permitted to intrude upon her grief? Then, as 
 her ladyship was silent, I demanded, had she forgotten old
 
 204 THE MEMOIES OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 times, and one whom she bad favoured with her intimacy at a very 
 happy period ? Had Calista forgotten Eugenio ? At the same 
 time I sent down by my servant with this letter a present of a 
 little sword for Lord Bullingdon, and a private note to his 
 governor, whose note of hand, by the way, I possessed for a sum 
 — I forget what — but such as the poor fellow would have been 
 very unwilling to pay. To this an answer came from her lady- 
 ship's amanuensis, stating that Lady Lyndon was too much 
 disturbed by grief at her recent dreadful calamity to see any one 
 but her own relations; and advices from my friend, the boy's 
 governor, stating that my Lord George Poynings was the young 
 kinsman who was about to console her. 
 
 This caused the quarrel between me and the young nobleman, 
 whom I took care to challenge on his first arrival at Dublin. 
 
 "When the news of the duel was brought to the widow at Castle 
 Lyndon, my informant wrote me, that Lady Lyndon shrieked and 
 flung down the journal, and said, "The horrible monster! He 
 would not shrink from murder, I believe;" and little lord Bul- 
 lingdon, drawing his sword — the sword I had given him, the rascal ! 
 — declared he would kill with it the man who had hurt cousin 
 George. On Mr. Runt telling him that I was the donor of the 
 weapon, the little rogue still vowed that he would kill me all the 
 same ! Indeed, in spite of my kindness to him, that boy always 
 seemed to detest me. 
 
 Her ladyship sent up daily couriers to inquire after the health 
 of Lord George ; and, thinking to myself that she would probably 
 be induced to come to Dublin if she were to hear that he was in 
 danger, I managed to have her informed that he was in a precarious 
 state, that he grew worse, that Redmond Barry had fled in con- 
 sequence ; of this flight I caused the Mercury newspaper to give 
 notice also, but indeed it did not carry me beyond the town of 
 Bray, where my poor mother dwelt, and where, under the difficulties 
 of a duel, I might be sure of having a welcome. 
 
 Those readers who have the sentiment of filial duty strong in 
 their mind, will wonder that I have not yet described my interview 
 with that kind mother whose sacrifices for me in youth had been 
 so considerable, and for whom a man of my warm and affectionate 
 nature could not but feel the most enduring and sincere regard.
 
 TIIE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 205 
 
 But a man, moving in the exalted sphere of society in which 
 I now stood, has his public duties to perform before he consults 
 his private affections : and so upon my first arrival I despatched 
 a messenger to Mrs. Barry, stating my arrival, conveying to her 
 my sentiments of respect and duty, and promising to pay them to 
 her personally so soon as my business in Dublin would leave 
 me free. 
 
 This, I need not say, was very considerable. I had my horses 
 to buy, my establishment to arrange, my entree into the genteel 
 world to make ; and, having announced my intention to purchase 
 horses, and live in a genteel style, was in a couple of days so 
 pestered by visits of the nobility and gentry, and so hampered 
 by invitations to dinners and suppers, that it became exceedingly 
 difficult for me during some days to manage my anxiously desired 
 visit to Mrs. Barry. 
 
 It appears that the good soul provided an entertainment as soon 
 as she heard of my arrival, and invited all her humble acquaintances 
 of Bray to be present ; but I was engaged subsequently to my 
 Lord Ballyragget on the day appointed, and was, of course, obliged 
 to break the promise that I had made to Mrs. Barry to attend her 
 humble festival. 
 
 I endeavoured to sweeten the disappointment by sending my 
 mother a handsome satin sack and velvet robe, which I purchased 
 for her at the best mercers in Dublin (and indeed told her I had 
 brought from Paris expressly for her) ; but the messenger whom 
 I despatched with the presents brought back the parcels, with the 
 piece of satin torn half way up the middle : and I did not need 
 his descriptions to be aware that something had offended the good 
 lady, -who came out, he said, and abused him at the door, and 
 would have boxed his ears, but that she was restrained by a gentle- 
 man in black, who I concluded with justice was her clerical friend 
 Mr. Jowls. 
 
 This reception of my presents made me rather dread than hope 
 for an interview with Mrs. Barry, and delayed my visit to her for 
 some days further. I wrote her a dutiful and soothing letter, to 
 which there was no answer returned, although I mentioned that 
 on my way to the capital I had been at Barryville, and revisited 
 the old haunts of my youth.
 
 206 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 I don't care to own that slie is the only human being whom I 
 am afraid to face. I can recollect her fits of anger as a child, and 
 the reconciliations, which used to he still more violent and painful ; 
 aud so, instead of going myself, I sent my factotum, TJlick Brady, 
 to her, who rode back, saying that he had met with a reception he 
 would not again undergo for twenty guineas ; that he had been 
 dismissed the house, with strict injunctions to inform me that my 
 mother disowned me for ever. This parental anathema, as it were, 
 affected me much, for I was always the most dutiful of sons, and 
 I determined to go as soon as possible, and brave what I knew 
 must be an inevitable scene of reproach and anger, for the sake, 
 as I hoped, of as certain a reconciliation. 
 
 I had been giving one night an entertainment to some of the 
 genteelest company in Dublin, and was showing my lord marquis 
 down-stairs with a pair of wax tapers, when I found a woman iu 
 a grey coat seated at my door-steps, to whom, taking her for a 
 beggar, I tendered a piece of money, and whom my noble friends, 
 who were rather hot with wine, began to joke as my door closed, 
 and I bade them all good night. 
 
 I was rather surprised and affected to find afterwards that the 
 hooded woman was no other than my mother, whose pride had 
 made her vow that she would not enter my doors, but whose 
 natural maternal yearnings had made her long to see her son's 
 face once again, and who had thus planted herself in disguise at 
 my gate. Indeed, I have found in my experience that these are 
 the only women who never deceive a man, and whose affection 
 remains constant through all trials. Think of the hours that the 
 kind soul must have passed, lonely in the street, listening to the 
 din and merriment within my apartments, the clinking of the 
 glasses, the laughing, the choruses, and the cheering. 
 
 "When my affair with Lord George happened, and it became 
 necessary to me, for the reasons I have stated, to be out of the 
 way, now, thought I, is the time to make my peace with my good 
 mother, she will never refuse me an asylum now that I seem in 
 distress ; and so sending to her a notice that I was coming, that 
 I had had a duel which had brought me into trouble, and required 
 I should go into hiding, I followed my messenger half an hour 
 afterwards, and, I warrant me, there was no want of a good
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 207 
 
 reception, for presently, being introduced into an empty room 
 by the bare-footed maid who waited upon Mrs. Barry, the door 
 was opened, and the poor mother flung herself into my arms with 
 a scream, and with transports of joy which I shall not attempt to 
 describe — they are but to be comprehended by women who held 
 in their arms an only child after a twelve years' absence from 
 him. 
 
 The Eeverend Mr. Jowls, my mother's director, was the only 
 person to whom the door of her habitation was opened during 
 my sojourn, and he would take no denial. He mixed for himself 
 a glass of rum-punch, which he seemed in the habit of drinking 
 at my good mother's charge, groaned aloud, and forthwith began 
 reading me a lecture upon the sinfulness of my past courses, and 
 especially of the last horrihle action I had been committing. 
 
 " Sinful," said my mother,bristling up when her son was attacked, 
 " sure we're all sinners ; and it's you, Mr. Jowls, who have given 
 me the inexpressible blessing to let me know that. But how else 
 would you have had the poor child behave?" 
 
 " I would have had the gentleman avoid the drink, and the 
 quarrel, and this wicked duel altogether," answered the clergyman. 
 
 But my mother cut him short, by saying such sort of conduct 
 might be very well in a person of his cloth and his birth, but 
 it neither became a Brady nor a Barry. In fact, she was quite 
 delighted with the thought that I had pinked an English mar- 
 quis's son in a duel ; and so, to console her, I told her of a 
 score more in which I had been engaged, and of some of which 
 I have already informed the reader. 
 
 As my late antagonist was in no sort of danger when I spread 
 that report of his perilous situation, there was no particular call 
 that my hiding should be very close. But the widow did not know 
 the fact as well as I did ; and caused her house to be barricaded, 
 and Becky, her bare-footed serving-wench, to be a perpetual 
 sentinel to give alarm, lest the officers should be in search of me. 
 
 The only person I expected, however, was my cousin, TJlick, 
 who was to bring me the welcome intelligence of Lady Lyndon's 
 arrival ; and I own, after two days' close confinement at Bray, in 
 which I narrated all the adventures of my life to my mother, and 
 succeeded in making her accept the dresses she had formerly
 
 208 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 refused, and a considerable addition to her income which I was 
 glad to make, I was very glad when I saw that reprobate, Ulick 
 Brady, as my mother called hira, ride up to the door in my carriage 
 with the welcome intelligence for my mother, that the young lord 
 was out of danger, and for me, that the Countess of Lyndon had 
 arrived in Dublin. 
 
 " And I wish, Eedmond, that the young gentleman had been in 
 danger a little longer," said the widow, her eyes filling with tears, 
 "and you'd have stayed so much the more with your poor old 
 mother." But I dried her tears, embracing her warmly, and pro- 
 mised to see her often, and hinted I would have mayhap a house 
 of my own and a noble daughter to welcome her. 
 
 ""Who is she, Eedmond dear?" said the old lady. 
 
 " One of the noblest and richest women in the empire, mother," 
 answered I. " No more, Brady, this time," I added, laughing; 
 with which hopes I left Mrs. Barry in the best of tempers. 
 
 No man can bear less malice than I do ; and, when I have once 
 carried my point, I am one of the most placable creatures in the 
 world. I was a week in Dublin before I thought it necessary to 
 quit that capital. I had become quite reconciled to my rival in 
 that time ; made a point of calling at his lodgings, and speedily 
 became an intimate consoler of his bedside. He had a gentleman 
 to whom I did not neglect to be civil, and towards whom I ordered 
 my people to be particular in their attentions, for I was naturally 
 anxious to learn what my Lord George's position with the lady 
 of Castle Lyndon had really been, whether other suitors were 
 about the widow, and how she would bear the news of his 
 wound. 
 
 The young nobleman himself enlightened me somewhat upon 
 the subjects I was most desirous to inquire into. 
 
 " Chevalier," said he to me, one morning when I went to pay 
 him my compliments, " I find you are an old acquaintance with 
 my kinswoman, the Countess of Lyndon. She writes me a page 
 of abuse of you in a letter here ; and the strange part of the 
 story is this, that one day when there was talk about you at Castle 
 Lyndon, and the splendid equipage you were exhibiting in Dublin, 
 the fair widow vowed and protested she never had heard of you. 
 
 " ' yes, mamma,' said the little Bullingdon, ' the tall dark
 
 THE MEMOIRS OP BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 209 
 
 man at Spa with the cast in his eye, who used to make my 
 governor tipsy, and sent me the sword ; his name is Mr. Barry.' 
 
 " But my lady ordered the boy out of the room, and persisted 
 in knowing nothing about you." 
 
 " And are you a kinsman and acquaintance of my Lady Lyndon, 
 my lord ? " said I, in a tone of grave surprise. 
 
 " Tes, indeed," answered the young gentleman. " I left her 
 house but to get this ugly wound from you. And it came at a 
 most unlucky time too." 
 
 " "Why more unlucky now than at another moment ? " 
 
 " "Why, look you, chevalier. I think the widow was not im- 
 partial to me. I think I might have induced her to make our 
 connection a little closer : and faith, though she is older than I 
 am, she is the richest party now in England." 
 
 "My Lord George," said I, " will you let me ask you a frank 
 but an odd question ? — will you show me her letters ? " 
 
 " Indeed I'll do no such thing," replied he, in a rage. 
 
 " Nay, don't be angry. If /show you letters of Lady Lyndon's 
 to me, will you let me see hers to you ? " 
 
 " "What, in Heaven's name, do you mean, Mr. Barry ? " said 
 the young nobleman. 
 
 " I mean, that I passionately loved Lady Lyndon. I mean, 
 
 that I am a that I rather was not indifferent to her. I 
 
 mean, that I love her to distraction at this present moment, 
 and will die myself, or kill the man who possesses her before me." 
 
 " You marry the greatest heiress and the noblest blood in 
 England ? " said Lord George, haughtily. 
 
 " There's no nobler blood in Europe than mine," answered 1 ; 
 " and I tell you, I dont know whether to hope or not. But this 
 I know, that there were days in which, poor as I am, the great 
 heiress did not disdain to look down upon my poverty ; and that 
 any man who marries her passes over my dead body to do it. 
 It's lucky for you," I added gloomily, "that on the occasion of 
 my engagement with you, I did not know what were your views 
 regarding my Lady Lyndon. My poor boy, you are a lad of 
 courage, and I love you. Mine is the first sword in Europe, 
 and you would have been lying in a narrower bed than that you 
 now occupy." 
 vol. in. p
 
 210 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 " Boy ! " said Lord George, " I am not four years younger than 
 you are." 
 
 " You are forty years younger than I am in experience. I 
 have passed through every grade of life. "With my own skill and 
 dariug I have made my own fortune. I have been in fourteen 
 pitched battles as a private soldier, and have been twenty-three 
 times on the ground, and never was touched but once, and it 
 was by the sword of a French maitre-d'armes, whom I killed. I 
 started in life at seventeen, a beggar, and am now at seven-and- 
 twenty, with 20,000 guineas. Do you suppose a man of my 
 courage and energy can't attain any thing that he dares, and that 
 having claims upon the widow, I will not press them ? " 
 
 This speech was not exactly true to the letter (for I had 
 multiplied my pitched battles, my duels, and my wealth some- 
 what) ; but I saw that it made the impression I desired to 
 effect upon the young gentleman's mind, who listened to my 
 statement with peculiar seriousness, and whom I presently left 
 to digest it. 
 
 A couple of days afterwards I called to see him again, when I 
 brought with me some of the letters that had passed between me 
 and my Lady Lyndon. " Here," said I, " look, I show it you in 
 confidence, it is a lock of her ladyship's hair ; here are her letters 
 signed Calista, and addressed to Eugenio. Here is a poem, 
 ' When Sol bedecks the Mead with Light, and pallid Cynthia sheds 
 her ray,' addressed, by her ladyship, to your humble servant." 
 
 " Calista ! Eugenio ! Sol bedecks the mead with light," cried 
 the young lord. " Am I dreaming ? Why, my dear Barry, the 
 widow has sent me the very poem herself! ' Eejoicing in the 
 sunshine bright, or musing in the evening grey.' " 
 
 I could not help laughing as he made the quotation. They 
 were, in fact, the very words my Calista had addressed to me. 
 And we found, upon comparing letters, that whole passages of 
 eloquence figured in the one correspondence which appeared in 
 the other. See what it is to be a blue-stocking and have a love 
 of letter- writing ! 
 
 The young man put down the papers in great perturbation. 
 
 " AVell, thank Heaven ! " said he, after a pause of some dura- 
 tion, — " thank Heaven, for a good riddance ! Ah, Mr. Barry,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OP BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 211 
 
 what a woman I might have married had these lucky papers not 
 come in my way ! I thought my Lady Lyndon had a heart, sir, 
 I must confess, though not a very warm one, and that, at least, 
 one could trust her. But marry her now ! I would as lief send 
 my servant into the street to get me a wife, as put up with such 
 an Ephesian matron as that." 
 
 "My Lord George," said I, "you little know the world. 
 Remember what a bad husband Lady Lyndon had, and don't be 
 astonished that she, on her side, should be indifferent. Nor has 
 she, I will dare to wager, ever passed beyond the bounds of harm- 
 less gallantry, or sinned beyond the composing of a sonnet or 
 a billet-doux." 
 
 " My wife," said the little lord, " shall write no sonnets or 
 billets-doux, and I'm heartily glad to think I have obtained, in 
 good time, a knowledge of the heartless vixen with whom I 
 thought myself for a moment in love." 
 
 The wounded young nobleman was either, as I have said, very 
 young and green in matters of the world — for to suppose that a 
 man would give up forty thousand a year, because, forsooth, the 
 lady connected with it had written a few sentimental letters to a 
 young fellow, is too absurd ; or, as I am inclined to believe, he 
 was glad of an excuse to quit the field altogether, being by no 
 means anxious to meet the victorious sword of Redmond Barry a 
 second time. 
 
 "When the idea of Poynings' danger, or the reproaches pro- 
 bably addressed by him to the widow regarding myself, had 
 brought this exceedingly weak and feeble woman up to Dublin, 
 as I expected, and my worthy Ulick had informed me of her 
 arrival, I quitted my good mother, who was quite reconciled to 
 me (indeed the duel had done that), and found the disconsolate 
 Calista was in the habit of paying visits to the wounded swain, 
 much to the annoyance, the servants told me, of that gentleman. 
 The English are often absurdly high and haughty upon a point 
 of punctdio ; and, after his kinswoman's conduct, Lord Poynings 
 swore he would have no more to do with her. 
 
 I had this information from his lordship's gentleman, with 
 whom, as I have said, I took particular care to be friends ; nor was 
 I denied admission by his porter, when I chose to call, as before.
 
 212 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Her ladyship had most likely bribed that person as I had, for 
 she had found her way up, though denied admission ; and, in 
 fact, I had watched her from her own house to Lord George 
 Poynings' lodgings, and seen her descend from her chair there 
 and enter, before I myself followed her. I proposed to await her 
 quietly in the ante-room, to make a scene there, and reproach 
 her with infidelity, if necessary ; but matters were, as it happened, 
 arranged much more conveniently for me, and walking, unan- 
 nounced, into the outer-room of his lordship's apartments, I 
 had the felicity of hearing in the next chamber, of which the 
 door was partially open, the voice of my Calista. She was in 
 full cry, appealing to the poor patient, as he lay confined in his 
 bed, and speakiug in the most passionate manner. " "What can 
 lead you, George," she said, " to doubt of my faith ? How can 
 you break my heart by casting me off in this monstrous manner ? 
 Do you wish to drive your poor Calista to the grave ? Well, 
 well, I shall join there the dear departed angel." 
 
 " Who entered it three months since," said Lord George, with 
 a sneer. " It's a wonder you have survived so long." 
 
 "Don't treat your poor Calista in this cruel, cruel manner, 
 Antonio ! " cried the widow. 
 
 "Bah!" said Lord George, " my wound is bad. My doctors 
 forbid me much talk. Suppose your Antonio tired, my dear. 
 Can't you console yourself with somebody else ? " 
 
 " Heavens, Lord George ! Antonio ! " 
 
 " Console yourself with Eugenio," said the young nobleman, 
 bitterly, and began ringing his bell; on which his valet, who was 
 in an inner room, came out, and he bade him show her ladyship 
 down-stairs. 
 
 Lady Lyndon issued from the room in the greatest flurry. 
 She was dressed in deep weeds, with a veil over her face, and 
 did not recognise the person waiting in the outer apartment. 
 As she went down the stairs, I stepped lightly after her, and as 
 her chairman opened her door, sprung forward, and took her 
 hand to place her in the vehicle. " Dearest widow," said I, "his 
 lordship spoke correctly. Console yourself with Eugenio ! " 
 She was too frightened even to scream, as her chairman 
 carried her away. She was set down at her house, and you
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 213 
 
 may be sure that I was at the chair-door, as before, to help 
 her out. 
 
 " Monstrous man ! " said she, " I desire you to leave me." 
 
 " Madam, it would be against my oath," replied I ; " recollect 
 the vow Eugenio sent to Calista." 
 
 " If you do not quit me, I will call for the domestics to turn 
 you from the door." 
 
 " What ! when I am come with my Calista's letters in my 
 pocket, to return them mayhap ? Tou can soothe, madam, but 
 you cannot frighten Redmond Barry." 
 
 " What is it you would have of me, sir ? " said the widow, 
 rather agitated. 
 
 " Let me come up-stairs, and I will tell you all," I replied ; 
 and she condescended to give me her hand, and to permit me to 
 lead her from her chair to her drawing-room. 
 
 When we were alone I opened my mind honourably to her. 
 
 "Dearest madam," said I, "do not let your cruelty drive a 
 desperate slave to fatal measures. I adore you. In former days 
 you allowed me to whisper my passion to you unrestrained, at 
 present you drive me from your door, leave my letters unanswered, 
 and prefer another to me. My flesh and blood cannot bear such 
 treatment ; look upon the punishment I have been obliged to 
 inflict, tremble at that which I may be compelled to administer 
 to that unfortunate young man; so sure as he marries you, 
 madam, he dies." 
 
 " I do not recognise," said the widow, " the least right you 
 have to give the law to the Countess of Lyndon ; I do not in the 
 least understand your threats, or heed them. What has passed 
 between me and an Irish adventurer that should authorise this 
 impertinent intrusion ? " 
 
 " These have passed, madam," said I, — " Calista's letters to 
 Eugenio. They may have been ver} T innocent, but will the world 
 believe it ? Tou may have only intended to play with the heart 
 of the poor artless Irish gentleman who adored and confided in 
 you. But who will believe the stories of your innocence against 
 the irrefragable testimony of your own hand-writing ? Who will 
 believe that you could write these letters in the mere wantonness 
 of coquetry, and not under the influence of affection ? "
 
 21 4 THE MEMOIRS OE BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 " Villain!" cried my Lady Lyndon, "could you dare to con- 
 strue out of those idle letters of mine any other meaning than 
 that which they really bear ? " 
 
 " I will construe any thing out of them," said I, " such is the 
 passion which animates me towards you. I have sworn it — 
 you must and shall be mine ! Did you ever know me promise 
 to accomplish a thing and fail ? Which will you prefer to have 
 from me — a love such as woman never knew from man before, 
 or a hatred to which there exists no parallel ? " 
 
 " A woman of my rank, sir, can fear nothing from the hatred of 
 an adventurer like yourself," replied the lady, drawing up stately. 
 
 " Look at your Poynings — was he of your rank ? Tou are 
 the cause of that young man's wound, madam, and, but that the 
 instrument of your savage cruelty relented, would have been the 
 author of his murder — yes, of his murder ; for, if a wife is faith- 
 less, does not she arm the husband who punishes the seducer ? 
 And I look upon you, Honoria Lyndon, as my wife." 
 
 " Husband ! wife, sir ! " cried the widow, quite astonished. 
 
 " Yes, wife ! husband ! I am not one of those poor souls with 
 whom coquettes can play, and who may afterwards throw them 
 aside. Tou would forget what passed between us at Spa ; Calista 
 would forget Eugeuio, but I will not let you forget me. You 
 thought to trifle with my heart, did you? When once moved, 
 Honoria, it is moved for ever. I love you — love as passion- 
 ately now as I did when my passion was hopeless, and, now that 
 I can win you, do you think I will forego you ? Cruel, cruel 
 Calista ! you little know the power of your own charms if you 
 think their effect is so easily obliterated — you little know the 
 constancy of this pure and noble heart if you think that, having 
 once loved, it can ever cease to adore you. No ! I swear by your 
 cruelty that I will revenge it, by your wonderful beauty that I 
 will win it, and be worthy to win it. Lovely, fascinating, fickle, 
 cruel woman! you shall be mine — I swear it? Your wealth 
 may. be great, but am I not of a generous nature enough to use 
 it worthily ? Your rank is lofty, but not so lofty as my ambition. 
 You threw yourself away once on a cold and spiritless debauchee ; 
 give yourself now, Honoria, to a man, and one who, however lofty 
 your rank may be, will enhance it and become it ! "
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 215 
 
 As I poured words to this effect out on the astouished widow, 
 I stood over her, fascinated her with the glance of niy eye, 
 saw her turn red and pale with fear and wonder, saw that my 
 praise of her charms and the exposition of my passion were 
 not unwelcome to her, and witnessed with triumphant compo- 
 sure the mastery I was gaining over her. Terror, be sure of 
 that, is not a bad ingredient of love. A man who wills fiercely 
 to win the heart of a weak and vapourish woman must succeed if 
 he have opportunity enough. 
 
 " Terrible man ! " said Lady Lyndon, shrinking from me as 
 soon as I had done speaking (indeed, I was at a loss for words, 
 and thinking of another speech to make to her) — " terrible man ! 
 leave me." 
 
 I saw that I had made an impression on her from those very 
 words. If she lets me into the house to-morrow, said I, she is 
 mine. 
 
 As I went down-stairs I put ten guineas into the hand of the 
 "hall-porter, who looked quite astonished at such a gift. 
 
 " It is to repay you for the trouble of opening the door to me," 
 said I; "you will have to do so often." 
 
 CHAPTER XYI. 
 
 I PROVIDE NOBLY FOR MX FAMILY AND ATTAIN THE HEIGHT 
 OF MY (SEEMING) GOOD rORTUNE. 
 
 The next day when I went back, my fears were realised ; the 
 door was refused to me — my lady was not at home. This I 
 knew to be false, I had watched the door the whole morning 
 from a lodging I took at a house opposite. 
 
 "Tour lady is not out," said I: "she has denied me, and I 
 can't, of course, force my way to her. But listen, you are an 
 Englishman ? " 
 
 " That I am," said the fellow, with an air of the utmost superi- 
 ority. "Tour honour could tell that by my haccent." 
 
 I knew he was, and misrht therefore offer him a bribe. An
 
 216 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Irish family servant in rags, and though his wages were never 
 paid him, would probably fling the money in your face. 
 
 " Listen, then," said I. " Your lady's letters pass through your 
 hands, don't they ? A crown for every one that you bring me to 
 read. There is a whiskey-shop in the next street, bring them 
 there when you go to drink, and call for me by the name of 
 Dermot." 
 
 " I recollect your honour at Spar" says the fellow, grinning ; 
 " seven's the main, heh ? " and, being exceedingly proud of this 
 reminiscence, I bade my inferior adieu. 
 
 I do not defend this practice of letter-opening in private life, 
 except in cases of the most urgent necessity, when we must 
 follow the examples of our betters, the statesmen of all Europe, 
 and, for the sake of a great good, infriuge a little matter of 
 ceremony. My Lady Lyndon's letters were none the worse for 
 being opened, and a great deal the better, the knowledge obtained 
 from the perusal of some of her multifarious epistles enabling 
 me to become intimate with her character in a hundred ways, 
 and obtain a power over her by which I was not slow to profit. 
 By the aid of the letters and of my English friend, whom I 
 always regaled with the best of liquor, and satisfied with presents 
 of money still more agreeable (I used to put on a livery in 
 order to meet him, and a red wig, in which it was impossible to 
 know the dashing and elegant Eedmond Barry), I got such an 
 insight into the widow's movements as astonished her. I knew 
 beforehand to what public places she would go ; they were, on 
 account of her widowhood, but few : and wherever she appeared, 
 at church or in the park, I was always ready to offer her her 
 book, or to canter on horseback by the side of her chariot. 
 
 Many of her ladyship's letters were the most whimsical rhodo- 
 montades that ever blue-stocking penned. She was a woman who 
 took up and threw off a greater number of dear friends, than 
 any one I ever knew. To some of these female darlings she 
 began presently to write about my unworthy self, and it was with 
 a sentiment of extreme satisfaction I found at length that the 
 widow was growing dreadfully afraid of me, calling me her bete 
 noire, her dark spirit, her murderous adorer, and a thousand 
 other names indicative of her extreme disquietude and terror.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 217 
 
 It was : " the wretch has been dogging my chariot through the 
 park," or, " my fate pursued me at church," and " my inevitable 
 adorer handed me out of my chair at the mercer's," or what not. 
 My wish was to increase this sentiment of awe in her bosom, 
 and to make her believe that I was a person from whom escape 
 was impossible. 
 
 To this end I bribed a fortune-teller whom she consulted, 
 along with a number of the most foolish and distinguished people 
 of Dublin in those days, and who, although she went dressed 
 like one of her waiting-women, did not fail to recognise her 
 real rank, and to describe as her future husband her perse verino- 
 adorer Eedmond Barry, Esq. This incident disturbed her very 
 much. She wrote about it in terms of great wonder and terror to 
 her female correspondents. "Can this monster," she wrote, 
 " indeed do as he boasts, and bend even Fate to his will ? — can 
 he make me marry him though I cordially detest him, and bring 
 me a slave to his feet ? The horrid look of his black serpent- 
 like eyes fascinates and frightens me ; it seems to follow me every- 
 where, and even when I close my own eyes, the dreadful gaze 
 penetrates the lids, and is still upon me." 
 
 When a woman begins to talk of a man in this way, he is an 
 ass who does not win her ; and, for my part, I used to follow 
 her about, and put myself in an attitude opposite her, " and fasci- 
 nate her with my glance," as she said, most assiduously. Lord 
 George Poynings, her former admirer, was meanwhile keeping his 
 room with his wound, and had seemed determined to give up all 
 claims to her favour ; for he denied her admittance when she 
 called, sent no answer to her multiplied correspondence, and 
 contented himself by saying generally, that the surgeon had 
 forbidden him to receive visitors or to answer letters. Thus, 
 while he went into the back-ground, I came forward, and took 
 good care that no other rivals should present themselves with any 
 chance of success ; for, as soon as I heard of one, I had a quarrel 
 fastened on him, and, in this way pinked two more besides my 
 first victim Lord George. I always took another pretext for 
 quarrelling with them than the real one of attention to Lady 
 Lyndon, so that no scandal or hurt to her ladyship's feelings 
 might arise in consequence ; but she very well knew what was
 
 21S THE MEMOIRS OP BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 the meaning of these duels, and the young fellows of Dublin, 
 too, by laying two and two together, began to perceive that there 
 was a certain dragon in watch for the wealthy heiress, and that 
 the dragon must be subdued first before they could get at the 
 lady. I warrant that, after the first three, not many champions 
 were found to address the lady, and have often laughed (in. my 
 sleeve) to see many of the young Dublin beaux riding by the side 
 of her carriage scamper off as soon as my bay mare and green 
 liveries made their appearance. 
 
 I wanted to impress her with some great and awful instance 
 of my power, and to this end had determined to confer a great 
 benefit upon my honest cousin Ulick, and carry off for him the 
 fair object of his affections, Miss Kiljoy, under the very eyes of 
 her guardian and friend, Lady Lyndon, and in the teeth of the 
 squires, the young lady's brothers, who passed the season at 
 Dublin, and made as much swagger and to-do about their sister's 
 10,OOOZ., Irish, as if she had had a plum to her fortune. The girl 
 was by no means averse to Mr. Brady, and it only shows how 
 faint-spirited some men are, and how a superior genius can 
 instantly overcome difficulties which, to common minds, seem 
 insuperable, that he never had thought of running off with her, as 
 I at once and boldly did. Miss Iviljoy had been a ward in 
 Chancery until she attained her majority (before which period 
 it would bave been a dangerous matter for me to put in execu- 
 tion the scheme I meditated concerning her), but, though now 
 free to marry whom she liked, she was a young lady of timid dis- 
 position, and as much under fear of her brothers and relatives as 
 though she had not been independent of them. They had some 
 friend of their own in view for the young lady, and had scornfully 
 rejected the proposal of Ulick Brady, the ruined gentleman, who 
 was quite unworthy, as these rustic bucks thought, of the hand 
 of such a prodigiously wealthy heiress as their sister. 
 
 Finding herself lonely iu her great house in Dublin, the Countess 
 of Lyndon invited her friend Miss Amelia to pass the season with 
 her at Dublin, and, in a fit of maternal fondness, also sent for her 
 son, the little Bullingdon, and my old acquaintance his governor, 
 to come to the capital and bear her company. A family coach 
 brought the boy, the heiress, and the tutor from Castle Lyndon,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 219 
 
 and I determined to take the first opportunity of putting my plan 
 in execution. 
 
 For this chance I had not very long to wait. I have said, in a 
 former chapter of my biography, that the kingdom of Ireland was 
 at this period ravaged by various parties of banditti, who, under 
 the name of Whiteboys, Oakboys, Steelboys, with captains at 
 their head, killed proctors, fired stacks, houghed and maimed cattle, 
 and took the law into their own hands. One of these bands, or 
 several of them for what I know, was commanded by a mysterious 
 personage called Captain Thunder, whose business seemed to be 
 that of marrying people with, or without their own consent, or 
 that of their parents. The "Dublin Gazettes" and "Mercuries" of 
 that period (the year 1772), teem with proclamations from the lord- 
 lieutenant, offering rewards for the apprehension of this dreadful 
 Captain Thunder and his gang, and describing at length various 
 exploits of the savage aide-de-camp of Hymen. I determined to 
 make use, if not of the services, at any rate of the name of Captain 
 Thunder, and put my cousin Ulick in possession of his lady and 
 her ten thousand pounds. She was no great beauty, and, I pre- 
 sume, it was the money he loved rather than the owner of it. 
 
 On account of her widowhood, Lady Lyndon could not as yet 
 frequent the balls and routs which the hospitable nobility of 
 Dublin were in the custom of giving ; but her friend Miss Kiljoy 
 had no such cause for retirement, and was glad to attend any 
 parties to whicli she might be invited. I made Ulick Brady a 
 present of a couple of handsome suits of velvet, and by my influence 
 procured him an invitation to many of the most elegant of these 
 assemblies. But he had not had ray advantages or experience of 
 the manners of court ; was as shy with ladies as a young colt, and 
 could no more dance a minuet than a donkey. He made very 
 little way in the polite world in his mistress's heart ; in fact, I 
 could see that she preferred several other young gentlemen to 
 him, who were more at home in the ball-room than poor Ulick, 
 who had made his first impression upon the heiress, and felt his 
 first flame for her, in her father's house of Ballykiljoy, where he 
 used to hunt and get drunk with the old gentleman. 
 
 " I could do tJiim, too, well enough, any how," Ulick would say, 
 heaving a sigh ; " and, if it's drinking or riding across country
 
 220 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 would do it, there's no man in Ireland would have a better chance 
 with Am alia." 
 
 " Never fear, TJlick," was my reply ; " }'ou shall have your 
 Amalia, or my name is not Eedmond Barry." 
 
 My Lord Charlemont, who was one of the most elegant and 
 accomplished noblemen in Ireland in those days, a fine scholar and 
 wit, a gentleman who had travelled much abroad, where I had the 
 honour of knowing him, gave a magnificent masquerade at his 
 house of Marino, some few miles from Dublin, on the Dunbeary 
 road. And it was at this entertainment that I was determined 
 that Ulick should be made happy for life. Mis3 Kiljoy was 
 invited to the masquerade, and the little Lord Bullingdon, who 
 longed to witness such a scene ; and it was agreed that he was to 
 go under the guardianship of his governor, my old friend the 
 Eev. Mr. Hunt. I learned what was the equipage in which the 
 party were to be conveyed to the ball, and took my measures 
 accordingly. 
 
 Ulick Brady was not present ; his fortune and quality were 
 not sufficient to procure him an invitation to so distinguished 
 a place, and I had it given out three days previous that he 
 had been arrested for debt ; a rumour which surprised nobody who 
 knew him. 
 
 I appeared that night in a character with which I was very 
 familiar, that of a private soldier in the King of Prussia's guard. 
 I had a grotesque mask made, with an immense nose and mous- 
 tachios, talked a jumble of broken English and German, in which 
 the latter greatly predominated; and had crowds round me 
 laughing at my droll accent, and whose curiosity was increased 
 by a knowledge of my previous history. Miss Kiljoy was attired 
 as an antique princess, with little Bullingdon as a page of the times 
 of chivalry ; his hair was in powder, his doublet rose-colour, and 
 pea-green and silver, and he looked very handsome and saucy as 
 he strutted about with my sword by his side. As for Mr. Hunt, 
 he walked about very demurely in a domino, and perpetually paid 
 his respects to the beauffet, and ate enough cold chicken, and 
 drank enough punch and champagne, to satisfy a company of 
 grenadiers. 
 
 The lord-lieutenant came and went in state — the ball was mag-
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 221 
 
 nificent. Miss Kiljoy bad partners in plenty, among whom was 
 myself, who walked a minuet with her (if the clumsy waddling 
 of the Irish heiress may be called by such a name), and I 
 took occasion to plead my passion for Lady Lyndon in the 
 most pathetic terms, and to beg her friend's interference in my 
 favour. 
 
 It was three hours past midnight when the party for Lyndon 
 House went away. Little Bullingdon had long since been asleep 
 in one of Lady Charlemont's china closets. Mr. Bunt was ex- 
 ceedingly husky in talk, and unsteady in gait. A young lady 
 of the present day would be alarmed to see a gentleman in such 
 a condition ; but it was a common sight in those jolly old times, 
 when a gentleman was thought a milksop unless he was occa- 
 sionally tipsy. I saw Miss Kiljoy to her carriage, with several 
 other gentlemen, and peering through the crowd of ragged link- 
 boys, drivers, beggars, drunken men and women, who used 
 invariably to wait round great men's doors when festivities were 
 going on, saw the carriage drive off, with a hurra from the mob, 
 and came back presently to the supper-room, where I talked 
 German, favoured the three or four topers still there with a 
 high Dutch chorus, and attacked the dishes and wine with great 
 resolution. 
 
 "How can you drink oisy with that big nose on?" said one 
 gentleman. 
 
 " Go an be hangt ! " said I, in the true accent, applying myself 
 again to the wine ; with which the others laughed, and I pursued 
 my supper in silence. 
 
 There was a gentleman present who had seen the Lyndon party 
 go off, with whom I had made a bet, which I lost ; and the next 
 morning I called upon him and paid it him. All which par- 
 t : culars the reader will be surprised at hearing enumerated ; but 
 the fact is, that it was not I who went back to the party, but my 
 late German valet, who was of my size, and, dressed in my mask, 
 could perfectly pass for me. "We changed clothes in a hackney- 
 coach that stood near Lady Lyndon's chariot, and driving after it, 
 speedily overtook it. 
 
 The fated vehicle which bore the lovely object of TJlick Brady's 
 affections had not advanced very far, when, in the midst of &
 
 222 THE MEMOIRS OP BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 deep rut in the road, it came suddenly to with a jolt, and the 
 footman, springing off the back, cried stop to the coachman, warning 
 him that a wheel was off, and that it would be dangerous to pro- 
 ceed with only three. Wheel-caps had not been invented in 
 those days, as they have since by the ingenious builders of 
 Long Acre. And how the linchpin of the wheel had come out 
 I do not pretend to say, but it possibly may have been extracted 
 by some rogues among the crowd before Lord Charlemont's 
 gate. 
 
 Miss Kiljoy thrust her head of the window, screaming as ladies 
 do ; Mr. Runt the chaplain woke up from his boozy slumbers ; 
 and little Bullingdon, starting up and drawing his little sword, 
 said, " Don't be afraid, Miss Amelia ; if it's footpads, I am 
 armed." The young rascal had the spirit of a lion, that's 
 the truth, as I must acknowledge, in spite of all my after-quarrels 
 with him. 
 
 The hackney-coach which had been following Lady Lyndon's 
 chariot, by this time came up, and the coachman seeing the 
 disaster, stepped down from his box, and politely requested her 
 ladyship's honour to enter his vehicle, which was as clean and 
 elegant as any person of tiptop quality might desire. This 
 invitation was, after a minute or two, accepted by the passengers 
 of the chariot : the hackney-coachman promising to drive them 
 to Dublin "in a hurry." Thady, the valet, proposed to accom- 
 pany his young master and the young lady ; and the coachman, 
 who had a friend seemingly drunk by his side on the box, with 
 a grin told Thady to get up behind. However, a3 the footboard 
 there was covered with spikes, as a defence against the street 
 boys, who love a ride gratis, Thady's fidelity would not induce 
 him to brave these, and he was persuaded to remain by the 
 wounded chariot, for which he and the coachman manufactured 
 a linchpin out of a neighbouring hedge. 
 
 Meanwhile, although the hackney-coachman drove on rapidly, 
 yet the party within seemed to consider it was a long distance 
 i'rom Dublin; and what was Miss Kiljoy's astonishment, on looking 
 out of the window, at length to see around her a lonely heath, 
 with no signs of buildings or city. She began forthwith to 
 scream out to the coachman to stop, but the man only whipped the
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 223 
 
 horses the faster for her noise, and bade her ladyship " hould on 
 — 'twas a short cut he was taking." 
 
 Miss Kiljoy continued screaming, the coachman flogging, the 
 horses galloping, until two or three men appeared suddenly from 
 a hedge, to whom the fair one cried for assistance ; and the young 
 Bullingdon opening the coach-door, jumped valiantly out, toppling 
 over head and heels as he fell, but, jumping up in an instant, he 
 drew his little sword, and, running towards the carriage, exclaimed, 
 " This way, gentlemen ! stop the rascal ! " 
 
 "Stop!" cried the men; at which the coachman pulled up 
 with extraordinary obedience. Runt all the while lay tipsy in the 
 carriage, having only a dreamy half-consciousness of all that was 
 going on. 
 
 The newly arrived champions of female distress now held a 
 consultation, in which they looked at the young lord, and laughed 
 considerably. 
 
 " Do not be alarmed," said their leader, coming up to the door ; 
 " one of my people shall mount the box by the side of that 
 treacherous rascal, and, with your ladyship's leave, I and my 
 companion will get in and see you home. "We are well armed, 
 and can defend you in case of danger." 
 
 With this, and without more ado, he jumped into the carriage, 
 his companion following him. 
 
 " Know your place fellow ! " cried out little Bullingdon, in- 
 dignantly : "and give place to the Lord Viscount Bullingdon ! " 
 and put himself before the huge person of the new-comer, who 
 was about to enter the hackney-coach. 
 
 " Get out of that, my lord," said the man, in a broad brogue, 
 and shoving him aside. On which the boy crying " Thieves ! 
 thieves ! " drew out his little hanger, and ran at the man, and 
 would have wounded him (for a small sword will wound as well 
 as a great one), but his opponent, who was armed with a long 
 stick, struck the weapon luckily out of the lad's hands ; it went 
 flying over his head, and left him aghast and mortified at his 
 discomfiture. 
 
 He then pulled off his hat, making his lordship a low bow, and 
 entered the carriage, the door of which was shut upon him by his 
 confederate who was to mount the box. Miss Kiljoy might have
 
 224 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 screamed, but I presume her shrieks were stopped by the sight of 
 an enormous horse-pistol which one of her champions produced, 
 who said, " No harm is intended you, ma'am, but if you cry out, we 
 must gag you ; " on which she suddenly became as mute as a fish. 
 
 All these events took place in an exceedingly short space of 
 time, and when the three invaders had taken possession of the 
 carriage, the poor little Bullingdon being left bewildered and 
 astonished on the heath, one of them putting his head out of the 
 window, said, — 
 
 " My lord, a word with you." 
 
 " What is it ? " said the boy, beginning to whimper ; he was 
 but eleven years old, and his courage had been excellent hitherto. 
 
 " Tou are only two miles from Marino. "Walk back till you 
 come to a big stone, there turn to the right, and keep on straight 
 till you get to the highroad, when you will easily find your way 
 back. And when you see her ladyship, your mamma, give Captain 
 Thunder's compliments, and say Miss Amelia Kiljoy is going to 
 be married." 
 
 " Oh, heavens ! " sighed out that young lady. 
 
 The carriage drove swiftly on, and the poor little nobleman was 
 left alone on the heath, just as the morning began to break. He 
 was fairly frightened, and no wonder. He thought of running 
 after the coach, but his courage and his little legs failed him, so he 
 sat down upon a stone and cried for vexation. 
 
 It was in this way that Illicit Brady made what I call a Sabine 
 marriage. "When he halted with his two groomsmen at the 
 cottage where the ceremony was to be performed, Mr. Bunt, the 
 chaplain, at first declined to perform it. But a pistol was held at 
 the head of that unfortunate preceptor, and he was told, with 
 dreadful oaths, that his miserable brains would be blown out, 
 when he consented to read the service. The lovely Amelia had, 
 very likely, a similar inducement held out to her, but of that I 
 know nothing ; for I drove back to town with the coachman as 
 soon as we had set the bridal party down, and had the satisfaction 
 of finding Iritz, my German, arrived before me, who had come 
 back in my carriage in my dress, having left the masquerade 
 undiscovered, and done every thing there according to my 
 orders.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 225 
 
 Poor Eunt came back the next day in a piteous plight, keeping 
 silence as to his share in the occurrences of the evening ; and with 
 a dismal story of having been drunk, of having been waylaid and 
 bound, of having been left on the road and picked up by a Wick- 
 low cart, which was coming in with provisions to Dublin, and 
 found him helpless on the road. There was no possible means of 
 fixing any share of the conspiracy upon him. Little Bullingdon, 
 who, too, found his way home, was unable in any way to identify 
 me. But Lady Lyndon knew that I was concerned in the plot, 
 for I met her ladyship hurrying the next day to the Castle, all the 
 town being up about the enlevement. And I saluted her with a 
 smile so diabolical, that I knew she was aware that I had been 
 concerned in the daring and ingenious scheme. 
 
 Thus it was that I repaid "Click Brady's kindness to me in early 
 days, and had the satisfaction of restoring the fallen fortunes of 
 a deserving branch of my family. He took his bride into Wick- 
 low, where he lived with her in the strictest seclusion until the 
 affair was blown over, the Kiljoys striving everywhere in vain, to 
 discover his retreat. They did not for a while even know who 
 was the lucky man who had carried off the heiress ; nor was it 
 until she wrote a letter some weeks afterwards, signed Amelia 
 Brady, and expressing her perfect happiness in her new condition, 
 and stating that she had been married by Lady Lyndon's chap- 
 lain Mr. Bunt, that the truth was known, and my worthy friend 
 confessed his share of the transaction. As his good-natured 
 mistress did not dismiss him from his post in consequence, every 
 body persisted in supposing that poor Lady Lyndon was privy to 
 the plot ; and the story of her ladyship's passionate attachment 
 for me gained more and more credit. 
 
 I was not slow, you may be sure, in profiting by these rumours. 
 Every one thought I had a share in the Brady marriage, 
 though no one could prove it. Every one thought I was well 
 with the widowed countess, though no one could show that I said 
 so. But there is a way of proving a thing even while you con- 
 tradict it, and I used to laugh and joke so a propos that all men 
 began to wish me joy of my great fortune, and look up to me as 
 the affianced husband of the greatest heiress in the kingdom. 
 The papers took up the matter, the female friends of Lady Lyndon 
 
 VOL. III. Q
 
 226 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 remonstrated with her and cried "Pie! " Even the English jour- 
 nals and magazines, which in those days were very scandalous, 
 talked of the matter, and whispered that a beautiful and accom- 
 plished widow, with a title and the largest possessions in the two 
 kingdoms, was about to bestow her hand upon a young gentleman 
 of high birth and fashion, who had distinguished himself in the 
 service of his M — y the K — of Pr — . I won't say who was the 
 author of these paragraphs, or how two pictures, one representing 
 myself under the title of "The Prussian Irishman," and the other 
 Lady Lyndon as " The Countess of Ephesus," actually appeared in 
 the "Town and Country Magazine," published at London, and 
 containing the fashionable tittle-tattle of the day. 
 
 Lady Lyndon was so perplexed and terrified by this continual 
 hold upon her, that she determined to leave the country. "Well, 
 she did ; and who was the first to receive her on landing at Holy- 
 head? Tour humble servant, Eedmond Barry, Esq. And, to 
 crown all, the " Dublin Mercury," which announced her ladyship's 
 departure announced mine the day before. There was not a soul 
 but thought she had followed me to England, whereas she was 
 only flying me. Vain hope! — a man of my resolution was not 
 thus to be balked in pursuit. Had she fled to the Antipodes, I 
 would have been there ; ay, and would have followed her as far as 
 Orpheus did Eurydice ! 
 
 Her ladyship had a house in Berkeley Square, London, more 
 splendid than that which she possessed in Dublin, and, knowing 
 that she would come thither, I preceded her to the English 
 capital, and took handsome apartments in Hill Street, hard by. I 
 had the same intelligence in her London house which I had pro- 
 cured in Dublin. The same faithful porter was there to give me 
 all the information I required. I promised to treble his wages as 
 soon as a certain event should happen. I won over Lady Lyndon's 
 companion by a present of 100 guineas down, and a promise of 
 2000 when I should be married, and gained the favours of her 
 favourite lady's-maid, by a bribe of similar magnitude. My 
 reputation had so far preceded me in London that, on my arrival, 
 numbers of the genteel were eager to receive me at their routes. 
 We have no idea in this humdrum age what a gay and splendid 
 place London was then ; what a passsion for play there was
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 227 
 
 among young and old, male and female; what thousands were 
 lost and won in a night ; what beauties there were — how brilliant, 
 gay, and dashing ! Everybody was delightfully wicked. The 
 royal Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland set the example — the 
 nobles followed close behind. Eunning away was the fashion: 
 ah ! it was a pleasant time ; and lucky was he who had fire, and 
 youth, and money, and could live in it ! I had all these, and the 
 old frequenters of White's, Wattier's, and Goosetree's could tell 
 stories of the gallantry, spirit, and high fashion of Captain Barry. 
 
 The progress of a love-story is tedious to all those who are not 
 concerned, and I leave such themes to the hack novel-writers, and 
 the young boarding-school misses for whom they write. It is not 
 my intention to follow, step by step, the incidents of my court- 
 ship, or to narrate all the difficulties I had to contend with, 
 and my triumphant manner of surmounting them. Suffice it to 
 say, I did overcome these difficulties. I am of opinion, with my 
 friend, the late ingenious Mr. Wilkes, that such impediments are 
 nothing in the way of a man of spirit ; and that he can convert 
 indifference and aversion into fove, if he have perseverance and 
 cleverness sufficient. By the time the countess's widowhood was 
 expired, I had found means to be received into her house ; I had 
 her women perpetually talking in my favour, vaunting my powers, 
 expatiating upon my reputation, and boasting of my success and 
 popularity in the fashionable world. 
 
 Also, the best friends I had in the prosecution of my tender 
 suit were the countess's noble relatives, who were far from knowing 
 the service that they did me, and to whom I beg leave to tender 
 my heartfelt thanks for the abuse with which they then loaded 
 me, and to whom I fling my utter contempt for the calumny and 
 hatred with which they have subsequently pursued me. 
 
 The chief of these amiable persons was the Marchioness of 
 Tiptoff, mother of the young gentleman whose audacity I had 
 punished at Dublin. This old harridan, on the countess's first 
 arrival in London, waited upon her, and favoured her with 
 such a storm of abuse for her encouragement of me, that I do 
 believe she advanced my cause more than six months' courtship 
 could have done, or the pinking of a half-dozen of rivals. It was 
 in vain that poor Lady Lyndon pleaded her entire innocence, and 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 vowed she had never encouraged me. " Never encouraged him ! " 
 screamed out the old Fury ; " didn't you encourage the wretch 
 at Spa during Sir Charles's own life ? Didn't you marry a 
 dependent of yours to one of this profligate's bankrupt cousins ? 
 "When he set off for England, didn't you follow him, like a mad 
 woman, the very next day ? Didn't he take lodgings at your very 
 door almost — and do you call this no encouragement ? For shame, 
 madam, shame ! You might have married mv son — mv dear and 
 noble George, but that he did not choose to interfere with your 
 shameful passion for the beggarly upstart whom you caused to 
 assassinate him ; and the only counsel I have to give your ladyship 
 is this, to legitimatise the ties which you have contracted with this 
 shameless adventurer ; to make that connection legal which, real 
 as it is now, is against both decency and religion ; and to spare your 
 family and your son the shame of your present line of life." 
 
 With this the old fury of a marchioness left the room, and Lady 
 Lyndon in tears ; and I had the whole particulars of the conver- 
 sation from her ladyship's companion, and augured the best result 
 from it in my favour. 
 
 Thus, by the sage influence of my Lady Tiptoff, the Countess 
 of Lyndon's natural friends and family were kept from her society. 
 Even when Lady Lyndon went to court, the most august lady in 
 the realm received her with such marked coldness, that the unfor- 
 tunate widow came home and took to her bed with vexation. 
 And thus, I may say, that royalty itself became an agent in 
 advancing my suit, and helping the plans of the poor Irish soldier 
 of fortune. So it is that Fate works with agents, great and 
 small ; and by means over which they have no control the destinies 
 of men and women are accomplished. 
 
 I shall always consider the conduct of Mrs. Bridget, (Lady 
 Lyndon's favourite maid at this juncture) as a masterpiece of 
 ingenuity ; and, indeed, had such an opinion of her diplomatic 
 skill, that the very instant I became master of the Lyndon estates, 
 and paid her the promised sum — I am a man of honour, and 
 rather than not keep my word with the woman, I raised the money 
 of the Jews, at an exorbitant interest — as soon, I say, as I achieved 
 my triumph, I took Mrs. Bridget by the hand, and said, " Madam, 
 you have shown such unexampled fidelity in my service that I am
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 229 
 
 glad to reward you, according to my promise ; but you have given 
 proofs of such extraordinary cleverness and dissimulation, that I 
 must decline keeping you in Lady Lyndon's establishment, and 
 beg you will leave it this very day ; " which she did, and went over 
 to the Tiptoff faction, and has abused me ever since. 
 
 But I must tell you what she did which was so clever. Why, 
 it was the simplest thing in the world, as all masterstrokes are. 
 When Lady Lyndon lamented her fate and my — as she was 
 pleased to call it — shameful treatment of her, Mrs. Bridget said, 
 " Why should not your ladyship write this young gentleman word 
 of the evil which he is causing you? Appeal to his feelings 
 (which, I have heard say, are very good indeed — the whole town 
 is ringing with accounts of his spirit and generosity), and beg him 
 to desist from a pursuit which causes the best of ladies so much 
 pain ? Do, my lady, write : I know your style is so elegant that I 
 for my part, have many a time burst into tears in reading your 
 charming letters, and I have no doubt Mr. Barry will sacrifice any 
 thing rather than hurt your feelings." And, of course, the 
 abigail swore to the fact. 
 
 " Do you think so, Bridget ? " said her ladyship. And my 
 mistress forthwith penned me a letter, in her most fascinating and 
 winning manner. 
 
 " Why, sir," wrote she, " will you pursue me ? why environ me in a web of 
 intrigue so frightful that my spirit sinks under it, seeing escape is hopeless, 
 from your frightful, your diabolical art ? They say you are generous to 
 others — be so to me. I know your bravery but too well: exercise it on men 
 who can meet your sword, not on a poor feeble woman, who cannot resist 
 you. Remember the friendship you once professed for me. And now, I 
 beseech you, I implore you, to give a proof of it. Contradict the calumnies 
 which you have spread against me, and repair, if you can, and if you bave a 
 spark of honour left, the miseries which you have caused to the heart-broken, 
 
 "H. Lyndon." 
 
 What was this letter meant for but that I should answer it in 
 person ? My excellent ally told me where I should meet Lady 
 Lyndon, and accordingly, I followed, and found her at the Pan- 
 theon. I repeated the scene at Dublin over again ; showed her 
 how prodigious my power was, humble as I was, and that my 
 energy was still untired. " But," I added, " I am as great in 
 good as I am in evil ; as fond and faithful as a friend as I am 
 terrible as an enemy. I will do every thing," I said, " which you
 
 230 THE MEMOIRS OF BARKY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 ask of me, except when you bid me not to love you. That is 
 beyond my power ; and while my heart has a pulse I must follow 
 you. It is my fate, your fate. Cease to battle against it, and be 
 mine. Loveliest of your sex, with life alone can end my passion 
 for you, and, indeed, it is only by dying at your command that I 
 can be brought to obey you. Do you wish me to die ? " 
 
 She said laughing (for she was a woman of a lively, humourous 
 turn), that she did not wish me to commit self-murder, and I felt 
 
 from that moment that she was mine. 
 
 * * * * ♦ 
 
 A year from that day, on the 15th of May, in the year 1773, I 
 had the honour and happiness to lead to the altar Honoria 
 Countess of Lyndon, widow of the late Et. Hon. Sir Charles 
 Lyndon, K.B. The ceremony was performed at St. George's 
 Hanover Square, by the Rev. Samuel Runt, her ladyship's chap- 
 lain. A magnificent supper and ball was given at our house in 
 Berkeley Square, and the next morning I had a duke, four earls, 
 three generals, and a crowd of the most distinguished people in 
 London, at my levee. "Walpole made a lampoon about the mar- 
 riage, and Selwyn cut jokes at the Cocoa-tree. Old lady Tiptoff, 
 although she had recommended it, was ready to bite off her fingers 
 with vexation ; and as for young Bullingdon, who was grown a tall 
 lad of fourteen, when called upon by the countess to embrace his 
 papa, he shook his fist in my face, and said, " He my father ! I 
 would as soon call one of your ladyship's footmen papa ! " 
 
 But I could afford to laugh at the rage of the boy and the old 
 woman, and at the jokes of the wits of St. James's. I sent off a 
 flaming account of our nuptials to my mother, and my uncle, the 
 good chevalier ; and now, arrived at the pitch of prosperity, and 
 having, at thirty years of age, by my own merits and energy, 
 raised myself to one of the highest social positions that any man 
 in England could occupy, I determined to enjoy myself as became 
 a man of quality for the remainder of my life. 
 
 After we had received the congratulations of our friends in 
 London — for in those days people were not ashamed of being 
 married, as they seem to be now — I and Honoria (who was all 
 complacency, and a most handsome, sprightly, and agreeable com- 
 panion) set off to visit our estates in the west of England, where
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 231 
 
 I had never as yet set foot. "We left London in three chariots, 
 each with four horses ; and my uncle would have been pleased 
 could he have seen painted on their panels the Irish crown and 
 the ancient coat of the Barrys beside the countess's coronet, and 
 the noble cognisance of the noble family of Lyndon. 
 
 Before quitting London, I procured his majesty's gracious per- 
 mission to add the name of my lovely lady to my own, and hence- 
 forward assumed the style and title of Barry Lindon, as I have 
 written it in this autobiography. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 I APPEAR AS AN ORNAMENT OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 
 
 All the journey down to Hackton Castle, the largest and most 
 ancient of our ancestral seats in Devonshire, was performed with 
 the slow and sober state becoming people of the first quality in the 
 realm. An outrider in my livery went on before us, and hespoke 
 our lodging from town to town; and thus we lay in state at Andover, 
 Ilminster, and Exeter ; and the fourth evening arrived in time for 
 supper before the antique baronial mansion, of which the gate was 
 in an odious Gothic taste that would have set Mr. Walpole wild 
 with pleasure. 
 
 The first days of a marriage are commonly very trying ; and I 
 have known couples, who lived together like turtle-doves for the 
 rest of their lives, peck each other's eyes out almost during the 
 honeymoon. I did not escape the common lot ; in our journey 
 westward my Lady Lyndon chose to quarrel with me because I 
 pulled out a pipe of tobacco (the habit of smoking which I had 
 acquired in Germany when a soldier in Biilow's, and could never 
 give it over), and smoked it in the carriage ; and also her ladyship 
 chose to take umbrage both at Ilminster and Andover, because in 
 the evenings when we lav there I chose to invite the landlords of 
 the Bell and the Lion to crack a bottle with me. Lady Lyndon 
 was a haughty woman, and I hate pride, and I promise you that
 
 232 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 in both instances I overcame this vice in her. On the third day of 
 our journey I had her to light my pipe-match with her own hands, 
 and made her deliver it to me with tears in her eyes ; and at the 
 Swan Inn at Exeter I had so completely subdued her, that she 
 asked me humbly whether I would not wish the landlady as well 
 as the host to step up to dinner with us. To this I should have 
 had no objection, for, indeed, Mrs. Bonnyface was a very good- 
 looking woman ; but we expected a visit from my lord bishop, a 
 kinsman of Lady Lyndon, and the bienseances did not permit the 
 indulgence of my wife's request. I appeared with her at evening 
 service to compliment our right reverend cousin, and put her name 
 down for twenty-five guineas and my own for one hundred, to the 
 famous new organ which was then being built for the cathedral. 
 This conduct, at the very outset of my career in the county, made 
 me not a little popular ; and the residentiary canon who did me 
 the favour to sup with me at the inn, went away after the sixth 
 bottle hiccuping the most solemn vows for the welfare of such a 
 p-p-pious gentleman. 
 
 Before we reached Hackton Castle, we had to drive through ten 
 miles of the Lyndon estates, where the people were out to visit 
 us, the church-bells set a ringing, the parson and the farmers 
 assembled [in their best by the roadside, and the school-children 
 and the labouring people were loud in their hurrahs for her lady- 
 ship. I flung money among these worthy characters, stopped to 
 bow and chat with his reverence and the farmers, and if I found 
 that the Devonshire girls were among the handsomest in the 
 kingdom is it my fault ? These remarks my Lady Lyndon espe- 
 cially would take in great dudgeon : and I do believe she was made 
 more angry by my admiration of the red cheeks of Miss Betsy 
 Quarringdon of Clumpton, than by any previous speech or act of 
 mine in the journey. " Ah, ah, my fine madam, you are jealous, are 
 you?" thought I, and reflected, not without deep sorrow, how lightly 
 she herself had acted in her husband's lifetime, and that those are 
 most jealous who themselves give most cause for jealousy. 
 
 Bound Hackton village the scene of welcome was particularly 
 gay ; and a band of music had been brought from Plymouth, and 
 arches and flags had been raised, especially before the attorney's 
 and the doctor's houses, who were both in the employ of the
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 2C? 
 
 lamily. There were many hundreds of stout people at the great 
 lodge, which, with the park-wall, bounds one side of Hackton Green, 
 and from which, for three miles, goes, or rather went, an avenue 
 of noble elms up to the towers of the old castle. I wished they had 
 been oak when I cut the trees down in '79, for they would have 
 fetched three times the money ; and I know nothing more culpable 
 than the carelessness of ancestors in planting their grounds witli 
 timber of small value, when they might just as easily raise oak. 
 Thus I have always said that the Eoundhead London of Hackton, 
 who planted these elms in Charles II. 's time, cheated me of 10,000?. 
 
 For the first few days after our arrival, my time was agreeably 
 spent in receiving the visits of the nobility and gentry who came 
 to pay their respects to the noble new married couple, and, like 
 Bluebeard's wife in the fairy tale, in inspecting the treasures, the 
 furniture, and the numerous chambers of the castle. It is a huge 
 old place, built as far back as Henry V.'s time, besieged and 
 battered by the Cromwellians in the Eevolution, and altered and 
 patched up, in an odious old-fashioned taste, by the Eoundhead 
 Lyndon, who succeeded to the property at the death of a brother 
 whose principles were excellent and of the true Cavalier sort, but 
 who ruined himself chiefly by drinking, dicing, and a dissolute life, 
 and a little by supporting the king. The castle stands in a fine 
 chase, which was prettily speckled over with deer ; and I can't but 
 own that my pleasure was considerable at first as I sat in the oak 
 parlour of summer evenings, with the windows open, the gold and 
 silver plate shining in a hundred dazzling colours on the side- 
 boards, a dozen jolly companions round the table, and could look 
 out over the wide green park and the waving woods, and see the 
 sun setting on the lake, and hear the deer calling to one another. 
 
 The exterior was, when I first arrived, a quaint composition of 
 all sorts of architecture, of feudal towers, and gable-ends in Queen 
 Bess's style, and rough-patched walls built up to repair the ravages 
 of the Eoundhead cannon ; but I need not speak of this at large, 
 having had the place new-faced at a vast expense, under a fashion- 
 able architect, and the fagade laid out in the latest French-Greek 
 and most classical style. There had been moats, and drawbridges, 
 and outer walls; these I had shaved away into elegant terraces, 
 and handsomely laid out in parterres according to the plans of
 
 234 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 M. Cornichon, the great Parisian architect, who visited England 
 for the purpose. 
 
 After ascending the outer steps, you entered an antique hall of 
 %-ast dimensions, wainscoated with black carved oak, and ornamented 
 with portraits of our ancestors, from the square beard of Brook 
 Lyndon, the great lawyer in Queen Bess's time, to the loose stoma- 
 cher and ringlets of Lady Saccharissa Lyndon, whom Vandyck 
 ] ainted when she was a maid of honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, 
 and down to Sir Charles Lyndon, with his riband as a knight of 
 the Bath ; and my lady, as she was painted by Hudson, in a white 
 patin sack and family diamonds, as she was presented to the old King 
 George II. These diamonds were very fine ; I first had them re- 
 set by Boehmer, when we appeared before their Trench majesties 
 at Versailles, and finally raised 18,0007. upon, after that infernal 
 run of ill-luck at Goosetrees, when Jemmy Twitcher (as we called 
 my Lord Sandwich), Carlisle, Charley Fox, and I played hombre 
 for four-and-forty hours, sans desemparer. Bows and pikes, huge 
 stag-heads, and hunting implements, and rusty old suits of armour, 
 that must have been worn in the days of Gog and Magog, for 
 what I know, formed the other old ornaments of this huge apart- 
 ment, and were ranged round a fire-place where you might have 
 turned a coach-and-six. This I kept pretty much in its antique 
 condition, but had the old armour eventually turned out and con- 
 signed to the lumber-rooms up-stairs, replacing them with china 
 monsters, gilded settees from France, and elegant marbles, of which 
 the broken noses and limbs, and ugliness, undeniably proved their 
 antiquity, and which an agent purchased for me at Borne. But 
 such was the taste of the times (and, perhaps, the rascality of my 
 agent), that 30,000Z. worth of these gems of art only went for 300 
 guineas at a subsequent period, when I found it necessary to raise 
 money on my collections. 
 
 From this main hall branched oft" on either side the long series 
 of state-rooms, poorly furnished with high-backed chairs and long, 
 queer Venice glasses, when first I came to the property, but 
 afterwards rendered so splendid by me, with the gold damasks of 
 Lyons, and the magnificent Gobelin tapestries I won from llichelieu 
 at play. There were thirty-six bedrooms de mailre, of which I 
 only kept three in their antique condition, — the haunted room, as
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 235 
 
 it was called, where the murder was done in James II's time, the 
 bed where William slept after landing at Torbay, and Queen Eliza- 
 beth's state-room. All the rest were re-decorated by Cornichon, 
 in the most elegant taste, not a little to the scandal of some of the 
 steady old country dowagers ; for I had pictures of Boucher and 
 Vanloo to decorate the principal apartments, in which the Cupids 
 and Venuses were painted in a manner so natural, that I recollect 
 the old wizened Countess of Frumpington pinning over the cur- 
 tains of her bed, and sending her daughter, Lady Blanche Whale- 
 bone, to sleep with her waiting-woman, rather than allow her to 
 lie in a chamber hung all over with looking-glasses, after the exact 
 fashion of the queen's closet at Versailles. 
 
 For many of these ornaments I was not so much answerable as 
 Cornichon, whom Lauraguais lent me, and who was the intendant 
 of my buildings during my absence abroad. I had given the man 
 carte-blanclie, and when he fell down and broke his leg, as he was 
 decorating a theatre in the room which had been the old chapel of 
 the castle, the people of the country thought it was a judgment of 
 Heaven upon him. In his rage for improvement the fellow dared 
 any thing. Without my orders, he cut down an old rookery which 
 was sacred in the country, and had a prophecy regarding it, stating, 
 •' When the rook-wood shall fall, down goes Hackton Hall." The 
 rooks went over and colonised Tiptoff Woods, which lay near us 
 (and be hanged to them !), and Cornichon built a temple to Venus, 
 and two lovely fountains on their site. Venuses and Cupids were 
 the rascal's adoration ; he wanted to take down the Gothic screen and 
 place Cupids in our pew there ; but old Doctor Huff, the rector, came 
 out with a large oak stick, and addressed the unlucky architect in 
 Latin, of which he did not comprehend a word, yet made him under- 
 stand that he would break his bones if he laid a single finger upon the 
 sacred edifice. Cornichon made complaints about the " Abbe Huff," 
 as he called him {ct quel able, grand Dieu ! added he, quite bewil- 
 dered, un abbeavec douze enfans /), but I encouraged the church in 
 this respect, and bade Cornichon exert his talents only in the castle. 
 
 There was a magnificent collection of ancient plate, to which I 
 added much of the most splendid modern kind : a cellar which, 
 however well furnished, required continual replenishing, and a 
 kitchen which I reformed altogether. My friend, Jack Wilkes, sent
 
 236 THE MEMOIES OF BAERY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 me down a cook from the Mansion House, for the English cookery, 
 — the turtle and venison department ; I had a chief (who called 
 out the Englishman, by the way, and complained sadly of the gros 
 coclion, who wanted to meet him with coups de poind) and a couple 
 of aides from Paris, and an Italian confectioner as my ojjiciers de 
 louche. All which natural appendages to a man of fashion, the 
 odious, stingy old Tiptoff, my kinsman and neighbour, affected to 
 view with horror, and he spread through the country a report that 
 I had my victuals cooked by Papists, lived upon frogs, and, he 
 verily believed, fricasseed little children. 
 
 But the squires ate my dinners very readily, for all that, and old 
 Dr. Huff himself was compelled to allow that my venison and 
 turtle were most orthodox. The former gentry I knew how to 
 conciliate, too, in other ways. There had been only a subscription 
 pack of fox-hounds in the country, and a few beggarly couples of 
 mangy beagles, with which old Tiptoff pattered about his grounds ; 
 I built a kennel and stables, which cost 30,000?., and stocked them 
 in a manner which was worthy of my ancestors, the Irish kings. 
 I had two packs of hounds, and took the field in the season four 
 times a-week, with three gentlemen in my hunt-uniform to follow 
 me, and open house at Hackton for all who belonged to the hunt. 
 
 These changes and this train de vivre required, as may be sup- 
 posed, no small outlay ; and I confess that I have little of that base 
 spirit of economy in my composition which some people practise 
 and admire. Eor instance, old Tiptoff was hoarding up his money 
 to repair his father's extravagance and disencumber his estates ; a 
 good deal of the money with which he paid off his mortgages my 
 agent procured upon mine. And, besides, it must be remembered 
 I had only a life-interest upon the Lyndon property, was always 
 of an easy temper in dealing with the money-brokers, and had to 
 pay heavily for insuring her ladyship's life. 
 
 At the end of a year Lady Lyndon presented me with a son — 
 Bryan Lyndon I called him, in compliment to my royal ancestry ; 
 but what more had I to leave him than a noble name ? Was not 
 the estate of his mother entailed upon the odious little Turk, 
 Lord Bullingdon, and who, by the way, I have not mentioned as 
 yet, though he was living at Hackton, consigned to a new governor. 
 The insubordination of that boy was dreadful. He used to quote
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 237 
 
 passages of Hamlet to his mother, which made her very angry. 
 Once when I took a horsewhip to chastise him, he drew a knife, 
 and would have stabbed me ; and, faith, I recollected my own 
 youth, which was pretty similar ; and, holding out my hand, burst 
 out laughing, and proposed to him to be friends. We were recon- 
 ciled for that time, and the next, and the next ; but there was no 
 love lost between us, and his hatred for me seemed to grow as he 
 grew, which was apace. 
 
 I determined to endow my darling boy, Bryan, with a property, 
 and to this end cut down twelve thousand pounds' worth of timber 
 on Lady Lyndon's Yorkshire and Irish estates ; at which pro- 
 ceeding Bullingdon's guardian, Tiptoff", cried out, as usual, aud 
 swore I had no right to touch a stick of the trees ; but down they 
 went ; and I commissioned my mother to re-purchase the ancient 
 lands of Ballybarry and Barryogue, which had once formed part 
 of the immense possessions of my house. These she bought back 
 with excellent prudence, and extreme joy; for her heart was 
 gladdened at the idea that a son was born to my name, and with 
 the notion of my magnificent fortunes. 
 
 To say truth, I was rather afraid, now that I lived in a very 
 different sphere to that in which she was accustomed to move, lest 
 she should come to pay me a visit, and astonish my English friends 
 by her bragging and her brogue, her rouge and her old hoops and 
 furbelows of the time of George II., in which she had figured 
 advantageously in her youth, and which she still fondly thought 
 to be at the height of the fashion. So I wrote to her, putting off 
 her visit ; begging her to visit us when the left wing of the castle 
 was finished, or the stables built, and so forth. There was no need 
 of such precaution. " A hint's enough for me, Bedmond," the old 
 lady would reply. " I'm not coming to disturb you among your 
 great English friends with my old-fashioned Irish ways. It's a 
 blessing to me to think that my darling boy has attained the position 
 which I always knew was his due, and for which I pinched myself 
 to educate him. You must bring me the little Bryan, that his grand- 
 mother may kiss him, one day. Present my respectful blessing to 
 her ladyship, his mamma. Tell her she has got a treasure in her 
 husband, which she couldn't have had had she taken a duke to marry 
 her; and that the Barrys and the Bradys, though without titles, have
 
 233 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 the best of blood in their veins. I shall never rest until I see you 
 Earl of Ballybarry, and my grandson Lord Viscount Barryogue." 
 
 How singular it was that the very same ideas should be passing 
 in my mother's mind and my own ! The very titles she had pitched 
 upon had also been selected (naturally enough) by me ; and I don't 
 mind confessing that I bad filled a dozen sheets of paper with my 
 signature, under the names of Ballybarry and Barryogue, and had 
 determined with my usual impetuosity to carry my point. My 
 mother went and established herself at Ballybarry, living with the 
 priest there until a tenement could be erected, and dating from 
 " Ballybarry Castle," which, you may be sure, I gave out to be a 
 place of no small importance. I had a plan of the estate in my 
 study, both at Hackton and in Berkeley Square, and the plans of 
 the elevation of Ballybarry Castle, the ancestral residence of Bany 
 Lyndon, Esq., with the projected improvements, in which the 
 Castle was represented as about the size of "Windsor, with more 
 ornaments to the architecture ; and eight hundred acres of bog 
 falling in handy, I purchased them at three pounds an acre, so 
 that my estate upon the map looked to be no insignificant one.* 
 I also in this year made arrangements for purchasing the Polwellan 
 estate and mines in Cornwall from Sir John Trecothick, for 
 70,OOOZ. — an imprudent bargain, which was afterwards the cause 
 to me of much dispute and litigation. The troubles of property, 
 the rascality of agents, the quibbles of lawyers, are endless. Humble 
 people envy us great men, and fancy that our lives are all pleasure. 
 Many a time in the course of my prosperity I have sighed for the 
 days of my meanest fortune, and envied the boon-companions at 
 my table, with no clothes to their backs but such as my credit 
 supplied them, without a guinea but what came from my pocket, 
 but without one of the harassing cares and responsibilities which 
 are the dismal adjuncts of great rank and property. 
 
 I did little more than make my appearance, and assume the 
 
 * On the strength of this estate, and pledging his honour that it was not 
 mortgaged, Mr. Barry Lyndon borrowed 17,000/., in the year 1786, from young 
 Captain Pigeon, the city merchant's son, who had just come in for his property. 
 As for the Polwellan estate and mines, "the cause of endless litigation," it must 
 be owned that our hero purchased them ; but he never paid more than the first 
 5000/. of the purchase-money. Henoe the litigation of which he complains, and 
 the famous Chancery suit of "Trecothick v. Lyndon," in which Mr. John Scott 
 greatly distinguished himself. — Ed.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 2oD 
 
 command of my estates, in the kingdom of Ireland, rewarding 
 generously those persons who had heen kind to me in my former 
 adversities, and taking my fitting place among the aristocracy of 
 the land. But, in truth, I had small inducements to remain in it 
 after having tasted of the genteeler and more complete pleasures 
 of English and continental life ; and we passed our summers at 
 Buxton, the Bath, and Harrogate, while Hackton Castle was 
 being beautified in the elegant manner already described by me, 
 and the season at our mansion in Berkeley Square. 
 
 It is wonderful how the possession of wealth brings out the 
 virtues of a man, or, at any rate, acts as a varnish or lustre to 
 them, and brings out their brilliancy and colour in a manner never 
 known when the individual stood in the cold grey atmosphere of 
 poverty. I assure you, it was a very short time before I was a 
 pretty fellow of the first class ; made no small sensation at the 
 coffee-houses in Pali-Mall, and afterwards at the most famous 
 clubs. My style, equipages, and elegant entertainments were in 
 every body's mouth, and were described in all the morning prints. 
 The needier part of Lady Lyndon's relatives, and such as had 
 been offended by the intolerable pomposity of old Tiptoff, began to 
 appear at our routs and assemblies ; and as for relations of my 
 own, I found in London and Ireland more than I had ever 
 dreamed of, of cousins who claimed affinity with me. There were, 
 of course, natives of my own country (of which I was not par- 
 ticularly proud), and I received visits from three or four swaggering 
 shabby Temple bucks, with tarnished lace and Tipperary brogue, 
 who were eating their way to the bar in London ; from several 
 gambling adventurers at the watering-places, whom I soon speedily 
 let to know their place ; and from others of more reputable con- 
 dition. Among them I may mention my cousin, the Lord 
 Kilbarry, who, on the score of his relationship, borrowed thirty 
 pieces from me to pay his landlady in Swallow-street, and whom, 
 for my own reasons, I allowed to maintain and credit a connection 
 for which the Heralds' College gave no authority whatsoever. Kil- 
 barry had a cover at my table ; punted at play, and paid when he 
 liked, which was seldom ; had an intimacy with, and was under 
 considerable obligations to, my tailor; and always boasted of his 
 cousin, the great Barry Lyndon of the west country.
 
 240 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Her ladyship and I lived, after a while, pretty separate when in 
 London. She preferred quiet, or, to say the truth, I preferred it, 
 being a great friend to a modest, tranquil behaviour in woman, 
 and a taste for the domestic pleasures. Hence I encouraged her 
 to dine at home with her ladies, her chaplain, and a few of her 
 friends; admitted three or four proper and discreet persons to 
 accompany her to her box at the Opera or play, on proper occa- 
 sions ; and, indeed, declined for her the too frequent visits of her 
 friends and family, preferring to receive them only twice or thrice 
 in a season on our grand reception days. Besides, she was a 
 mother, and had great comfort in the dressing, educating, and 
 dandling our little Bryan, for whose sake it was fit that she 
 should give up the pleasures and frivolities of the world ; so she 
 left that part of the duty of every family of distinction to be 
 performed by me. To say the truth, Lady Lyndon's figure and 
 appearance were not at this time such as to make for their owner 
 any very brilliant appearance in the fashionable world. She had 
 grown very fat, was short-sighted, pale in complexion, careless 
 about her dress, dull in demeanour; her conversations with me 
 characterised by a stupid despair, or a silly, blundering attempt at 
 forced cheerfulness still more disagreeable : hence our intercourse 
 was but trifling, and my temptations to carry her into the world 
 or to remain in her society of necessity exceedingly small. She 
 would try my temper, at home, too, in a thousand ways. When 
 requested by me (often, I own, rather roughly) to entertain the 
 company with conversation, wit, and learning, of which she was a 
 mistress; or music, of which she was an accomplished performer, 
 she would as often as not begin to cry, and leave the room. My 
 company from this, of course, fancied I was a tyrant over her; 
 whereas, I was only a severe and careful guardian over a silly, 
 bad-tempered, and weak-minded lady. 
 
 She was luckily very fond of her youngest son, and through 
 him I had a wholesome and effectual hold of her ; for if in any of 
 her tantrums or fits of haughtiness — (this woman was intolerably 
 proud, and repeatedly, at first, in our quarrels, dared to twit me 
 with my own original poverty and low birth), — if, I say, in our 
 disputes she pretended to have the upper-hand, to assert her 
 authority against mine, to refuse to sign such papers as I might
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 241 
 
 tbink necessary for the distribution of our large and complicated 
 property", I would have Master Bryan carried off to Chiswick for a 
 couple of days ; and I warrant me his lady-mother could hold out 
 no longer, and would agree to anything I chose to propose. The 
 servants about her I took care should be in my pay, not hers: 
 especially the child's head nurse was under my orders, not those 
 of my lady; and a very handsome, red-cheeked, impudent jade 
 she was ; and a great fool she made me make of myself. This 
 woman was more mistress of the house than the poor-spirited 
 lady who owned it. She gave the law to the servants : and if I 
 showed any particular attention to any of the ladies who visited 
 us, the slut would not scruple to show her jealousy, and to find 
 means to send them packing. The fact is, a generous man is 
 always made a fool of by some woman or other; and this one had 
 such an influence over me, that she could turn me round her 
 finger.* 
 
 Her infernal temper (Mrs. Stammer was the jade's name), and 
 my wife's moody despondency, made my house and home not over- 
 pleasant ; hence I was driven a good deal abroad, where, as play 
 
 * From these curious confessions, it would appear that Mr. Lyndon maltreated 
 his lady in every possible -way ; that he denied her society, bullied her into signing 
 away her property, spent it in gambling and taverns, was openly unfaithful to 
 her ; and, when she complained, threatened to remove her children from her. 
 Nor, indeed, is he the only husband who has done the like, and has passed for 
 "nobody's enemy but his own;" a jovial, good-natured fellow. The world 
 contains scores of such amiable people ; and, indeed, it is because justice has not 
 been done them that we have edited this autobiography. Had it been that of a 
 mere hero of romance, • — one of those heroic youths who figure in the novels of 
 Scott and James, — there would have been no call to introduce the reader to a 
 personage already so often and so charmingly depicted. Mr. Barry Lyndon is not, 
 we repeat, a hero of the common pattern ; but let the reader look round, and ask 
 -elf, Do not as many rogues succeed in life as honest men ? more fools than 
 men of talent ? And is it not just that the lives of this class should be described 
 by the student of human nature as well as the actions of those fairy-tale princes, 
 those perfect impossible heroes, whom our writers love to describe ? There is 
 something naive and simple in that time-honoured style of novel-writing by which 
 Prince Prettyman, at the end of his adventures, is put in possession of every 
 worldly prosperity, as he has been endowed with every mental and bodily excel- 
 lence previously. The novelist thinks that he can do no more for his darling 
 hero than make him a lord. Is it not a poor standard that, of the simmum 
 bonum ? The greatest good in life is not to be a lord, perhaps not even to be 
 happy. Poverty, illness, a humpback, may be rewards and conditions of good, as 
 well as that bodily prosperity which all of us unconsciously set up for worship. 
 But this is a subject for an essay, not a note ; and it is best to allow Mr. Lyndon 
 to resume the candid and ingenious narrative of his virtues and defects. 
 
 vol. in. r.
 
 242 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ, 
 
 was the fashion at every club, tavern, and assembly, I, of course, 
 •was obliged to resume my old habit, and to commence as an 
 amateur those games at which I was once unrivalled in Europe. 
 But whether a man's temper changes with prosperity, or his skill 
 leaves him when deprived of a confederate, and pursuing the game 
 no longer professionally, he joins in it, like the rest of the world, 
 for pastime, I know not ; but certain it is, that in the seasons of 
 1774-5 I lost much money at "White's and the Cocoa Tree, and 
 was compelled to meet my losses by borrowing largely upon my 
 wife's annuities, insuring her ladyship's life, and so forth. The 
 terms at which I raised these necessary sums, and the outlays 
 requisite for my improvements, were, of course, very onerous, and 
 clipped the property considerably; and it was some of these 
 papers which my Lady Lyndon (who was of a narrow, timid, and 
 stingy turn) occasionally refused to sign, until I persuaded her, as 
 I have before shown. 
 
 My dealings on the turf ought to be mentioned, as forming part 
 of my history at this time ; but, in truth, I have no particular 
 pleasure in recalling my Newmarket doings. I was infernally bit 
 and bubbled in almost every one of my transactions there ; and 
 though I could ride a horse as well as any man in England, was 
 no match with the English noblemen at backing him. Eifteen 
 years after my horse, Bay Biilow, by Sophy Hardcastle, out of 
 Eclipse, lost the Newmarket stakes, for which he was the first 
 favourite, I found that a noble earl, who shall be nameless, had 
 got into his stable the morning before he ran, and the consequence 
 was that an outside horse won, and your humble servant was out 
 to the amount of fifteen thousand pounds. Strangers had no 
 chance in those days on the heath ; and, though dazzled by the 
 splendour and fashion assembled there, and surrounded by the 
 greatest persons of the land, — the royal dukes, with their wives 
 and splendid equipages, — old Grafton, with his queer bevy of 
 company, and such men as Ancaster, Sandwich, Lorn, — a man 
 might have considered himself certain of fair play and have 
 been not a little proud of the society he kept. Yet, I promise 
 you, that, exalted as it was, there was no set of men in Europe 
 who knew how to rob more genteelly, to bubble a stranger, to 
 bribe a jockey, to doctor a horse, or to arrange a betting-book.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 243 
 
 Even I couldn't stand against these accomplished gamesters of 
 the highest families in Europe. "Was it my own want of style, 
 or my want of a fortune ? I know not. But now I was 
 arrived at the height of my ambition both my skill and my luck 
 seemed to be deserting me. Everything I touched crumbled in 
 my hand ; every speculation I had, faded ; every agent I trusted 
 deceived me. I am, indeed, one of those born to make, and not to 
 keep fortunes ; for the qualities and energy which lead a man 
 to effect the first are often the very causes of his ruin in the latter 
 case ; indeed I know of no other reason for the misfortunes which 
 finally befell me.* 
 
 I had always a taste for men of letters, and perhaps, if the truth 
 must be told, have no objection to playing the fine gentleman and 
 patron among the wits. Such people are usually needy, and of 
 low birth, and have an instinctive awe and love of a gentleman 
 and a laced coat, as all must have remarked who have frequented 
 their society. Mr. Reynolds, who was afterwards knighted, and 
 certainly the most elegant painter of his day, was a pretty 
 dexterous courtier of the wit tribe; and it was through this 
 gentleman, who painted a piece of me, Lady Lyndon, and our 
 little Bryan, which was greatly admired at the Exhibition (I was 
 represented as quitting my wife, in the costume of the Tippleton 
 yeomanry, of which I was major : the child starting back from 
 my helmet like whatd'yecaU'em — Hector's son, as described by 
 Mr. Pope, in his Iliad ), it was through Mr. Eeynolds that I was 
 introduced to a score of these gentlemen, and their great chief, 
 Mr. Johnson. I always thought their great chief a great bear. 
 He drank tea twice or thrice at my house, misbehaving himself 
 most grossly, treating my opinions with no more respect than 
 those of a school-boy, and telling me to mind my horses and 
 tailors, and not trouble myself about letters. His Scotch bear- 
 leader, Mr. Boswell, was a butt of the first quality. I never saw 
 such a figure as the fellow cut in what he called a Corsican habit, 
 at one of Mrs. Cornely's balls, at Carlisle House, Soho. But that 
 the stories connected with that same establishment are not the 
 most profitable tales in the world, I could tell tales of scores 
 
 '' The memoirs seem to have been written about the year 1814, in that calm 
 retreat which Fortune had selected for the author at the close of his life.
 
 2-14 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 of queer doings there. All the high and low demireps of the 
 town gathered there, from his grace of Aneaster down to my 
 countryman, poor Mr. Oliver Goldsmith, the poet, and from the 
 Duchess of Kingston down to the Bird of Paradise, or Kitty 
 Fisher, Here I have met very queer characters, who came to 
 queer ends too ; poor Hackman, that afterwards was hanged for 
 killing Miss Bay, and (on the sly) his reverence Dr. Simony, 
 whom my friend Sam Foote, of the Little Theatre, bade to live 
 even after forgery and the rope cut short the unlucky parson's 
 career. 
 
 It was a merry place, London, in those days, and that's the 
 truth. I'm writing now in my gouty old age, and people have 
 grown vastly more moral and matter-of-fact than they were at the 
 close of the last century, when the world was young with me. 
 There was a difference between a gentleman and a common 
 fellow in those times. "We wore silk and embroidery then. 
 Now every man has the same coachman-like look in his belcher 
 and caped coat, and there is no outward difference between my 
 lord and his groom. Then it took a man of fashion a couple of 
 hours to make his toilette, and he could show some taste and 
 genius in the selecting it. "What a blaze of splendour was a 
 drawing-room, or an opera, of a gala night! What sums of 
 money were lost and won at the delicious faro-table ! My gilt 
 curricle and outriders, blazing in green and gold, were very 
 different objects to the equipages you see nowadays in the riug, 
 with the stunted grooms behind them. A man could drink 
 four times as much as the milksops nowadays can swallow; 
 but 'tis useless expatiating on this theme. Gentlemen are dead 
 and gone. The fashion has now turned upon your soldiers and 
 sailors, and I grow quite moody and sad when I think of thirty 
 years ago. 
 
 This is a chapter devoted to reminiscences of what was a very 
 happy and splendid time with me, but presenting little of mark in 
 the way of adventure, as is generally the case when times are 
 happy and easy. It would seem idle to fill pages with accounts 
 of the every-day occupations of a man of fashion,— the fair ladies 
 who smiled upon him, the dresses he wore, the matches he played, 
 and won or lost. At this period of time, when youngsters are
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 245 
 
 employed cutting the Frenchmen's throats in Spain and Trance, 
 lying out in bivouacs, and feeding off commissariat beef and 
 biscuit, they would not understand what a life their ancestors led ; 
 and so I shall leave further discourse upon the pleasures of the 
 times when even the Prince was a lad in leading-strings, when 
 Charles Fox had not subsided into a mere statesman, and Buona- 
 parte was a beggarly brat in his native island. 
 
 Whilst these improvements were going on in my estates, — my 
 house, from an antique Norman castle, being changed to an 
 elegant Greek temple, or palace — my gardens and woods losing 
 their rustic appearance to be adapted to the most genteel French 
 style — my child growing up at his mother's knees, and my influ- 
 ence in the country increasing, — it must not be imagined that 
 I stayed in Devonshire all this while, and that I neglected 
 to make visits to London, and my various estates in England and 
 Ireland. 
 
 I went to reside at the Trecothick estate, and the Polwellan 
 wheel, where I found, instead of profit, every kind of pettifogging 
 chicanery; I passed over in state to our territories in Ireland, 
 where I entertained the gentry in a style the lord-lieutenant 
 himself could not equal ; gave the fashion to Dublin (to be sure it 
 was a beggarly, savage city in those days, and, since the time 
 there has been a pother about the Union, and the misfortunes 
 attending it, I have been at a loss to account for the mad praises 
 of the old order of things, which the fond Irish patriots have 
 invented), I say I set the fashion to Dublin, and small praise to 
 me, for a poor place it was in those times, whatever the Irish 
 party may say. 
 
 In a former chapter I have given you a description of it. It 
 was the Warsaw of our part of the world ; there was a splendid, 
 ruined, half-civilised nobility, ruling over a half-savage population. 
 I say half-savage advisedly. The commonalty in the streets were 
 wild, unshorn, and in rags. The most public places were not safe 
 after nightfall. The College, the public buildings, and the great 
 gentry's houses, were splendid (the latter unfinished for the most 
 part) ; but the people were in a state more wretched than any 
 vulgar I have ever known ; the exercise of their religion was only 
 half-allowed to them ; their clergy were forced to be educated out
 
 246 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 of the country ; their aristocracy was quite distinct from them ; 
 there was a Protestant nobility, and in the towns, poor, insolent 
 Protestant corporations, with a bankrupt retinue of mayors, 
 aldermen, and municipal officers, all of whom figured in addresses, 
 and had the public voice in the country; but there was no 
 sympathy and connection between the upper and the lower people 
 of the Irish. To one who had been bred so much abroad as 
 myself, this difference between Catholic and Protestant was doubly 
 striking ; and though as firm as a rock in my own faith, yet I 
 could not help remembering my grandfather held a different one, 
 and wondering that there should be such a political difference 
 between the two. I passed among my neighbours for a dangerous 
 leveller, for entertaining and expi^essing such opinions, and espe- 
 cially for asking the priest of the parish to my table at Castle 
 Lyndon. He was a gentleman, educated at Salamanca, and, to 
 my mind, a far better bred and more agreeable companion than 
 his comrade the rector, who had but a dozen Protestants for 
 his congregation, who was a lord's son, to be sure, but he could 
 hardly spell, and the great field of his labours was in the kennel 
 and cockpit. 
 
 I did not extend and beautify the house of Castle Lyndon as I 
 had done our other estates, but contented myself with paying an 
 occasional visit there, exercising an almost royal hospitality, and 
 keeping open house during my stay. "When absent, I gave to my 
 aunt, the widow Brady, and her six unmarried daughters (although 
 they always detested me), permission to inhabit the place, my 
 mother preferring my new mansion of Barryogue. 
 
 And as my Lord Bullingdon was by this time grown excessively 
 tall and troublesome, I determined to leave him under the care 
 of a proper governor in Ireland, with Mrs. Brady and her six 
 daughters to take care of him ; and he was welcome to fall in love 
 with all the old ladies if he were so minded, and thereby imitate 
 his step-father's example. When tired of Castle Lyndon, his 
 lordship was at liberty to go and reside at my house with my 
 mamma; but there was no love lost between him and her, and, on 
 account of my son Bryan, I think she hated him as cordially as 
 ever I myself could possibly do. 
 
 The county of Devon is not so lucky as the neighbouring county
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 2i7 
 
 of Cornwall, and has not the share of representatives which the 
 latter possesses ; where I have known a moderate country gentle- 
 man, with a few score of hundreds per annum from his estate, 
 treble his income by returning three or four members to parlia- 
 ment, and by the influence with ministers which these seats gave 
 him. The parliamentary interest of the house of Lyndon had 
 been grossly neglected during my wife's minority, and the inca- 
 pacity of the earl her father ; or, to speak more correctly, it had 
 been smuggled away from the Lyndon family altogether by the 
 adroit old hypocrite of Tiptoff Castle, who acted as most kinsmen 
 and guardians do by their wards and relatives, and robbed them. 
 The Marquess of Tiptoff returned four members to parliament; 
 two for the borough of Tippleton, which, as all the world knows, 
 lies at the foot of our estate of Hackton, bounded on the other 
 side by Tiptoff Park. For time out of mind we had sent members 
 for that borough, until Tiptoff, taking advantage of the late lord's 
 imbecility, put in his own nominees. When his eldest son became 
 of age, of course my lord was to take his seat for Tippleton ; when 
 Eigby (Nabob Eigby, who made his fortune under Clive in India) 
 died, the marquess thought fit to bring down his second son, my 
 Lord George Poynings, to whom I have introduced the reader in 
 a former chapter, and determined, in his high mightiness, that he, 
 too, should go on and swell the ranks of the opposition — the big 
 old Whigs, with whom the marquess acted. 
 
 Eigby had been for some time in an ading condition previous to 
 his demise, and you may be sure that the circumstance of his 
 failing health had not been passed over by the gentry of the 
 county, who were stanch government men for the most part, and 
 hated my Lord Tiptoff's principles as dangerous and ruinous. 
 " We have been looking out for a man to fight against him," said 
 the squires to me ; " we can only match Tiptoff out of Hackton 
 Castle. Tou, Mr. Lyndon, are our man, and at the nest county 
 election we will swear to brincr tou in." 
 
 I hated the Tiptoffs so, that I would have fought them at any 
 election. They not only would not visit at Hackton, but declined 
 to receive those who visited us; they kept the women of the 
 county from receiving my wife ; they invented half the wild stories 
 of my profligacy and extravagance with which the neighbourhood
 
 243 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 was entertained ; they said I had frightened my wife into marriage, 
 and that she was a lost woman; they hinted that Bullingdon's 
 life was not secure under my roof, that his treatment was odious, 
 and that I wanted to put him out of the way to make place for 
 Bryan my son. I could scarce have a friend to Hackton, but 
 they counted the bottles drunk at my table. They ferreted out 
 my dealings with my lawyers and agents. If a creditor was 
 unpaid, every item of his bill was known at Tiptoff Hall; if I 
 looked at a farmer's daughter, it was said I had ruined her. My 
 faults are many, I confess, and, as a domestic character, I can't 
 boast of any particular regularity, or temper ; but Lady Lyndon 
 and I did not quarrel more than fashionable people do, and, at 
 first, we always used to make it up pretty well. I am a man full 
 of errors, certainly, but not the devil that these odious backbiters 
 at Tiptoff represented me to be. For the first three years I never 
 struck my wife but when I was in liquor. When I flung the 
 carving-knife at Bullingdon I was drunk, as every body present 
 can testify ; but as for having any systematic scheme against the 
 poor lad, I can declare solemnly that, beyond merely hating him 
 (and one's inclinations are not in one's power), I am guilty of no 
 evil towards him. 
 
 I had sufficient motives, then, for enmity against the Tiptoffs, 
 and am not a man to let a feeling of that kind lie inactive. 
 Though a Whig, or, perhaps, because a Whig, the marquess was 
 one of the haughtiest men breathing, and treated commoners as 
 his idol, the great earl used to treat them — after he came to a 
 coronet himself — as so many low vassals, who might be proud to 
 lick his shoe-buckle. When the Tippleton mayor and corporation 
 waited upon him, he received them, covered, never offered Mr. 
 Mayor a chair, but retired when the refreshments were brought, 
 or had them served to the worshipful aldermen in the steward's 
 room. These honest Britons never rebelled against such treat- 
 ment, until instructed to do so by my patriotism. No, the dogs 
 lilted to be bullied, and, in the course of a long experience, I have 
 met witli but very few Englishmen who are not of their way of 
 thinking. 
 
 It was not until I opened their eyes that they knew their de- 
 gradation. I invited the mayor to Hackton, and Mrs. Mayoress
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 249 
 
 (a very buxom, pretty groceress she was, by the way) I made sit 
 by my wife, and drove them both out to the races in my curricle. 
 Lady Lyndon fought very hard against this condescension, but I 
 had a way with her, as the saying is, and though she had a temper, 
 yet I had a better one. A temper, psha! A wild cat has a 
 temper, but a keeper can get the better of it, and I know very few 
 women in the world whom I could not master. 
 
 "Well, I made much of the mayor and corporation, sent them 
 bucks for their dinners, or asked them to mine, made a point of 
 attending their assemblies, dancing with their wives and daughters, 
 going through, in short, all the acts of politeness which are neces- 
 sary in such occasions ; and though old Tiptoff must have seen 
 my goings on, yet his head was so much m the clouds, that he 
 never once condescended to imagine his 'dynasty could be over- 
 thrown in his own town of Tippleton, and issued his mandates as 
 securely as if he had been the Grand Turk, and the Tippletonians 
 no better than so many slaves of his will. 
 
 Every post which brought us any account of Pugby's increasing 
 illness, was the sure occasion of a dinner from me ; so much so, 
 that my friends of the hunt ..used to laugh, and say, " Eigby's 
 worse; there's a corporation dinner at Hackton." 
 
 It was in 1776, when the American war broke out, that 1 came 
 into parliament. My Lord Chatham, whose wisdom his party in 
 those days used to call super-human, raised his oracular voice in 
 the House of Peers against the American contest ; and my coun- 
 tryman, Mr. Burke, a great philosopher, but a plaguey long-winded 
 orator, was the champion of the rebels in the Commons, where, 
 however, thanks to British patriotism, he could get very few to 
 back him. Old Tiptoff would have sworn black was white, if the 
 great earl had bidden him, and he made his son give up his com- 
 mission in the Guards, in imitation of my Lord Pitt, who resigned 
 his ensigncy rather than fight against what he called his American 
 brethren. 
 
 But this was a height of patriotism extremely little relished in 
 England, where, ever since the breaking out of hostilities, our 
 people hated the Americans heartily, and where, when we heard 
 of the fight of Lexington, and the glorious victory of Bunker's 
 Hill (as we used to call it in those days), the nation flushed out
 
 250 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 in its usual hot-headed anger. The talk was all against the philo- 
 sophers after that, and the people most indomitably loyal. It was 
 not until the land-tax was increased, that the gentry began to 
 grumble a little, but still my party in the west was very strong 
 against the Tiptofis, and I determined to take the field and win 
 as usual. 
 
 The old marquess neglected every one of the decent precautions 
 which are requisite in a parliamentary campaign. He signified to 
 the corporation and freeholders his intention of presenting his son, 
 Lord George, and his desire that the latter should be elected their 
 burgess ; but he scarcely gave so much as a glass of beer to whet 
 the devotedness of his adherents, and I, as I need not say, 
 engaged every tavern in Tippleton in my behalf. 
 
 There is no need to go over the twenty-times-told tale of an 
 election. I rescued the borough of Tippleton from the hands of 
 Lord Tiptoff and his son, Lord George. I had a savage sort of 
 satisfaction, too, in forcing my Avife, who had been at one time 
 exceedingly smitten by her kinsman, as I have already related, to 
 take part against him, and to wear and distribute my colours 
 when the day of election came. And when we spoke at one 
 another, I told the crowd that I had beaten Lord George in love, 
 that I had beaten him in war, and that I would now beat him in 
 parliament ; and so I did, as the event proved : for, to the inex- 
 pressible anger of the old marquess, Barry Lyndon, Esquire, was 
 returned member of parliament for Tippleton, in place of John 
 lligby, Esquire, deceased; and I threatened him at the next 
 election to turn him out of loth his seats, and went to attend my 
 duties in parliament. 
 
 It was then I seriously determined on achieving for myself 
 the Irish peerage, to be enjoyed after me by my beloved son aud 
 heir.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 251 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 IN WHICH MT GOOD FOHTUNE BEGINS TO WATEH. 
 
 And now, if any people should be disposed to think my history 
 immoral (for I have heard some assert that I was a man who never 
 deserved that so much prosperity should fall to my share), I will 
 beg those cavillers to do me the favour to read the conclusion of 
 my adventures, when they will see it was no such great prize that 
 I had won, and that wealth, splendour, thirty thousand per 
 annum, and a seat in parliament, are often purchased at too dear 
 a rate, when one has to buy those enjoyments at the price of 
 personal liberty, and saddled with the charge of a troublesome 
 wife. 
 
 They are the deuce, these troublesome wives, and that is the 
 truth. No man knows until he tries how wearisome and dis- 
 heartening the burthen of one of them is, and how the annoyance 
 grows and strengthens from year to year, and the courage weaker 
 to bear it ; so that that trouble which seemed light and trivial 
 the first year, becomes intolerable ten years after. I have heard 
 of one of the classical fellows in the dictionary who began by 
 carrying a calf up a hill every day, and so continued until the 
 animal grew to be a bull, which he still easily accommodated upon 
 his shoulders ; but take my word for it, young unmarried gentle- 
 men, a wife is a very much harder pack to the bach than the 
 biggest heifer in Smithfield ; and, if I can prevent one of you 
 from marrying, the Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq., will not be 
 written in vain. !S"ot that my lady was a scold or a shrew, as 
 some wives are , I could have managed to have cured her of that ; 
 but she was of a cowardly, crying, melancholy, maudlin temper, 
 which is to me still more odious ; and, do what one would to 
 please her, would never be happy or in good humour. I left her 
 alone after a while, and because, as was natural in my case, where 
 a disagreeable home obliged me to seek amusement and com- 
 panions abroad, she added a mean, detestable jealousy to all her 
 other faults ; and I could not for some time pay the commonest 
 attention to any other woman, but my Lady Lyndon must weep,
 
 252 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 and wring her hands, and threaten to commit suicide, and I know 
 not wbat. 
 
 Her death would have been no comfort to me, as I leave any 
 person of common prudence to imagine ; for that scoundrel of a 
 young Bullingdon (who was now growing up a tall, gawky, 
 swarthy lad, and about to become my greatest plague and an- 
 noyance) would have inherited every penny of the property, and I 
 should have been left considerably poorer even than when I married 
 the widow ; for I spent my personal fortune as well as the lady's 
 income in the keeping up of our rank, and was always too much 
 a man of honour and spirit to save a penny of Lady Lyndon's 
 income. Let this be flung in the teeth of my detractors, who say 
 I never could have so injured the Lyndon property had I not 
 been making a private purse for myself ; and who believe that, 
 even in my present painful situation, I have hoards of gold laid 
 by somewhere, and could come out as a Croesus when I choose. 
 I never raised a shilling- upon Lady Lyndon's property but I 
 spent it like a man of honour; besides incurring numberless 
 personal obligations for money, which all went to the common 
 stock. Independent of the Lyndon mortgages and incumbrances, 
 I owe myself at least one hundred and twenty thousand pounds, 
 which I spent while in occupancy of my wife's estate : so that I 
 may justly say that property is indebted to me in the above- 
 mentioned sum. 
 
 Although I have described the utter disgust and distaste which 
 speedily took possession of my breast as regarded Lady Lyndon ; 
 and although I took no particular pains (for I am all frankness 
 and aboveboard) to disguise my feelings in general, yet she was 
 of such a mean spirit, that she pursued me with her regard in 
 spite of my indifference to her, and would kindle up at the 
 smallest kind word I spoke to her. The fact is, between my 
 respected reader and myself, that I was one of the handsomest 
 and most dashing young men of England in those days, and my 
 wife was violently in love with me; and though I say it who 
 shouldn't, as the phrase goes, my wife was not the only woman 
 of rank in London who had a favourable opinion of the humble 
 Irish adventurer. What a riddle these women are, I have often 
 thought ! I have seen the most elegant creatures at St. James's
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 253 
 
 grow wild for love of the coarsest and most vulgar of men ; the 
 cleverest women passionately admire the most illiterate of our 
 sex, and so on. There is no end to the contrariety in the foolish 
 creatures ; and though I don't mean to hint that I am vulgar or 
 illiterate, as the persons mentioned above (I would cut the throat 
 of any man who dared to whisper a word against my birth or my 
 breeding), yet I have shown that Lady Lyndon had plenty of 
 reason to dislike me if she chose ; but, like the rest of her silly 
 sex, she was governed by infatuation, not reason ; and, up to the 
 very last day of our being together, would be reconciled to me, and 
 fondle me, if I addressed her a single kind word. 
 
 " Ah," she would say, in these moments of tenderness, " Ah, 
 JRedmond, if you would always be so ! " And in these fits of love 
 she was the most easy creature in the world to be persuaded, and 
 would have signed away her whole property, had it been possible. 
 And, I must confess, it was with very little attention on my part 
 that I could bring her into good humour. To walk with her on 
 the Mall, or at Eanelagh, to attend her to church at St. James's, 
 to purchase any little present or trinket for her, was enough to 
 coax her. Such is female inconsistency ! The next day she 
 would be calling me " Mr. Barry," probably, and be bemoaning her 
 miserable fate that she ever should have been united to such a 
 monster. So it was she was pleased to call one of the most 
 brilliant men in his majesty's three kingdoms ; and I warrant me 
 other ladies had a much more flattering opinion of me. 
 
 Then she would threaten to leave me ; but I had a hold of her 
 in the person of her son, of whom she was passionately fond, I 
 don't know why, for she had always neglected Bullingdon her 
 elder, and never bestowed a thought upon his health, his welfare, 
 or his education. 
 
 It was our young boy, then, who formed the great bond of union 
 between me and her ladyship ; and there was no plan of ambition 
 I could propose in which she would not join for the poor lad's 
 behoof, and no expense she would not eagerly incur, if it might by 
 any means be shown to tend to his advancement. I can tell you, 
 bribes were administered, and in high places too, — so near the 
 royal person of his majesty, that you would be astonished were I 
 to mention what great personages condescended to receive our
 
 2j4 THE MEMOIRS OP BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 loans. I get from the English and Irish heralds a description 
 and detailed pedigree of the Barony of Barryogue, and claimed 
 respectfully to be reinstated in my ancestral titles, and also to be 
 rewarded with the Viscounty of Ballybarry. " This head would 
 become a coronet," my lady would sometimes say, in her fond 
 moments, smoothing down my hair ; and, indeed, there is many 
 a puny whipster in their lordships' house who has neither my 
 presence nor my courage, my pedigree, nor any of my merits. 
 
 The striving after this peerage I consider to have been one of 
 the most unlucky of all my unlucky dealings at this period. I 
 made unheard of sacrifices to bring it about. I lavished money 
 here and diamonds there. I bought lands at ten times their value ; 
 purchased pictures and articles of vertu at ruinous prices. I gave 
 repeated entertainments to those friends to my claims who, being 
 about the royal person, were likely to advance it. I lost many a 
 bet to the royal dukes, his majesty's brothers ; but let these matters 
 be forgotten, and, because of my private injuries, let me not be 
 deficient in loyalty to my sovereign. 
 
 The only person in this transaction whom I shall mention openly, 
 is that old scamp and swindler Gustavus Adolphus, thirteenth Earl 
 of Crabs. This nobleman was one of the gentlemen of his majesty's 
 closet, and one with whom the revered monarch was on terms of 
 considerable intimacy. A close regard had sprung up between 
 them in the old king's time ; when his royal highness, playing at 
 battledore and shuttlecock with the young lord on the landing- 
 place of the great staircase at Kew, in some moment of irritation, 
 the Prince of Wales kicked the young earl down stairs, who, falling, 
 broke his leg. The prince's hearty repentance for his violence 
 caused him to ally himself closely with the person whom he had 
 injured; and when his majesty came to the throne there was no 
 man, it is said, of whom the Earl of Bute was so jealous as of my 
 Lord Crabs. The latter was poor and extravagant, and Bute got 
 him out of the way, by sending him on the Eussian and other 
 embassies; but on this favourite's dismissal Crabs sped back from 
 the Continent, and was appointed almost immediately to a place 
 about his majesty's person. 
 
 It was with this disreputable nobleman that I contracted an 
 unlucky intimacy, when, fresh and unsuspecting, I first established
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BAERY LYNDON, ESQ. 255 
 
 myself in town, after my marriage with Lady Lyndon: and, 
 as Crabs was really one of the most entertaining fellows in 
 the world, I took a sincere pleasure in his company; besides 
 the interested desire I had in cultivating the society of a 
 man who was so near the person of the highest personage in 
 the realm. 
 
 To hear the fellow, you would fancy that there was scarce any 
 appointment made in which he had not a share. He told me, for 
 instance, of Charles Fox being turned out of bis place a day before 
 poor Charley himself was aware of the fact. He told me when the 
 Howes were coming back from America, and who was to succeed 
 to tbe command there. Not to multiply instances, it was upon 
 this person tbat I fixed my chief reliance for tbe advancement of 
 my claim to the Barony of Barryogue, and the Viscounty which 
 I proposed to get. 
 
 One of the main causes of expense which this ambition of mine 
 entailed upon me was the fitting out and arming a company of 
 infantry from the Castle Lyndon and Hackton estates, in Ireland, 
 winch I offered to my gracious sovereign for the campaign against 
 American rebels. These troops, superbly equipped and clothed, 
 were embarked at Portsmouth in the year 1778 ; and the patriotism 
 of the gentleman who had raised them was so acceptable at court, 
 that, on being presented by my Lord North, his majesty condes- 
 cended to notice me particularly, and said, " That's right, Mr. 
 Lyndon, raise another company, and go with them too!" But 
 this was by no means, as the reader may suppose, to my notions. 
 A man with thirty thousand pounds per annum is a fool to risk 
 his life like a common beggar ; and on this account I have always 
 admired the conduct of my friend Jack Bolter, who had been a 
 most active and resolute cornet of horse, and, as such, engaged in 
 every scrape and skirmish which could fall to his lot ; but just 
 before the battle of Minden he received news that his uncle, tbe 
 great army contractor, was dead, and had left him five thousand 
 per annum. Jack that instant applied for leave ; and, as it was 
 refused him on the eve of a general action, my gentleman took 
 it, and never fired a pistol again, except against an officer who 
 questioned his courage, and whom he winged in such a cool and 
 determined manner, as showed all the world tbat it was from
 
 253 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 prudence, and a desire of enjoying his money, not from cowardice, 
 that he quitted the profession of arms. 
 
 "When this Hackton company Avas raised, my stepson, who was 
 now sixteen years of age, was most eager to he allowed to join it, 
 and I would have gladly consented to have been rid of the young 
 man ; but his guardian, Lord Tiptoif, who thwarted me in every- 
 thing, refused his permission, and the lad's military inclinations 
 were balked. If he could have gone on the expedition, and a 
 rebel rifle had put an end to him, I believe, to tell the truth, I 
 should not have been grieved over much, and I should have had 
 the pleasure of seeing my other son the heir to the estate which 
 his father had won with so much pains. 
 
 The education of this young nobleman had been, I confess, some 
 of the loosest ; and perhaps the truth is, I did neglect the brat. 
 He was of so wild, savage, and insubordinate a nature, that I never 
 had the least regard for him ; and before me and his mother, at 
 least, was so moody and dull, that I thought instruction thrown 
 away upon him, and left him for the most part to shift for himself. 
 For two whole years he remained in Ireland, away from us ; and 
 when in England, we kept him mainly at Hackton, never caring 
 to have the uncouth, ungainly lad in the genteel company in the 
 capital in which we naturally mingled. My own poor boy, on the 
 contrary, was the most polite and engaging child ever seen ; it was 
 a pleasure to treat him with kindness and distinction ; and before 
 he was five years old, the little fellow was the pink of fashion, 
 beauty, and good breeding. 
 
 In fact, he could not have been otherwise, with the care both his 
 parents bestowed upon him, and the attentions that were lavished 
 upon him in every way. "When he was four years old, I quarrelled 
 with the English nurse who had attended upon him, and about 
 whom my wile had been so jealous, and procured for him a French 
 rjouvcrnante, who had lived with families of the first quality in 
 Paris, and who, of course, must set my Lady Lyndon jealous too. 
 Under the care of this young woman my little rogue learned to 
 chatter French most charmingly. It would have done your heart 
 good to hear the dear rascal swear Mort de ona vie ! and to see him 
 stamp his little foot, and send the manans and canaille of the 
 domestics to the trente mille diables. He was precocious in all
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 257 
 
 things : at a very early age he would mimic everybody ; at five, 
 he would sit at table, and drink his glass of champagne with the 
 best of us ; and his nurse would teach him little French catches, 
 and the last Parisian songs of Vade and Collard, — pretty songs 
 they were too ; and would make such of his hearers as understood 
 French burst with laughing, and, I promise you, scandalise some 
 of the old dowagers who were admitted into the society of his 
 mamma; not that there were many of them, for I did not 
 encourage the visits of what you call respectable people to Lady 
 Lyndon. They are sad spoilers of sport, — tale-bearers, envious, 
 narrow-minded people ; making mischief between man and wife. 
 "Whenever any of these grave personages in hoops and high heels 
 used to make their appearance at Hackton, or in Berkeley Square, 
 it was my chief pleasure to frighten them oft"; and I would make 
 my little Bryan dance, sing, and play the (liable a quatre, and aid 
 him myself so as to scare the old frumps. 
 
 I never shall forget the solemn remonstrances of our old square- 
 toes of a rector at Hackton, who made one or two vain attempts 
 to teach little Bryan Latin, and with whose innumerable children 
 I sometimes allowed the boy to associate. They learned some of 
 Bryan's French songs from him, which their mother, a poor soul 
 who understood pickles and custards much better than French, 
 used fondly to encourage them in singing ; but which their father 
 one day hearing, he sent Miss Sarah to her bed-room and bread 
 and water for a week, and solemnly horsed Master Jacob in the 
 presence of all his brothers and sisters, and of Bryan, to whom he 
 hoped that flogging would act as a warning. But my little rogue 
 kicked and plunged at the old parson's shins until he was obliged 
 to get his sexton to hold him down, and swore, corllew, morbleu, 
 ventrebleu, that his young friend Jacob should not be maltreated. 
 After this scene, his reverence forbade Bryan the rectory-house ; 
 on which I swore that his eldest son, who was bringing up for the 
 ministry, should never have the succession of the living of Hackton, 
 which I had thoughts of bestowing on him ; and his father said, 
 with a canting hypocritical air, which I hate, that Heaven's will 
 must be done ; that he would not have his children disobedient or 
 corrupted for the sake of a bishopric : and wrote me a pompous 
 and solemn letter, charged with Latin quotations, taking farewell 
 
 VOL. III.
 
 258 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 of me and my house. " I do so with regret," added the old gentle- 
 man," for I have received so many kindnesses from the Hackton 
 family that it goes to my heart to be disunited from them. My 
 poor, I fear, may suffer in consequence of my separation from you, 
 and mv being henceforward unable to bring to your notice instances 
 of distress and affliction, which, when they were known to you, I 
 will do you the justice to say, your generosity was always prompt 
 to relieve." 
 
 There may have been some truth in this, for the old gentleman 
 was perpetually pestering me with petitions, and I know for a 
 certainty, from his own charities, was often without a shilling in 
 his pocket ; but I suspect the good dinners at Hackton had a con- 
 siderable share in causing his regrets at the dissolution of our 
 intimacy, and I know that his wife was quite sorry to forego the 
 acquaintance of Bryan's gouvernante, Mademoiselle Louison, who 
 had all the newest French fashions at her fingers' ends, and who 
 never went to the Rectory but you would see the girls of the 
 family turn out in new sacks or mantles the Sunday after. 
 
 I used to punish the old rebel by snoring very loud in my pew 
 on Sundays during sermon-time ; and I got a governor presently 
 for Bryan, and a chaplain of my own, when he became of age suf- 
 ficient to be separated from the women's society and guardianship. 
 His English nurse I married to my head-gardener, with a handsome 
 portion ; his French gouvernante I bestowed upon my faithful 
 German Fritz, not forgetting the dowry in the latter instance, and 
 they set up a French dining-house in Soho, and I believe at the 
 lime I write they are richer in the world's goods than their 
 generous and free-handed master. 
 
 For Bryan I now got a young gentleman from Oxford, the 
 Rev. Edmund Lavender, who was commissioned to teach him 
 Latin when the boy was in the humour, and to ground him in 
 history, grammar, and the other qualifications of a gentleman. 
 Lavender was a precious addition to our society at Hackton. He 
 was the means of making a deal of fun there. He was the butt of 
 all our jokes, and bore them with the most admirable and martyr- 
 like patience. He was one of that sort of men who would rather 
 be kicked by a great man than not to be noticed by him ; and I 
 have often put his wig into the fire in the f.xe of the company,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 259 
 
 and he would laugh at the joke as well as any man there. It was 
 a delight to put him on a high-mettled horse, and send him after 
 the hounds, — pale, sweating, calling on us, for Heaven's sake, to 
 stop, and holding on for the dear life by the mane and the crupper. 
 How it happened that the fellow was never killed I know not, but 
 I suppose hanging is the way in which his neck will be broke. 
 He never met with any accident, to speak of, in our hunting- 
 matches ; but you were pretty sure to find him at dinner in his 
 place at the bottom of the table making the punch, whence he 
 would be carried off fuddled to bed before the night was over. 
 Many a time have Bryan and I painted his face black on those 
 occasions. We put him into a haunted room, and frightened his 
 soul out of his body with ghosts ; we let loose cargoes of rats upon 
 his bed ; we cried fire, and filled his boots with water ; we cut 
 the legs of his preaching-chair, and filled his sermonbook with 
 snuff. Poor Lavender bore it all with patience ; and at our 
 parties, or when we came to London, was amply repaid by being 
 allowed to sit with the gentlefolks, and to fancy himself in the 
 society of men of fashion. It was good to hear the contempt with 
 which he talked about our rector. " He has a son, sir, who is a 
 servitor, and a servitor at a small college," he would say. " How 
 could you, my dear sir, think of giving the reversion of Hackton to 
 such a lowbred creature ?" 
 
 I should now speak of my other son, at least my Lady Lyndon's 
 I mean the Yiscount Bullingdon. I kept him in Ireland for 
 some years, under the guardianship of my mother, whom I had 
 installed at Castle Lyndon ; and great, I promise you, was her 
 state in that occupation, and prodigious the good soul's splendour 
 and haughty bearing. "With all her oddities the Castle Lyndon 
 estate was the best managed of all our possessions ; the rents were 
 excellently paid, the charges of getting them in smaller than they 
 would have been under the management of any steward. It was 
 astonishing what small expenses the good widow incurred, 
 although she kept up the dignity of the two families, as she would 
 say. She had a set of domestics to attend upon the young lord ; 
 she never went out herself but in an old gilt coach and six ; the 
 house was kept clean and tight ; the furniture and gardens in the 
 best repair ; and, in our occasional visits to Ireland, we never
 
 2go THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ, 
 
 found any house we visited in such good condition as our own. 
 There were a score of ready serving lasses, and half as many 
 trim men about the castle ; and everything in as fine condition 
 as the best housekeeper could make it. All this she did with 
 scarcely any charges to us : for she fed sheep and cattle in the 
 parks, and made a handsome profit of them at Ballinasloe ; she 
 supplied I don't know how many towns with butter and bacon ; 
 and the fruit and vegetables from the gardens of Castle Lyndon 
 got the highest prices in Dublin market. She had no waste in 
 the kitchen, as there used to be in most of our Irish houses ; and 
 there was no consumption of liquor in the cellars, for the old lady 
 drank water, and saw little or no company. All her society was 
 a couple of the girls of my ancient flame, Nora Brady, now Mrs. 
 Quin, who with her husband had spent almost all their property, 
 and who came to see me once in London, looking very old, fat, 
 and slatternly, with two dirty children at her side. She wept 
 very much when she saw me, called me " Sir" and " Mr. Lyndon." 
 , at which I was not sorry, and begged me to help her husband 
 which I did, getting him, through my friend, Lord Crabs, a place 
 in the excise in Ireland, and paying the passage of his family and 
 himself to that country. I found him a dirty, cast-down, snivel- 
 ling drunkard ; and, looking at poor JSTora, could not but wonder 
 at the days when I had thought her a divinity. But if ever I 
 have had a regard for a woman, I remain through life her constant 
 friend, and could mention a thousand such instances of my 
 generous and faithful disposition. 
 
 Young Bullingdon, however, was almost the only person with 
 whom she was concerned that mj- mother could not keep in order. 
 The accounts she sent me of him at first were such as gave my 
 paternal heart considerable pain. He rejected all regularity and 
 authority. He would absent himself for weeks from the house on 
 sporting or other expeditions. lie was when at home silent and 
 queer, refusing to make my mother's game at piquet of evenings, 
 but plunging into all sorts of musty old books, with which he 
 muddled his brains ; more at ease laughing and chatting with the 
 pipers and maids in the servants'-hall, than with the gentry in the 
 drawing-room ; always cutting gihes and jokes at Mrs. Barry, at 
 which she (who was rather a slow woman at repartee) would chafe
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 261 
 
 violently ; in fact, leading a life of insubordination and scandal. 
 And, to crown all, the young scape-grace took to frequenting the 
 society of the Eomish priest of the parish — a threadbare rogue, 
 from some Popish seminary in France or Spain — rather than the 
 company of the vicar of Castle Lyndon, a gentleman of Trinity, 
 who kept his hounds and drank his two bottles a-day. 
 
 Regard for the lad's religion made me not hesitate then how I 
 should act towards him. If I have any principle which has guided 
 me through life, it has been respect for the Establishment, and a 
 hearty scorn and abhorrence of all other forms of belief. I there- 
 fore sent my French body-servant, in the year 17 — , to Dublin with 
 a commission to bring the young reprobate over, and the report 
 brought to me was that he had passed the whole of the last night 
 of his stay in Ireland with his Popish friend at the mass-house ; 
 that he and my mother had a violent quarrel on the very last day ; 
 that, on the contrary, he kissed Biddy and Dosy, her two nieces, 
 who seemed very sorry that he should go ; and that being pressed 
 to go and visit the rector, he absolutely refused, saying he was a 
 wicked old Pharisee, inside whose doors he would never set his 
 foot. The doctor wrote me a letter, warning me against the 
 deplorable errors of this young imp of perdition, as he called him, 
 and I could see that there was no love lost between them. But 
 it appeared that, if not agreeable to the gentry of the country, 
 young Bullingdon had a huge popularity among the common 
 people. There was a regular crowd weeping round the gate when 
 his coach took its departure. Scores of the ignorant, savage 
 wretches ran for miles along by the side of the chariot, and some 
 went even so far as to steal away before his departure, and appear 
 at the Pigeon-house at Dublin to bid him a last farewell. It was 
 with considerable difficulty that some of these people could be 
 kept from secreting themselves in the vessel, and accompanying 
 their young lord to England. 
 
 To do the young scoundrel justice, when he came among us, he 
 was a manly, noble-looking lad, and everything in his bearing and 
 appearance betokened the high blood from which he came. He 
 was the very portrait of some of the dark cavaliers of the Lyndon 
 race, whose pictures hung in the gallery at Hackton, where the 
 lad was fond of spending the chief part of his time, occupied with
 
 262 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 the musty old books which he took out of the library, and which 
 I hate to see a young man of spirit poring over. Always in my 
 company he preserved the most rigid silence, and a haughty, 
 scornful demeanour, which was so much the more disagreeable 
 because there was nothing in his behaviour I could actually take 
 hold of to find fault with, although his whole conduct was insolent 
 and supercilious to the highest degree. His mother was very 
 much agitated at receiving him on his arrival ; if he felt arty such 
 agitation he certainly did not show it. He made her a very 
 low and formal bow when he kissed her hand ; and, when I 
 held out mine, put both his hands behind his back, stared me 
 full in the face, and bent his head, saying, " Mr. Barry Lyndon, 
 I believe ; " turned on his heel, and began talking about the 
 state of the weather to his mother, whom he always styled 
 "Tour Ladyship." She was angry at this pert bearing, and, 
 when they were alone, rebuked him sharply for not shaking hands 
 with his father. 
 
 " My father, madam ? " said he ; " surely you mistake. My 
 father was the Eight Honourable Sir Charles Lyndon. J at least 
 have not forgotten him, if others have." It was a declaration of 
 war to me, as I saw at once ; though I declare I was willing 
 enough to have received the boy well on his coming amongst us, 
 and to have lived with him on terms of friendliness. But as men 
 serve me I serve them. Who can blame me for my after-quarrels 
 with this young reprobate, or lay upon my shoulders the evils 
 which afterwards befell? Perhaps I lost my temper, and my 
 subsequent treatment of him was hard. But it was he began the 
 quarrel, and not I.; and the evil consequences which ensued were 
 entirely of his creating. 
 
 As it is best to nip vice in the bud, and for a master of a family 
 to exercise his authority in such a manner as that there may be 
 no question about it, I took the earliest opportunity of coming to 
 close quarters with Master Bullingdon, and the day after his 
 arrival among us, upon his refusal to perform some duty which I 
 requested of him, I had hiin conveyed to my study, and thrashed 
 him soundly. This process, I confess, at first, agitated me a good 
 deal, for I had never laid a whip on a lord before ; but I got 
 speedily used to the practice, and his back and my whip became
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 263 
 
 so well acquainted, that I warrant there was very little ceremony 
 between us after a while. 
 
 If I were to repeat all the instances of the insubordination aud 
 brutal conduct of young Bullingdon, I should weary the reader. 
 His perseverance in resistance was, I think, even greater than 
 mine in correcting him, for a man, be he ever so much resolved to 
 do his duty as a parent, can't be flogging his children all day, or 
 for every fault they commit ; and though I got the character of 
 being so cruel a step-father to him, I pledge my word I spared 
 him correction when he merited it many more times than I 
 administered it. Besides, there were eight clear months in the 
 year when he was quit of me, during the time of my presence in 
 London at my place in Parliament and at the court of my 
 sovereign. 
 
 At this period I made no difficulty to allow him to profit by 
 the Latin and Greek of the old rector, who had christened 
 him, and had a considerable influence over the wayward lad. 
 After a scene or a quarrel between us, it was generally to the 
 rectory-house that the young rebel would fly for refuge and 
 counsel, and I must own that the parson was a pretty just 
 umpire between us in our disputes. Once he led the boy back to 
 Hackton by the hand, and actually brought him into my presence, 
 although he had vowed never to enter the doors in my lifetime 
 again, and said, " He had brought his lordship to acknowledge his 
 error, and submit to any punishment I might think proper to 
 inflict." Upon which I caned him in the presence of two or 
 three friends of mine, with whom I was sitting drinking at the 
 time ; and to do him justice, he bore a pretty severe punishment 
 without wincing or crying in the least. This will show that I was 
 not too severe in my treatment upon the lad, as I had the 
 authority of the clergyman himself for inflicting the correction 
 which I thought proper. 
 
 Twice or thrice, Lavender, Bryan's governor, attempted to 
 punish my Lord Bullingdon ; but I promise you the rogue was 
 too strong for him, and levelled the Oxford man to the ground 
 with a chair, greatly to the delight of little Bryan, who cried out 
 " Bravo, Bully ! thump him, thump him ! " And Bully certainly 
 did, to the governor's heart's content, who never attempted
 
 264 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 personal chastisement afterwards, but contented himself by 
 bringing the tales of his lordship's misdoings to me, his natural 
 protector and guardian. 
 
 With the child Bullingdon was, strange to say, pretty tractable. 
 He took a liking for the little fellow, — as, indeed, everybody who 
 saw that darling boy did, — liked Mm the more, he said, because 
 he was " half a Lyndon." And well he might like him, for many 
 a time, at the dear angel's intercession of " Papa, don't flog Bully 
 to-day ! " I have held my hand, and saved him a horsing, which 
 he richly deserved. 
 
 With his mother, at first, he would scarcely deign to have any 
 communication. He said she was no longer one of the family. 
 Why should he love her, as she had never been a mother to him ? 
 But it will give the reader an idea of the dogged obstinacy and 
 surliness of the lad's character, when I mention one trait regarding 
 him. It has been made a matter of complaint against me, that I 
 denied him the education befitting a gentleman, and never sent 
 him to college or to school ; but the fact is, it was of his own 
 choice that he went to neither. He had the offer repeatedly from 
 me (who wished to see as little of his impudence as possible), but 
 he as repeatedly declined, and, for a long time, I could not make 
 out what was the charm which kept him in a house where he 
 must have been far from comfortable. 
 
 It came out, however, at last. There used to be very frequent 
 disputes between my Lady Lyndon and myself, in which some- 
 times she was wrong, sometimes I was ; and which, as neither of 
 us had very angelical tempers, used to run very high. I was often 
 in liquor ; and when in that condition, what gentleman is master 
 of himself? Perhaps I did, in this state, use my lady rather 
 roughly, iling a glass or two at her, and call her by a few names 
 that were not complimentary. I may have threatened her life 
 (which it was obviously my interest not to take), and have 
 frightened her, in a word, considerably. 
 
 After one of these disputes, in which she ran screaming through 
 the galleries, and I, as tipsy as a lord, came staggering after, it 
 appears Bullingdon was attracted out of his room by the noise ; 
 as I came up with her, the audacious rascal tripped up my heels, 
 which were not very steady, and, catching his fainting mother in
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 265 
 
 his arms, took her into his own room, where he, upon her entreaty, 
 swore he would never leave the house as long as she continued 
 united with me. I knew nothing of the vow, or indeed of the 
 tipsy frolic which was the occasion of it ; I was taken up 
 " glorious," as the phrase is, by my servants, and put to bed, and, 
 in the morning, had no more recollection of what had occurred 
 any more than of what happened when I was a baby at the breast. 
 Lady Lyndon told me of the circumstance years after; and I 
 mention it here, as it enables me to plead honourably "not 
 guilty " to one of the absurd charges of cruelty trumped up 
 against me with respect to my step-son. Let my detractors 
 apologise, if they dare, for the conduct of a graceless ruffian who 
 trips up the heels of his own natural guardian and step-father 
 after dinner. 
 
 This circumstance served to unite mother and son for a little, 
 but their characters were too different. I believe she was too fond 
 of me ever to allow him to be sincerely reconciled to her. As he 
 grew up to be a man, his hatred towards me assumed an intensity 
 quite wicked to think of (and which I promise you I returned 
 with interest) ; and it was at the age of sixteen, I think, that the 
 impudent young hang-dog, on my return from parliament one 
 summer, and on my proposing to cane him as usual, gave me to 
 understand that he would submit to no farther chastisement from 
 me, and said, grinding his teeth, that he would shoot me if I laid 
 hands on him. I looked at him; he was grown, in fact, to be a 
 tall young man, and I gave up that necessary part of his education. 
 
 It was about this time that I raised the company which was to 
 serve in America ; and my enemies in the country (and since my 
 victory over the Tiptoffs I scarce need say I had many of them) 
 began to propagate the most shameful reports regarding my con- 
 duct to that precious young scapegrace, my son-in-law, and to 
 insinuate that I actually wished to get rid of him. Thus my 
 loyalty to my sovereign was actually construed into a horrid, 
 unnatural attempt on my part on Bulliugdon's life ; and it was 
 said that I had raised the American corps for the sole purpose of 
 getting the young viscount to command it, and so of getting rid 
 of him. I am not sure that they had not fixed upon the name of 
 the very man in the company who was ordered to despatch him at
 
 266 THE MEMOIRS OF BAERY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 the first general action, and the bribe I was to give Mm for this 
 delicate piece of service. 
 
 But the truth is, I was of opinion then (and though the fulfil- 
 ment of my prophecy has been delayed, yet I make no doubt 
 it will be brought to pass ere long), that my Lord Bullingdou 
 needed none of my aid in sending him into the other world, 
 but had a happy knack of finding the way thither himself, which 
 he would be sure to pursue. In truth, he began upon this 
 way early ; of all the violent, daring, disobedient scapegraces 
 that ever caused an affectionate parent pain, he was certainly the 
 most incorrigible; there was no beating him, or coaxing him, or 
 taming him. 
 
 For instance, with my little son, when his governor brought 
 him into the room as we were over the bottle after dinner, my 
 lord would begin his violent and undutiful sarcasms at me. 
 
 "Dear child," he would say, beginning to caress and fondle him, 
 " what a pity it is I am not dead for thy sake ! The Lyndons 
 would then have a worthier representative, and enjoy all the benefit 
 of the illustrious blood of the Barrys of Barryogue ; would they 
 not, Mr. Barry Lyndon ? " He always chose the days when com- 
 pany, or the clergy or gentry of the neighbourhood, were present, 
 to make these insolent speeches to me. 
 
 Another day (it was Bryan's birth-day) we were giving a grand 
 ball and gala at Hackton, and it was time for my little Bryan to 
 make his appearance among us, as he usually did in the smartest 
 little court-suit you ever saw (ah, me! but it brings tears into my 
 old eyes now to think of the bright looks of that darling little 
 face) ; there was a great crowding and tittering when the child 
 came in, led by his half-brother, who walked into the dancing- 
 room (would you believe it ?) in his stocking-feet, leading little 
 Bryan by the hand, paddling about in the great shoes of the elder ! 
 " Don't you think he fits my shoes very well, Sir Richard War- 
 grave ? " says the young reprobate; upon which the company 
 began to look at each other and to titter, and his mother coming 
 up to Lord Bullingdon with great dignity, seized the child to her 
 breast, and said, " From the manner in which I love this child, 
 my lord, you ought to know how I would have loved his elder 
 brother, had he proved worthy of any mother's affection!" and,
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 267 
 
 bursting into tears, Lady Lyndon left the apartment, and the 
 young lord rather discomfited for once. 
 
 At last, on one occasion, his behaviour to me was so outrageous 
 (it was in the hunting-field and in a large public company), that 
 I lost all patience, rode at the urchin straight, wrenched him out 
 of his saddle with all my force, and, flinging him roughly to the 
 ground, sprung down to it myself, and administered such a cor- 
 rection across the young caitiff's head and shoulders with my 
 horsewhip as might have ended in his death, had I not been re- 
 strained in time, for my passion was up, and I was in a state to 
 do murder or any other crime. 
 
 The lad was taken home and put to bed, where he lay for a day 
 or two in a fever, as much from rage and vexation as from the 
 chastisement I had given him ; and three days afterwards, on 
 sending to inquire at his chamber whether he would join the 
 family at table, a note was found on his table, and his bed was 
 empty and cold. The young villain had fled, and had the audacity 
 to write in the following terms regarding me to my wife, his 
 mother : — 
 
 " Madam," he said, " I have borne as long as mortal could 
 endure the ill-treatment of the insolent Irish upstart whom you 
 have taken to your bed. It is not only the lowness of his birth 
 and the general brutality of his manners which disgust me, and 
 must make me hate him so long as I have the honour to bear the 
 name of Lyndon, which he is unworthy of, but the shameful nature 
 of his conduct towards your ladpship, his brutal and ungentleman- 
 like behaviour, his open infidelity, his habits of extravagance, 
 intoxication, his shameless robberies and swindling of my property 
 and yours. It is these insults to you which shock and annoy me 
 more than the ruffian's infamous conduct to myself. I would have 
 stood by your ladyship as I promised, but you seem to have taken 
 latterly your husband's part ; and, as I cannot personally chastise 
 this low-bred ruffian who, to our shame be it spoken, is the hus- 
 band of my mother, and as I cannot bear to witness his treatment 
 of you, and loathe his horrible society as if it were the plague, I 
 am determined to quit my native country, at least during his 
 detested life, or during my own. I possess a small income from 
 my father, of which I have no doubt Mr. Barry will cheat me if ho
 
 268 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 can, but which, if your ladyship has some feelings of a mother left, 
 you will, perhaps, award to me. Messrs. Childs, the Bankers, can 
 have orders to pay it to me when due ; if they receive no such 
 orders, I shall be not in the least surprised, knowing you to be in 
 the hands of a villain who would not scruple to rob on the highway, 
 and shall try to find out some way in life for myself more honour- 
 able than that by which the penniless Irish adventurer has arrived 
 to turn me out of my rights and home." 
 
 This mad epistle was signed " Bullingdon," and all the neigh- 
 bours vowed that I had been privy to his flight, and would profit 
 by it; though I declare on my honour my true and sincere desire, 
 after reading the above infamous letter, was to have the author 
 within a good arm's length of me, that I might let him know my 
 opinion regarding him. But there was no eradicating this idea 
 from people's minds, who insisted that I wanted to kill Bullingdon, 
 whereas murder, as I have said, was never one of my evil 
 qualities ; and even had I wished to injure my young enemy ever 
 so much, common prudence would have made my mind easy, as I 
 knew he was going to ruin his own way. 
 
 It was long before we heard of the fate of the audacious young 
 truant; but after some fifteen months had elapsed, I had the 
 pleasure of being able to refnte some of the murderous calumnies 
 which had been uttered against me, by producing a bill with 
 Bullingdon's own signature, drawn from General Tarleton's army 
 in America, where my company was conducting itself with the 
 greatest glory, and with which my lord was serving as a volunteer. 
 There were some of my kind friends who persisted still in attri- 
 buting all sorts of wicked intentions to me. Lord Tiptoff would 
 never believe that I would pay any bill, much more any bill of 
 Lord Bullingdon's ; old Lady Betty Grimsby, his sister, persisted 
 in declaring the bill was a forgery, and the poor dear lord dead, 
 until there came a letter to her ladyship from Lord Bullingdon 
 himself, who had been at New York at head-quarters, and who 
 described at length the splendid festival given by the officers of 
 the garrison to our distinguished chieftains, the two Howes. 
 
 In the meanwhile, if I had murdered my lord, I could scarcely 
 have been received with more shameful obloquy and slander than 
 now followed me in town and country. " You will hear of the
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 269 
 
 ]ad's death, be sure," exclaimed one of my friends. " And then 
 his wife's will follow," added another. "He will marry Jenny 
 Jones," added a third ; and so on. Lavender brought me the 
 news of these scandals about me : the country was up against me. 
 The farmers on market-days used to touch their hats sulkily, and 
 get out of my way ; the gentlemen who followed my hunt now 
 suddenly seceded from it, and left off my uniform ; at the county 
 ball, where I led out Lady Susan Capermore, and took my place 
 third in the dance after the duke and the marquis, as was my 
 wont, all the couples turned away as we came to them, and we 
 were left to dance alone. Sukey Capermore has a love of dancing, 
 which would make her dance at a funeral if anybody asked her, 
 and I had too much spirit to give in at this signal instance of 
 insult towards me, so we danced with some of the very commonest 
 low people at the bottom of the set- — your apothecaries, wine- 
 merchants, attorneys, and such scum as are allowed to attend our 
 public assemblies. 
 
 The bishop, my Lady Lyndon's relative, neglected to invite us 
 to the palace at the assizes ; and, in a word, every indignity was 
 put upon me which could by possibility be heaped upon an 
 innocent and honourable gentleman. 
 
 My reception in London, whither I now carried my wife and 
 family, was scarcely more cordial. On paying my respects to my 
 sovereign at St. James's, his majesty pointedly asked me when I 
 bad news of Lord Bullingdon. On which I replied, with no 
 ordinary presence of mind, " Sir, my Lord Bullingdon is fighting 
 the rebels against your majesty's crown in America. Does your 
 majesty desire that I should send another regiment to aid him ? " 
 On which the king turned on his heel, and I made mv bow out of 
 the presence-chamber. Yv'hen Lady Lyndon kissed the queen's 
 hand at the drawing-room, I found that precisely the same question 
 had been put to her ladyship, and she came home much agitated 
 at the rebuke which had been administered to her. Thus it was 
 that my loyalty was rewarded, and my sacrifice, in favour of my 
 country, viewed! I took away my establishment abruptly to 
 Paris, where I met with a very different reception, but my stay 
 amidst the enchanting pleasures of that capital was extremely 
 short ; for the French government, which had been long tampering
 
 
 270 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 •with the American rebels, now openly acknowledged the inde- 
 pendence of the United States. A declaration of war ensued, all 
 we happy English were ordered away from Paris, and I think I 
 left one or two fair ladies there inconsolable. It is the only place 
 where a gentleman can live as he likes without being incommoded 
 by his wife. The countess and I during our stay scarcely saw 
 each other except upon public occasions, at Versailles, or at the 
 queen's play-table ; and our dear little Bryan advanced in a 
 thousand elegant accomplishments, which rendered him the 
 delight of all w r ho knew him. 
 
 I must not forget to mention here my last interview with my 
 good uncle, the Chevalier de Ballybarry, whom I left at Brussels 
 with strong intentions of making his salut, as the phrase is, and 
 who had gone into retirement at a convent there. Since then he 
 had come into the world again, much to his annoyance and 
 repentance, having fallen desperately in love in his old age with 
 a French actress, who had done, as most ladies of her character 
 do, ruined him, left him, and laughed at him. His repentance 
 was very edifying. Under the guidance of Messieurs of the 
 Irish College, he once more turned his thoughts towards religion, 
 and his only prayer to me when I saw him and asked in what I 
 could relieve him, was to pay a handsome fee to the convent into 
 which he proposed to enter. 
 
 This I could not, of course, do, my religious principles for- 
 bidding me to encourage superstition in any way ; and the old 
 gentleman and I parted rather coolly in consequence of my 
 refusal, as he said, to make his old days comfortable. 
 
 I was very poor at the time, that is the fact ; and entre nous, 
 the Bosemont of the French opera, an indifferent dancer, but a 
 charming figure and ancle, was ruining me in diamonds, equipages, 
 and furniture bills ; added to which, I had a run of ill luck at 
 play, and was forced to meet my losses by the most shameful 
 sacrifices to the money-lenders, by pawning part of Lady Lyndon's 
 diamonds (that graceless little Bosemont wheedled me out of 
 some of them), and by a thousand other schemes for raising 
 money. But when Honour is in the case, was I ever found 
 backward at her call ? and what man can say that Barry Lyndon 
 lost a bet wdrich he did not pay ?
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 271 
 
 As for my ambitious hopes regarding the Irish peerage, I 
 began, on my return, to find out that I had been led wildly 
 astray by that rascal Lord Crabs, who liked to take my money, 
 but had no more influence to get me a coronet than to procure 
 for me the pope's tiara. The sovereign was not a whit more 
 gracious to me on returning from the Continent than lie had been 
 before my departure ; and I had it from one of the aides-de-camp 
 of the royal dukes, his brothers, that my conduct and amuse- 
 ments at Paris had been odiously misrepresented by some spies 
 there, and had formed the subject of royal comment, and that the 
 king had, influenced by these calumnies, actually said I was the 
 most disreputable man in the three kingdoms. I disreputable ! 
 I a dishonour to my name and country ! When I heard these 
 falsehoods, I was in such a rage that I went off to Lord North at 
 once to remonstrate with the minister, to insist upon being allowed 
 to appear before his majesty and clear myself of the imputations 
 against me, to point out my services to the government in voting 
 •with them, and to ask when the reward that had been promised 
 to me, viz., the title held by my ancestors, was again to be revived 
 iu my person ? 
 
 There was a sleepy coolness in that fat Lord North, which was 
 the most provoking thing that the opposition had ever to encounter 
 from him. He heard me with half-shut eyes. When I had 
 finished a long, violent speech, which I made striding about his 
 room in Downing Street, and gesticulating with all the energy of 
 an Irishman, he opened one eye, smiled, and asked me gently if 
 I had done. On my replying in the affirmative, he said, ' : Well, 
 Mr. Barry, I'll answer you, point by point. The king is exceed- 
 ingly averse to make peers, as you know. Tour claims, as you 
 call them, have been laid before him, and his majesty's gracious 
 reply was, that you were the most impudent man in his dominions, 
 and merited a halter rather than a coronet. As for withdrawing 
 your support from us, you are perfectly welcome to carry yourself 
 and your vote whithersoever you please. And now, as I have a 
 great deal of occupation, perhaps you will do me the favour to 
 retire." So saying, he raised his hand lazily to the bell, and bowed 
 me out, asking blandly if there was any other thing in the world 
 in which he could oblige me.
 
 272 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 I went home in a fury which can't be described, and having Lord 
 Crabs to dinner that day, assailed his lordship by pulling his wig 
 off his head, and smothering it in his face, and by attacking him 
 in that part of the person where, according to report, he had been 
 formerly assaulted by majesty. The whole story was over the town 
 the next day, and pictures of me were hanging in the clubs and 
 print-shops performing the operation alluded to. All the town 
 laughed at the picture of the lord and the Irishman, and I need 
 not say recognised both. As for me, I was one of the most cele- 
 brated characters in London in those days ; my dress, style, and 
 equipages, being as well known as those of any leader of the 
 fashion ; and my popularity, if not great in the highest quarters, 
 was at least considerable elsewhere. The people cheered me in 
 the Gordon rows, at the time they nearly killed my friend, Jemmy 
 Twitcher, and burned Lord Mansfield's house down. Indeed, I 
 was known as a stanch Protestant, and after my quarrel with Lord 
 North veered right round to the opposition, and vexed him with 
 all the means in my power. 
 
 These were not, unluckily, very great, for I was a bad speaker, 
 and the house would not listen to me, and presently, in 1780, after 
 the Gordon disturbance, was dissolved, when a general election 
 took place. It came on me, as all my mishaps were in the habit 
 of coming, at a most unlucky time. I was obliged to raise more 
 money, at most ruinous rates, to face the confounded election, 
 and had the Tiptoffs against me in the field more active and 
 virulent than ever. 
 
 My blood boils even now when I think of the rascally conduct 
 of my enemies in that scoundrelly election. I was held up as 
 the Irish Bluebeard, and libels of me were printed, and gross 
 caricatures drawn representing me flogging Lady Lyndon, whip- 
 ping Lord Bullingdon, turning him out of doors in a storm, and 
 I know not what. There were pictures of a pauper cabin in 
 Ireland, from which it was pretended I came; others in which I 
 was represented as a lacquey and shoe-black. A flood of calumny 
 was let loose upon me, m which any man of less spirit would 
 have gone down. 
 
 But though I met my accusers boldly, though I lavished sums 
 of money in the election, though I flung open Hackton Hall, and
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 273 
 
 kept champagne and burgundy running there and at all my inns 
 in the town as commonly as water, the election went against me. 
 The rascally gentry had all turned upon me and joined the TiptofF 
 faction ; it was even represented that I held my wife by force, 
 and though I sent her into the town alone, wearing my colours, 
 with Bryan in her lap, and made her visit the mayor's lady and 
 the chief women there, nothing would persuade the people but 
 that she lived in fear and trembling of me, and the brutal mob 
 had the insolence to ask her why she dared to go back, and how 
 she liked horsewhip for supper. 
 
 I was thrown out of my election, and all the bills came down 
 upon me together — all the bills I had been contracting for the 
 years of my marriage, which the creditors, with a rascally unani- 
 mity, sent in until they lay upon iny table in heaps. I won't cite 
 their amount ; it was frightful. My stewards and lawyers made 
 matters worse. I was bound up in an inextricable toil of bills 
 and debts, of mortgages and insurances, and all the horrible evils 
 attendant upon them. Lawyers upon lawyers posted down from 
 London : composition after composition was made, and Lady 
 Lyndon's income hampered almost irretrievably to satisfy these 
 cormorants. To do her justice, she behaved with tolerable kind- 
 ness at this season of trouble ; for whenever I wanted money I 
 had to coax her, and whenever I coaxed her I was sure of brin^inc: 
 
 7 O O 
 
 this weak and light-minded woman to good humour, who was of 
 such a weak, terrified nature, that to secure an easy week with 
 me she would sign away a thousand a -year. And when my 
 troubles began at Hackton, and I determined on the only chance 
 left, viz., to retire to Ireland and retrench, assigning over the 
 best part of my income to the creditors until their demands were 
 met, my lady was quite cheerful at the idea of going, and said, if 
 we would be quiet, she had no doubt all would be well ; indeed, 
 was glad to undergo the comparative poverty in which we must 
 now live, for the sake of the retirement and the chance of domestic 
 quiet, which she hoped to enjoy. 
 
 \Ve went off to Bristol pretty suddenly, leaving the odious and 
 ungrateful wretches at Hackton to vilify us, no doubt, in our 
 absence. My stud and hounds were sold off immediately; the 
 harpies would have been glad to pounce upon my person, but that 
 
 VOL. III. T
 
 274 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 was out of their power. I had raised by cleverness and manage- 
 ment to the full as much on my mines and private estates as 
 they were worth ; so the scoundrels were disappointed in this 
 instance ; and as for the plate and property in the London house, 
 they could not touch that, as it was the property of the heirs of 
 the house of Lyndon. 
 
 I passed over to Ireland, then, and took up my abode at Castle 
 Lyndon for a while, all the world imagining that I was an utterly 
 ruined man, and that the famous and dashing Barry Lyndon 
 would never again appear in the circles of which he had been an 
 ornament. But it was not so. In the midst of my perplexities, 
 Fortune reserved a great consolation for me still. Despatches 
 came home from America announcing Lord Cornwallis's defeat of 
 General Gates in Carolina, and the death of Lord Bullingdon, 
 who was present as a volunteer. 
 
 For my own desires to possess a paltry Irish title I cared little. 
 My son was now heir to an Euglish earldom, and I made him 
 assume forthwith the title of Lord Viscount Castle-Lyndon, the 
 third of the family titles. My mother went almost mad with joy 
 at saluting her grandson as " my lord," and I felt that all my 
 sufferings and privations were repaid by seeing this darling child 
 advanced to such a post of honour. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 If the world were not composed of a race of ungrateful scoun- 
 drels, who share your prosperity while it lasts, and, even when 
 gorged with, your venison and burgundy, abuse the generous giver 
 of the feast, I am sure I merit a good name and a high reputation 
 in Ireland, at least, where my generosity was unbounded, and the 
 splendour of my mansion and entertainments unequalled by any 
 other nobleman of my time. As long as my magnificence lasted, 
 all the country was free to partake of it ; I had hunters sufficient 
 in my stables to mount a reghneut of dragoons, and butts of wine
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 275 
 
 in my cellar which would have made whole counties drunk for 
 years. Castle Lyndon became the head-quarters of scores of 
 needy gentlemen, and I never rode a-hunting but I had a dozen 
 young fellows of the best blood of the country riding as my squires 
 and gentlemen of the horse. My son, little Castle Lyndon, was a 
 prince ; his breeding and manners, even at his early age, showed him 
 to be worthy of the two noble families from whom he was descended, 
 and I don't know what high hopes I had for the boy, and indulged 
 in a thousand fond anticipations as to his future success and figure 
 in the world. But stern Fate had determined that I should leave 
 none of my race behind me, and ordained that I should finish my 
 career, as I see it closing now — poor, lonely, and childless. I 
 may have had my faults, but no man shall dare to say of me that 
 I was not a good and tender father. 1 loved that boy passionately, 
 perhaps with a blind partiality; I denied him nothing. Gladlv, 
 gladly, I swear, would I have died that his premature doom might 
 have been averted. I think there is not a day since I lost him 
 but his bright face and beautiful smiles look down on me out of 
 heaven where he is, and that my heart does not yearn towards 
 him. That sweet child was taken from me at the age of nine 
 years, when he was full of beauty and promise ; and so powerful is 
 the hold his memory has of me that I have never been able to forget 
 him ; his little spirit haunts me of nights on my restless, solitary 
 pillow ; many a time, in the wildest and maddest compauy, as the 
 bottle is going round, and the song and laugh roaring about, I am 
 thinking of him. I have got a lock of his soft brown hair hanging 
 round my breast now ; it will accompany me to the dishonoured 
 pauper's grave, where soon, no doubt, Barry Lyndon's worn-out 
 old bones will be laid. 
 
 My Bryan was a boy of amazing high spirit (indeed, how, 
 coming from such a stock, could he be otherwise?), impatient 
 even of my control, against which the dear little .rogue would 
 often rebel gallantly ; how much more, then, of his mother's and 
 the women's, whose attempts to direct him he would laugh to 
 scorn. Even my own mother ("Mrs. Barry of Lyndon" the 
 good soul now called herself, in compliment to my new family) 
 was quite unable to check him, and hence you may fancy what a 
 will he had of his own. If it had not been for that, he might 
 
 T 2
 
 276 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 have lived to this day : he might — hut why repine ? Is he not in a 
 better place ? would the heritage of a beggar do any service to 
 him ? It is best as it is — Heaven be good to us ! — Alas ! that 
 I, his father, should be left to deplore him, 
 
 It was in the month of October I had been to Dublin in order 
 to see a lawyer and a monied man, who had come over to Ireland 
 to consult with me about some sales of mine and the cut of 
 Hackton timber, of which, as I hated the place and was greatly in 
 want of money, I was determined to cut down every stick. There 
 had been some difficulty in the matter. It was said I had no 
 right to touch the timber. The brute peasantry about the estate 
 had been roused to such a pitch of hatred against me, that the 
 rascals actually refused to lay an axe to the trees, and my agent 
 (that scoundrel Larkins) declared that his life was in danger 
 among them if he attempted any further despoilment (as they 
 called it) of the property. Every article of the splendid furniture 
 was sold by this time, as I need not say, and, as for the plate, I 
 had taken good care to bring it off to Ireland, where it now was 
 in the best of keeping, my banker's, who had advanced six thou- 
 sand pounds on it, which sum I soon had occasion for. 
 
 I went to Dublin, then, to meet the English men of business, 
 and so far succeeded in persuading Mr. Splint, a great ship- 
 builder and timber-dealer of Plymouth, of my claim to the Hackton 
 timber, that he agreed to purchase it off-hand at about one-third 
 of its value, and hauded me over 50001., which, being pressed with 
 debts at the time, I was fain to accept. He had no difficulty in 
 getting down the wood, I warrant. He took a regiment of ship- 
 wrights and sawyers from his own and the king's yards at Ply- 
 mouth, and in two months Hackton Park was as bare of trees as 
 the bog of Allen. 
 
 I had but ill-luck with that accursed expedition and money. I 
 lost the greater part of it in two nights' play at Daly's, so that 
 my debts stood just as they were before ; and before the vessel 
 sailed for Holyhead, which carried away my old sharper of a 
 timber-merchant, all that I had left of the money he brought me 
 was a couple of hundred pounds, with which I returned home very 
 disconsolately, and very suddenly, too, for my Dublin tradesmen 
 were hot upon me, hearing I had spent the loan, and two of my
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 277 
 
 wine-merchants bad writs out against me for some thousands of 
 pounds. 
 
 I bought in Dublin, according to my promise, however — for 
 when I give a promise I will keep it at any sacrifices — a little 
 horse for my dear little Bryan, which was to be a present for his 
 tenth birthday, that was now coming on. It was a beautiful little 
 animal and stood me in a good sum. I never regarded money for 
 that dear child. But the horse was very wild. He kicked ofi" one 
 of my horse-boys, who rode him at first, and broke the lad's leg, 
 and, though I took the animal in hand on the journey home, it 
 was only my weight and skill that made the brute quiet. 
 
 "When we got home I sent the horse away with one of my 
 grooms to a farmer's house to break him thoroughly in, and told 
 Bryan, who was all anxiety to see his little horse, that he would 
 arrive by his birthday, when he should hunt him along with my 
 hounds, and I promised myself no small pleasure in presenting 
 the dear fellow to the field that day, which I hoped to see him 
 lead some time or other in place of his fond father. Ah, me ! 
 never was that gallant boy to ride a fox-chase, or to take the place 
 amongst the gentry of his country which his birth and genius had 
 pointed out for him ! 
 
 Though I don't believe in dreams and omens, yet I can't but 
 own that when a great calamity is hanging over a man he has 
 frequently many strange and awful forebodings of it. I fancy 
 now I had many. Lady Lyndon, especially, twice dreamed of her 
 son's death ; but, as she was now grown uncommonly nervous 
 and vapourish, I treated her fears with scorn, and my own, of 
 course, too. And in an unguarded moment, over the bottle after 
 dinner, I told poor Bryan, who was always questioning me about 
 the little horse, and when it was to come, that it was arrived, that 
 it was in Doolan's farm, where Mick the groom was breaking him 
 in. " Promise me, Bryan," screamed his mother, "that you will 
 not ride the horse except in company of your father." But I 
 only said, " Pooh, madam, you are an ass ! " being angry at her 
 silly timidity, which was always showing itself in a thousand 
 disagreeable ways now ; and, turning round to Bryan, said, " I 
 promise your lordship a good flogging if you mount him without 
 my leave."
 
 278 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 I suppose the poor child did not care about paying this penalty 
 for the pleasure he was to have, or possibly thought a fond father 
 would remit the punishment altogether, for the next morning, 
 when I rose rather late, having sat up drinking the night before, 
 I found the child had been off at day-break, having slipped 
 through his tutor's room (this was Eedmond Quin, our cousin, 
 whom I had taken to live with me), and I had no doubt but that 
 he was gone to Doolan's farm. 
 
 I took a great horse-whip and galloped off after him in a rage, 
 swearing I would keep my promise. Bat, Heaven forgive me! I 
 little thought of it, when at three miles from home I met a sad 
 procession coming towards me, peasants moaning and howling as 
 our Irish do, the black horse led by the hand, and, on a door that 
 some of the folks carried, my poor dear, dear little boy. There he 
 lay in his little boots and spurs, and his little coat of scarlet and 
 gold. His dear face was quite white, and he smiled as he held a 
 baud out to me, and said, painfully, " Tou won't whip me, will 
 you, papa ? " I could only burst out into tears in reply. I have 
 aeen many and many a man dying, and there's a look about the 
 eyes which you cannot mistake. There was a little drummer-boy 
 I was fond of who was hit down before my company at Kiihners- 
 dorf ; when I ran up to give him some water, he looked exactly 
 like my dear Bryan then did — there's no mistaking that awful 
 look of the eyes. "We carried him home and scoured the country 
 round for doctors to come and look at his hurt. 
 
 But what does a doctor avail in a contest with the grim, invin- 
 cible enemy ? Such as came could only confirm our despair by 
 their account of the poor child's case. He had mounted his horse 
 gallantly, sat him bravely all the time the animal plunged and 
 kicked, and, having overcome his first spite, run him at a hedge 
 by the roadside. But there were loose stones at the top, and the 
 horse's foot caught among them, and he and his brave little rider 
 rolled over together at the other side. The people said they saw 
 the noble little boy spring up after his fall and run to catch the 
 horse, which had broken away from him, kicking him on the back, 
 as it would seem, as they lay on the ground. Poor Bryan ran a 
 few yards and then dropped down as if shot. A pallor came over 
 his face, and they thought he was dead. But they poured whiskey
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 279 
 
 down his mouth, and the poor child revived ; still he could not 
 move, his spine was injured, the lower half of him was dead when 
 they laid him in hed at home. The rest did not last long, God 
 help me ! He remained yet for two days with us, and a sad 
 comfort it was to think he was in no pain. 
 
 During this time the dear angel's temper seemed quite to 
 change ; he asked his mother and me pardon for any act of dis- 
 obedience he had been guilty of towards us, he said often he 
 should like to see his brother Bullingdon. " Bully was better 
 than you, papa," he said ; " he used not to swear so, and he told 
 and taught me many good things while you were away." And, 
 taking a hand of his mother and mine in each of his little clammy 
 ones, he begged us not to quarrel so, but love each other, so that 
 we might meet again in heaven, where Bully told him quarrelsome 
 people never went. His mother was very much affected by these 
 admonitions from the poor, suffering angel's mouth, and I was so 
 too. I wish she had enabled me to keep the counsel which the 
 dying boy gave us. 
 
 At last, after two days he died. There he lay, the hope of my 
 family, the pride of my manhood, the link which had kept me and 
 my Lady Lyndon together. " O Bedmond," said she, kneeling 
 by the sweet child's body, " do, do let us listen to the truth out 
 of his blessed mouth, and do you amend your life, and treat your 
 poor, loving, fond wife as her dying child bade you." And I said 
 I would; but there are promises which it is out of a man's power 
 to keep, especially with such a woman as her. But we drew 
 together after that sad event, and were for several months better 
 friends. 
 
 I won't tell you with what splendour we buried him. Of what 
 avail are undertakers' feathers and heralds' trumpery ? I went 
 out and shot the fatal black horse that had killed him at the door 
 of the vault where we laid my boy. I was so wild that I could 
 have shot myself too. But for the crime, it would have been 
 better that I should, perhaps, for what has my life been since that 
 sweet flower was taken out of my bosom ? A succession of 
 miseries, wrongs, disasters, and mental and bodily sufferings, 
 which never fell to the lot of any other man in Christendom.
 
 230 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Lady Lyndon, always vaporish and nervous, after our blessed 
 boy's catastrophe became more agitated than ever, and plunged 
 into devotion with so much fervour, that you would have fancied 
 her almost distracted at times. She imagined she saw visions. 
 She said an angel from heaven had told her that Bryan's death 
 Avas as a punishment to her for her neglect of her first-born. 
 Then she would declare Bullingdon was alive ; she had seen him 
 in a dream. Then again she would fall into fits of sorrow about 
 his death, and grieve for him as violently as if he had been the 
 last of her sons who had died, and not our darling Bryan, who, 
 compared to Bullingdon, was what a diamond is to a vulgar stone. 
 Her freaks were painful to witness, and difficult to control. It 
 began to be said in the country that the countess was going mad. 
 My scoundrelly enemies did not fail to confirm and magnify the 
 rumour, and would add that I was the cause of her insanity, I had 
 driven her to distraction, I had killed Bullingdon, I had murdered 
 my own son ; I don't know what else they laid to my charge. 
 Even in Ireland their hateful calumnies reached me ; my friends 
 fell away from me. They began to desert my hunt as they did in 
 England, and when I went to race or market found sudden 
 reasons for getting out of my neighbourhood. I got the name of 
 Wicked Barry, Devil Lyndon, which you please ; the country- 
 folks used to make marvellous legends about me ; the priests 
 said I had massacred I don't know how many German nuns 
 in the Seven "Years' "War; that the ghost of the murdered 
 Bullingdon haunted my house. Once at a fair in a town hard 
 by, when .1 had a mind to buy a waistcoat for one of my people, a 
 fellow standing by, said, " 'Tis a strait waistcoat he's buying for 
 my Lady Lyndon." And from this circumstance arose a legend 
 of my cruelty to my wife, and many circumstantial details were 
 narrated regarding my manner and ingenuity of torturing her. 
 
 The loss of my dear boy pressed not only on my heart as a 
 father, but injured my individual interests in a very considerable 
 degree, for as there was now no direct heir to the estate, and 
 Lady Lyndon was of a weak health, and supposed to be quite un- 
 likely to leave a family, the next in succession, that detestable 
 family of TiptofT, began to exert themselves in a hundred ways to 
 annoy me, and were at the head of the party of enemies who
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 2S1 
 
 were raising reports to my discredit. They interposed between 
 me and my management of the property in a hundred different 
 ways, making an outcry if I cut a stick, sunk a shaft, sold a 
 picture, or sent a few ounces of plate to he remodelled. They 
 harassed me with ceaseless law-suits, got injunctions from Chan- 
 cers, hampered my agents in the execution of their work, so much 
 so that you would have fancied my own was not my own, hut 
 theirs, to do as they liked with. What is worse, as I have reason 
 to believe, they had tamperings and dealings with my own 
 domestics under my own roof, for I could not have a word with 
 Lady Lyndon but it somehow got abroad, and I could not be 
 drunk with my chaplain and friends but some sanctified rascals 
 would get hold of the news, and reckon up all the bottles I drank 
 and all the oaths I swore. That these were not few, I acknow- 
 ledge. I am of the old school, was always a free liver and speaker, 
 and, at least, if I did and said what I liked, was not so bad as 
 manv a canting scoundrel I know of who covers his foibles and 
 sins, unsuspected, with a mask of holiness. 
 
 As I am making a clean breast of it, and am no hypocrite, I 
 may as well confess now that I endeavoured to ward off" the 
 devices of my enemies by an artifice which was not, perhaps, 
 strictly justifiable. Every thing depended on my having an heir 
 to the estate ; for if Lady Lyndon, who was of weakly health had 
 died, the next day I was a beggar ; all my sacrifices of money, &c, 
 on the estate would not have been held in a farthing's account ; all 
 the debts would have been left on my shoulders ; and my enemies 
 would have triumphed over me, which, to a man of my honourable 
 spirit, was "the unkindest cut of all," as some poet says. 
 
 I confess, then, it was my wish to supplant these scoundrels, 
 and, as I could not do so without an heir to my property, I 
 determined to find one. If I had him near at hand, and of my 
 own blood too, though with the bar sinister, is not here the 
 question. It was then I found out the rascally machinations of 
 my enemies, for, having broached this plan to Lady Lyndon, 
 Avhom I made to be, outwardly at least, the most obedient of 
 wives, — although I never let a letter from her or to her go or 
 arrive without my inspection,— although I allowed her to see none 
 but those persons who I thought, in her delicate health, would
 
 282 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 be fitting society for her, yet the infernal Tiptoffs got wind of my 
 scheme, protested instantly against it, not only by letter, but in 
 the shameful libellous public prints, and held me up to public 
 odium as a " child-forger," as they called me. Of course I denied 
 the charge — I could do no otherwise, and offered to meet any 
 one of the Tiptoffs on the field of honour, and prove him a 
 scoundrel and a liar, as he was, though, perhaps, not in this 
 instance. But they contented themselves by answering me by a 
 lawyer, and declined an invitation, which any man of spirit would 
 have accepted. My hopes of having an heir were thus blighted 
 completely; indeed, Lady Lyndon (though, as I have said, I take 
 her opposition for nothing) had resisted the proposal with as 
 much energy as a woman of her weakness could manifest, and 
 said she had committed one great crime in consequence of me, 
 but would rather die than perform another. I could easily, have 
 brought her ladyship to her senses, however : but my scheme had 
 taken wind, and it was now in vain to attempt it. We might 
 have had a dozen children in honest wedlock, and people would 
 have said they were false. 
 
 As for raising money on annuities, I may say I had used her 
 life-interest up. There were but few of those assurance-societies 
 in my time which have since sprung up in the city of London ; 
 underwriters did the business, and my wife's life was as well 
 known among them as, I do believe, that of any woman in 
 Christendom. Latterly, when I wanted to get a sum against her 
 life, the rascals had the impudenee to say my treatment of her did 
 not render it worth -a year's purchase, — as if my interest lay in 
 killing her ! Had my boy lived, it would have been a different 
 thing; he and his mother might have cut off the entail of a good 
 part of the property between them, and my affairs have been put 
 in better order. IMow they were in a bad condition indeed. All 
 my schemes had turned out failures; my lands, which I had pur- 
 chased with borrowed money, made me no return, and I was 
 obliged to pay ruinous interest for the sums with which I had 
 purchased them. My income, though very large, was saddled 
 with hundreds of annuities, and thousands of lawyers' charges ; 
 and 1 felt the net drawing closer and closer round me, and no 
 means to extricate myself from its toils.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 283 
 
 To add to all my perplexities, two years after my poor child's 
 death, my wife, whose vagaries of temper and wayward follies 
 I had borne with for twelve years, wanted to leave me, and 
 absolutely made attempts at what she called escaping from my 
 tyranny. 
 
 My mother, who was the only person that, in my misfortunes, 
 remained faithful to me (indeed, she has always spoken of me in 
 my true light, as a martyr to the rascality of others and a victim 
 of my own generous and confiding temper), found out the first 
 scheme that was going on, and of which those artful and malicious 
 TiptofFs were, as usual, the main promoters. Mrs. Barry, indeed, 
 though her temper was violent and her ways singular, was an 
 invaluable person to me in my house, which would have been at 
 rack and ruin long before, but for her spirit of order and manage- 
 ment, and for her excellent economy in the government of my 
 numerous family. As for my -Lady Lyndon, she, poor soul ! was 
 much too fine a lady to attend to household matters — passed her 
 days with her doctor, or her books of piety, and never appeared 
 among us except at my compulsion, when ehe and my mother 
 would be sure to have a quarrel. 
 
 Mrs. Barry, on the contrary, had a talent for management in 
 all matters. She kept the maids stirring, and the footmen to 
 their duty ; had an eye over the claret in the cellar, and the oats 
 and hay in the stable ; saw to the salting and pickling, the pota- 
 toes and the turf-stacking, the pig-killing and the poultry, the 
 linen-room and the bakehouse, and the ten thousand minutiae of a 
 great establishment. If all Irish housewives were like her, I 
 warrant many a hall-fire would be blazing where the cobwebs only 
 grow now, and many a park covered with sheep and fat cattle 
 where the thistles are at present the chief occupiers. If anything 
 could have saved me from the consequences of villany in others, 
 and (I confess it, for I am not above owning to my faults) my 
 own too easy, generous, and careless nature, it would have been 
 the admirable prudence of that worthy creature. She never went 
 to bed until all the house was quiet and all the candles out ; and 
 you may fancy that this was a matter of some difficulty with a 
 man of my habits, who had commonly a dozen of jovial fellows 
 (artful scoundrels and false friends most of them were !) to drink
 
 284 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 with me every night, and who seldom, for my part, went to bed 
 sober. Many and many a night, when I was unconscious of her 
 attention, has that good soul pulled my boots off", and seen me 
 laid by my servants snug in bed, and carried off the candle 
 herself, and been the first in the morning, too, to bring me my 
 drink of small-beer. Mine were no milksop times, I can tell you. 
 A gentleman thought no shame of taking his half-dozen bottles ; 
 and, as for your coffee and slops, they were left to Lady Lyndon, 
 her doctor, and the other old women. It was my mother's pride 
 that I could drink more than any man in the country, — as much, 
 within a pint, as my father before me, she said. 
 
 That Lady Lyndon should detest her was quite natural. She 
 is not the first of woman or mankind either that has hated a 
 mother-in-law. I set my mother to keep a sharp watch over the 
 freaks of her ladyship, and this, you may be sure, was one of the 
 reasons why the latter disliked her. I never minded that how- 
 ever. Mrs. Barry's assistance and surveillance were invaluable to 
 me ; and, if I had paid twenty spies to watch my lady, I should 
 not have been half so well served as by the disinterested care and 
 watchfulness of my excellent mother. She slept with the house- 
 keys under her pillow, and had an eye everywhere. She followed 
 all the countess's movements like a shadow ; she managed to 
 know, from morning till night, everything that my lady did. If 
 she walked in the garden, a watchful eye was kept on the wicket ; 
 and, if she chose to drive out, Mrs. Barry accompanied her, and a 
 couple of fellows in my liveries rode alongside of the carriage to 
 see that she came to no harm. Though she objected, and would 
 have kept her room in sullen silence, I made a point that we 
 should appear together at church in the coach-and-six every 
 Sunday, and that she should attend the race-balls in my company, 
 whenever the coast was clear of the rascally bailiffs who beset me. 
 This gave the lie to any of those maligners who said that I wished 
 to make a prisoner of my wife. The fact is, that, knowing her 
 levity, and seeing the insane dislike to me and mine which had 
 now begun to supersede what, perhaps, had been an equally 
 insane fondness for mo, I was bound to be on my guard that she 
 should not give me the slip. Had she left me I was ruined the 
 next day. This (which my mother knew) compelled us to keep a
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 285 
 
 tight watch over her ; but, as for imprisoning her, I repel the 
 imputation with scorn. Every man imprisons his wife to a certain 
 degree ; the world would be in a pretty condition if women were 
 allowed to quit home and return to it whenever they had a mind. 
 In watchiug over my wife, Lady Lyndon, I did no more than 
 exercise the legitimate authority, which awards honour and obedi- 
 ence to every husband. 
 
 Such, however, is female artifice, that, in spite of all my watch- 
 fulness in guarding her, it is probable my lady would have given 
 me the slip, had I not had quite as acute a person as herself as 
 my ally ; for, as the proverb says that " the best way to catch one 
 thief is to set another after him," so the best way to get the 
 better of a woman is to engage one of her own artful sex to guard 
 her. One would have thought that, followed as she was, all her 
 letters read, and all her acquaintances strictly watched by me, 
 living in a remote part of Ireland away from her family, Lady 
 Lyndon could have had no chance of communicating with her allies, 
 or of making her wrongs, as she was pleased to call them, public ; 
 and yet, for awhile, she carried on a correspondence under my 
 very nose, and acutely organised a conspiracy for flying from me, 
 as shall be told. 
 
 She always had an inordinate passion for dress, and, as she was 
 never thwarted in any whimsey she had of this kind (for I spared 
 no money to gratify her, and among my debts are milliners' bills 
 to the amount of many thousands), boxes used to pass continually 
 to and fro from Dublin, with all sorts of dresses, caps, flounces, 
 and furbelows, as her fancy dictated. With these would come 
 letters from her milliner, in answer to numerous similar injunctions 
 from my lady, all of which passed through my hands, without the 
 least suspicion, for some time. And yet in these very papers, by 
 the easy means of sympathetic ink, were contained all her lady- 
 ship's correspondence, and Heaven knows (for it was some time, 
 as I have said, before I discovered the trick) what charges 
 against me. 
 
 But clever Mrs. Barry found out that always, before my lady- 
 wife chose to write letters to her milliner, she had need of lemons 
 to make her drink, as she said ; and this fact, being mentioned to 
 me, set me a-thinking, and so I tried one of the letters before the
 
 286 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 fire, and the whole scheme of villany was brought to light. I will 
 give a specimen of one of the horrid artful letters of this unhappy 
 woman. In a great hand, with wide lines, were written a set of 
 directions to her mantua-maker, setting forth the articles of dress 
 for which my lady had need, the peculiarity of their make, the 
 stuffs she selected, &c. She would make out long lists in this 
 wav, writing each article in a separate line, so as to have more 
 space for detailing all my cruelties and her tremendous wrongs. 
 Between these lines she kept the journal of her captivity ; it 
 would have made the fortune of a romance-writer in those days 
 but to have got a copy of it, and to have published it under the 
 title of the " Lovely Prisoner, or the Savage Husband," or by 
 some name equally taking and absurd. The journal would be as 
 
 follows: — 
 
 ***** 
 
 " Monday. — Yesterday I was made to go to church. My odious, 
 monstrous, vulgar, slie-dragon of a mother-in-law, in a yellow satin 
 and red ribands, taking the first place in the coach ; Mr. L. riding 
 by its side, on the horse he never paid for to Captain Hurdlestone. 
 The wicked hypocrite led me to the pew, with hat in hand and a 
 smiling countenance, and kissed my hand as I entered the coach 
 after service, and patted my Italian greyhound, — all that the few 
 people collected might see. He made me come down stairs in the 
 evening to make tea for his company, of whom three-fourths, 
 he himself included, were, as usual, drunk. They painted the 
 parson's face black, when his reverence had arrived at his seventh 
 bottle, and at his usual insensible stage, and they tied him on the 
 grey mare, with his face to the tail. The she-dragon read the 
 Whole Duty of Man all the evening till bedtime, when she saw me 
 to my apartments, locked me in, and proceeded to wait upon her 
 abominable son, whom she adores for his wickedness, I should 
 
 think, as Slycorax did Caliban." 
 
 ***** 
 
 You should have seen my mother's fury as I read her out this 
 passage ! Indeed, I have always had a taste for a joke (that 
 practised on the parson, as described above is, I confess, a true 
 bill), and used carefully to select for Mrs. Barry's hearing all the 
 compliments that Lady Lyndon passed upon her. The dragon
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 287 
 
 was the name by which she was known in this precious cor- 
 respondence, or sometimes she was designated by the title of the 
 "Irish Witch." As for me, I was denominated "my gaoler," 
 " my tyrant," " the dark spirit which has obtained the mastery 
 over my being," and so on, in terms always complimentary to my 
 power, however little they might be so to my amiability. Here is 
 another extract from her " Prison Diary," by which it will be 
 seen that my lady, although she pretended to be so indifferent to 
 my goings on, had a sharp woman's eye, and could be as jealous as 
 
 another : — 
 
 * » * * * 
 
 " Wednesday. — This day two years my last hope and pleasure in 
 life was taken from me, and my dear child was called to heaven. 
 Has he joined his neglected brother there, whom I suffered to 
 grow up unheeded by my side, and whom the tyranny of the 
 monster to whom I am united drove to exile, and, perhaps, to 
 death ? Or is the child alive, as my fond heart sometimes deems ? 
 Charles Bullingdon ! come to the aid of a wretched mother, who 
 acknowledges her crimes, her coldness towards thee, and now 
 bitterly pays for her error ! But, no, he cannot live ! I am 
 distracted ! My only hope is in you, my cousin — you whom I had 
 once thought to salute by a still fonder title, my dear George 
 Poynings ! Oh, be my knight and my preserver, the true chivalric 
 being thou ever wert, and rescue me from the thrall of the felon 
 caitiff who holds me captive, — rescue me from him, and from 
 Stycorax, the vile Irish witch, bis mother!" 
 
 (Here follow some verses, such as her ladyship was in the 
 habit of composing by reams, in which she compares herself to 
 Sabra, in the Seven Champions, and beseeches her George to 
 rescue her from the dragon, meaning Mrs. Barry. I omit the 
 lines, and proceed), — 
 
 " Even my poor child, who perished untimely on this sad anni- 
 versary, the tyrant who governs me had taught to despise and 
 dislike me. 'Twas in disobedience to my orders, my prayers, that 
 he went on the fatal journey. What sufferings, what humiliations 
 have I had to endure since then ! I am a prisoner in my own 
 halls. I should fear poison, but that I know the wretch has a 
 sordid interest in keeping me alive, and that my death would be
 
 288 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 the signal for his ruin. But I dare not stir without my odious, 
 hideous, vulgar gaoler, the horrid Irishwoman, who pursues my 
 every step. I am locked into my chamber at night, like a felon, 
 and only suffered to leave it when ordered into tbe presence of my 
 lord (/ordered !), to be present at his orgies with his boon com- 
 panions, and to hear his odious converse as he lapses into the 
 disgusting madness of intoxication ! He has given up even the 
 semblance of constancy — he, who swore that I alone could attach 
 or charm him ! And now he brings his vulgar mistresses before 
 my very eyes, and would have had me acknowledge, as heir to my 
 own property, his child by another ! 
 
 " No, I never will submit ! Thou, and thou only, my George, 
 my early friend, shalt be heir to the estates of Lyndon. "Why 
 did not Pate join me to thee, instead of to the odious man who 
 
 holds me under his sway, and make the poor Calista happy ! " 
 
 ****** 
 
 So the letters would run on for sheets upon sheets, in the 
 closest cramped handwriting ; and I leave any unprejudiced reader 
 to say whether the writer of such documents must not have been 
 as silly and vain a creature as ever lived, and whether she did not 
 want being taken care of ? I could copy out yards of rhapsody 
 to Lord George Poynings, her old flame, in which she addressed 
 him by the most affectionate names, and implored him to find a 
 refuge for her against her oppressors ; but they would fatigue the 
 reader to peruse, as they would me to copy. The fact is, that this 
 unlucky lady had the knack of writing a great deal more than 
 she meant. She was always reading novels and trash ; putting 
 herself iuto imaginary characters, flying off into heroics and 
 sentimentalities, and, with as little heart as any woman I ever 
 knew, yet showing the most violent disposition to be in love. She 
 wrote always as if she was in a flame of passion. I have an elegy 
 on her lap-dog, the most tender and pathetic piece she ever wrote ; 
 and most tender notes of remonstrance to Betty, her favourite 
 maid ; to her housekeeper, on quarrelling witli her ; to half-a-dozen 
 acquaintances, each of whom she addressed as the dearest friend in 
 the world, and forgot, the very moment she took up another fancy. 
 As for her love for her children, the above passage will show how 
 much she was capable of true maternal feeling ; the very sentence
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 239 
 
 in which she records the death of one child serves to betray her 
 egotisms, and to wreak her spleen against myself; and she only 
 wishes to recal another from the grave, in order that he may be of 
 some personal advantage to her. If I did deal severely with this 
 woman, keeping her from her flatterers, who won! J have bred discord 
 between us, and locking her up out of mischief, who shall say that 
 I was wrong ? If any woman deserved a strait waistcoat, it was 
 my Lady Lyndon ; and I have known people in my time manacled, 
 and with their heads shaved, in the straw, who had not committed 
 half the follies of that foolish, vain, infatuated creature. 
 
 My mother was so enraged by the charges against me and 
 herself which these letters contained, that it wa3 with the utmost 
 difficulty I could keep her from discovering our knowledge of them 
 to Lady Lyndon, whom it was, of course, my object to keep in 
 ignorance of our knowledge of her designs ; for I was anxious to 
 know how far they went, and to what pitch of artifice she would 
 go. The letters increased in interest (as they say of the novels) 
 as they proceeded. Pictures were drawn of my treatment of her 
 which would make your heart throb. 1 don't know of what 
 monstrosities she did not accuse me, and what miseries and 
 starvation she did not profess herself to undergo, all the while 
 she was living exceedingly fat and contented, to outward appear- 
 ances, at our house at Castle Lyndon. Novel-reading and vanity 
 had turned her brain. I could not say a rough word to her (and 
 she merited many thousands a day, I can tell you), but she 
 declared I was putting her to the torture ; and my mother could' 
 not remonstrate with her but she went off into a fit of hvsterics 
 of which she would declare the worthy old lady was the cause. 
 
 At last she began to threaten to kill herself; and, though I by 
 no means kept the cutlery out of the way, did not stint her in 
 garters, and left her doctor's shop at her entire service, — knowing 
 her character full well, and that there was no woman in 
 Christendom less likely to lay hands on her precious life than 
 herself, yet these threats had an effect evidently in the quarter to 
 which they were addressed ; for the milliner's packets now began 
 to arrive with great frequency, and the bills sent to her contained 
 assurances of coming aid. The chivalrous Lord George Poynings 
 was coming to his cousin's rescue, and did me the compliment to 
 
 VOL. III. u
 
 290 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 say that be hoped to free his dear cousin from the clutches of the 
 most atrocious villain that ever disgraced humanity, and that, 
 -when she was free, measures should he taken for a divorce, on the 
 ground of cruelty and every species of ill-usage on my part. 
 
 I had copies of all these precious documents on one side and 
 the other carefully made, by my before-mentioned relative, godson, 
 and secretary, Mr. Eedmond Quin, at present the worthy agent of 
 the Castle Lyndon property. This was a son of my old flame 
 Nora, whom I had taken from her in a fit of generosity, promising 
 to care for his education at Trinity College, and provide for him 
 through life. But after the lad had been for a year at the University 
 the tutors would not admit him to commons or lectures until his 
 college bills were paid ; and, offended by this insolent manner of 
 demanding the paltry sum due, I withdrew my patronage from the 
 place, and ordered my gentleman to Castle Lyndon, where I made 
 him useful to me in a hundred ways. In my dear little boy's 
 lifetime, he tutored the poor child as far as his high spirit would 
 let him ; but I promise you it was small trouble poor dear 
 Bryan ever gave the books. Then he kept Mrs. Barry's accounts ; 
 copied my own interminable correspondence with my lawyers and 
 the agents of all my various property ; took a hand at picquet or 
 backgammon of evenings with me and my mother ; or, being an 
 ingenious lad enough (though of a mean, boorish spirit, as became 
 the son of such a father), accompanied my Lady Lyndon's spinet 
 with his flageolet ; or read French and Italian with her, in both of 
 which languages her ladyship was a fine scholar, and in which he 
 also became perfectly conversant. It would make my watchful 
 old mother very angry to hear them conversing in these languages ; 
 for, not understanding a word of either of them, Mrs. Brady was 
 furious when they were spoken, and always said it was some 
 scheming they were after. It was Lady Lyndon's constant way 
 of annoying the old lady, when the three were alone together, to 
 address Quin in one or other of these tongues. 
 
 I was perfectly at ease with regard to his fidelity, for I had bred 
 the lad, and loaded him with benefits, and, besides, had had 
 various proofs of his trustworthiness, lie it was who brought me 
 three of Lord George's letters, in reply to some of my lady's 
 complaints, which were concealed between the leather and the
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF EARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 291 
 
 boards of a book which was sent from the circulating library 
 for her ladyship's perusal. He and my lady too had frequent 
 quarrels. She mimicked his gait in her pleasanter moments ; in 
 her haughty moods, she would not sit down to table with a 
 tailor's grandson. " Send me anything for company but that 
 odious Quin," she would say, when I proposed that he should go 
 and amuse her with his books and his flute ; for, quarrelsome as 
 we were, it must not be supposed we were always at it ; I was 
 occasionally attentive to her. We would be friends for a month 
 together, sometimes ; then we would quarrel for a fortnight ; then 
 she would keep her apartments for a month ; all of which domes- 
 tic circumstances were noted down, in her ladyship's peculiar way, 
 in her journal of captivity, as she called it : and a pretty docu- 
 ment it is ! Sometimes she writes, " My monster has been almost 
 kind to-day," or "my ruffian has deigned to smile." Then she 
 will break out into expressions of savage hate ; but for my poor 
 mother it was ahcays hatred. It was, " The she-dragon is sick to- 
 day ; I wish to Heaven she would die ! " or, " the hideous old 
 Irish basket-woman has been treating me to some of her Billings- 
 gate to-day," and so forth ; all which expressions, read to Mrs. 
 Barry, or translated from the French and Italian, in which many 
 of them were written, did not fail to keep the old lady in a per- 
 petual fury against her charge ; and so I had my watch-dog, as I 
 called her, always on the alert. In translating these languages, 
 young Quin was of great service to me ; for I had a smattering of 
 French ; and High Dutch, when I was in the army, of course, I 
 knew well ; but Italian I knew nothing of, and was glad of the 
 services of so faithful and cheap an interpreter. 
 
 This cheap and faithful interpreter, this godson and kinsman, 
 on whom and on whose family I had piled up benefits, was actually 
 trying to betray me, and for several months, at least, was in league 
 with the enemy against me. I believe that the reason why they 
 did not move earlier, was the want of the great mover of all 
 treasons — money, of which, in all parts of my establishment, 
 there was a woeful scarcity; but of this they also managed to 
 get a supply through my rascal of a' godson, who could come 
 and go quite unsuspected ; and the whole scheme was arranged 
 under our very noses, and the post-chaise ordered, and the 
 
 u 2
 
 292 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 means of escape actually got ready, while I never suspected 
 their design. 
 
 A mere accident made me acquainted with their plan. One of 
 my colliers had a pretty daughter; and this pretty lass had for 
 her bachelor, as they call them in Ireland, a certain lad who 
 brought the letter-bag for Castle Lyndon (and many a dunning 
 letter for me was there in it, God wot !) ; and this letter-boy told 
 his sweetheart how he brought a bag of money from the town for 
 Master Quin ; and how that Tim, the post-boy, had told him that 
 he was to bring a chaise down to the water at a certain hour ; 
 and Miss Rooney, who had no secrets from me, blurted out the 
 whole story, asked me what scheming I was after, and what poor, 
 unlucky girl I was going to carry away with the chaise I had 
 ordered, and bribe with the money I had got from town ? 
 
 Then the whole secret flashed upon me, that the man I had 
 cherished in my bosom was going to betray me. I thought at one 
 time of catching the couple in the act of escape ; half drowning 
 them in the ferry which they had to cross to get to their chaise, 
 and of pistolling the young traitor before Lady Lyndon's eyes ; 
 but, on second thoughts, it was quite clear that the news of the 
 escape would make a noise through the country, and rouse the 
 confounded justice's people about my ears, and bring me no good 
 in the end. So I was obliged to smother my just indignation, 
 and to content myself by crushing the foul conspiracy, just at the 
 moment it was about to be hatched. 
 
 I went home, and in half-an-hour, and with a few of my terrible 
 looks, I had Lady Lyndon on her knees, begging me to forgive 
 her ; confessing all and even thing ; ready to vow and swear she 
 would never make such an attempt again ; and declaring that she 
 was fifty times on the point of owning everything to me, but that 
 I be feared my wrath against the poor young lad, her accomplice, 
 who was indeed the author and inventor of all the mischief. This, 
 though I knew how entirely false the statement was, I was fain to 
 pretend to believe; so I begged her to write to her cousin, Lord 
 George, who had supplied her with money, as she admitted, and 
 with whom the plan had been arranged, stating, briefly, that she 
 had altered her mind as to the trip to the country proposed ; and 
 that, as her dear husband was rather in delicate health, she
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 293 
 
 preferred to stay at home and nurse him. I added a dry post- 
 script, in which I stated that it would give me great pleasure if 
 his lordship would come and visit us at Castle Lyndon ; and that 
 I longed to renew an acquaintance which in former times gave me 
 so much satisfaction. " I should seek him out," I added, " so 
 soon as ever I was in his neighbourhood, and eagerly anticipated 
 the pleasure of a meeting with him." I think he must have 
 understood my meaning perfectly well, which was, that I would 
 run him through the body on the very first occasion I could come 
 at him. 
 
 Then I had a scene with my perfidious rascal of a nephew, in 
 which the young reprobate showed an audacity and a spirit for 
 which I was quite unprepared. "When I taxed him with ingrati- 
 tude, " What do I owe you ?" said he. " I have toiled for you as 
 no man ever did for another, and worked without a penny of 
 wages. It was you yourself who set me against you, by giving 
 me a task against which my soul revolted, — by making me a spy 
 over your unfortunate wife, whose weakness is as pitiable as arc 
 her misfortunes and your rascally treatment of her. Flesh and 
 blood could not bear to see the manner in which you used her. I 
 tried to help her to escape from you ; and I would do it again, if 
 the opportunity offered, and so I tell you to your teeth !" -When 
 I offered to blow his brains out for his insolence, "Pooh!" said 
 he, — " kill the man who saved your poor boy's life once, and who 
 Avas endeavouring to keep him out of the ruin and perdition into 
 which a wicked father was leading him, when a Merciful Power 
 interposed, and withdrew him from this house of crime ? I would 
 have left you months ago, but I hoped for some chance of rescuing 
 this unhappy lady. I swore I would try, the day I saw you strike 
 her. Kill me, you woman's bully ! You would, if you dared, but 
 you have not the heart. Tour very servants like me -better than 
 you. Touch me, and they will rise and send you to the gallows 
 you merit!" 
 
 I interrupted this neat speech by sending a water-bottle at the 
 young gentleman's head, which felled him to the ground; and 
 then I went to meditate upon what he had said to me. It was 
 true the fellow had saved poor little Bryan's life, and the boy 
 to his dying day was tenderly attached to him. " Be good to
 
 294 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 Redmond, papa," were almost the last words be spoke; and I 
 promised the poor child, on his death-bed, that I would do as he 
 asked. It was also true, that rough usage of him would be little 
 liked by my people, with whom he had managed to become a great 
 favourite ; which, somehow, though I got drunk with the rascals 
 often, and was much more familiar with them than a man of my 
 rank commonly is, yet I knew I was by no means liked by them, 
 and the scoundrels were murmuring against me perpetually. 
 
 But I might have spared myself the trouble of debating what 
 his fate should be, for the young gentleman took the disposal of it 
 out of my hands in the simplest way in the world, viz., by washing 
 and binding up his head so soon as he came to himself, by taking 
 his horse from the stables ; and, as he was quite free to go in and 
 out of the house and park as he liked, he disappeared without the 
 least let or hindrance ; and, leaving the horse behind him at the 
 ferry, went off in the very post-chaise which was waiting for Lady 
 Lyndon. I saw and heard no more of him for a considerable time, 
 and, now that he was out of the house, did not consider him a very 
 troublesome enemy. 
 
 But the cunning artifice of woman is such that, I think, in the 
 long run, no man, were he Machiavel himself, could escape from 
 it ; and though 1 had ample proofs in the above transaction (in 
 which my wife's perfidious designs were frustrated by my fore- 
 sight, and under her own handwriting) of the deceitfulness of her 
 character and her hatred for me, yet she actually managed to 
 deceive me, in spite of all my precautions and the vigilance of my 
 mother in my behalf. Had I followed that good lady's advice, 
 who scented the danger from afar off, as it were, I should never 
 have fallen into the snare prepared for me, and which was laid in 
 a way that was as successful as it was simple. 
 
 My Lady Lyndon's relation with me was a singular one. Her 
 life was passed in a crack-brained sort of alternation between love 
 and hatred for me. K I was in a good humour with her (as 
 occurred sometimes), there was nothing she would not do to 
 propitiate me further, and she would be as ahsurd and violent in 
 her expressions of fondness as, at other moments, she would be in 
 her demonstrations of hatred. It is not your feeble, easy hus-
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 295 
 
 bands, who are loved best in the world, according to my expe- 
 rience of it. I do think the women like a little violence of 
 temper, and think no worse of a husband who exercises his 
 authority pretty smartly. I had got my lady into such a terror 
 about me, that when I smiled it was quite an era of happiness to 
 her ; and, if I beckoned to her, she would come fawning up to me 
 like a dog. I recollect how, for the few days I was at school, the 
 cowardly, meau-spirited fellows would laugh if ever our school- 
 master made a joke. It was the same in the regiment whenever 
 the bully of a sergeant was disposed to be jocular — not a recruit 
 but was on the broad grin. Well, a wise and determined husband 
 will get his wife into this condition of discipline ; and I brought 
 my high-born wife to kiss my hand, to pull off my boots, to fetch 
 and carry for me like a servant, and always to make it a holiday, 
 too, when I was in good humour. I confided, perhaps, too much 
 in the duration of this disciplined obedience, and forgot that the 
 very hypocrisy which forms a part of it (all timid people are liars 
 in their hearts) may be exerted in a way that may be far from 
 agreeable in order to deceive you. 
 
 After the ill-success of her last adventure, which gave me end- 
 less opportunities to banter her, one would have thought I might 
 have been on my guard as to what her real intentions were, but 
 she managed to mislead me with an art of dissimulation quite 
 admirable, and lulled me into a fatal security with regard to her 
 intentions : for, one day, as I was joking her, and asking her 
 whether she would take the water again, whether she had found 
 another lover, and so forth, she suddenly burst into tears, and, 
 seizing hold of my hand, cried passionately out, — 
 
 " Ah, Barry, you know well enough that I have never loved but 
 you ! "Was I ever so wretched that a kind word from you did not 
 make me happy ? ever so angry, but the least offer of good-will 
 on your part did not bring me to your side ? Did I not give a 
 sufficient proof of my affection for you, in bestowing one of the 
 first fortunes in England upou you ? have I repined or rebuked 
 you for the way you have wasted it ? No, I loved you too much 
 and too fondly ; I have always loved you. From the first moment 
 I saw you, I felt irresistibly attracted towards you. I saw your 
 bad qualities, and trembled at your violence ; but I could not help
 
 296 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 loving you. I married you, though I knew I was sealing my own 
 fate in doing so, and in spite of reason and duty. What sacrifice 
 do you want from me ? I am ready to make any, so you will but 
 love me, or, if not, that at least, you will gently use me." 
 
 I was in a particularly good humour that day, and we had a 
 sort of reconciliation ; though my mother, when she heard the 
 speech, and saw me softening towards her ladyship, warned me 
 solemnly, and said, " Depend on it, the artful hussy has some other 
 scheme in her head now." The old lady was right, and I swallowed 
 the bait which her ladyship had prepared to entrap me as simply 
 as any gudgeon takes a hook. 
 
 I had been trying to negotiate with a man for some money, for 
 which I had pressing occasion ; but since our dispute regarding 
 the affair of the succession, my lady had resolutely refused to sign 
 any papers for my advantage, and without her name, I am sorry 
 to say, my own was of little value in the market, and I could not 
 get a guinea from any money-dealer in London or Dublin. Nor 
 could I get the rascals from the latter place to visit me at Castle 
 Lyndon, owing to that unlucky affair I had with Lawyer Sh'arp, 
 when I made him lend me the money he brought down, and old 
 Solomons the Jew, being robbed of the bond I gave him after 
 leaving my house,* the people would not trust themselves within 
 my walls any more. Our rents, too, were in the hands of receivers 
 by this time, and it was as much as I could do to get enough 
 money from the rascals to pay my wine-merchants their bills. 
 Our English property, as I have said, was equally hampered, and, 
 as often as I applied to my lawyers and agents for money, would 
 come a reply demanding money of me, for debts and pretended 
 claims which the rapacious rascals said they had on me. 
 
 It was, then, with some feelings of pleasure that T got a letter 
 from my confidential man in Gray's Inn, London, saying (in reply 
 to some ninety-ninth demand of mine) that he thought he could 
 get me some money ; and enclosing a letter from a respectable 
 firm in the City of London, connected with the mining interest, 
 which offered to redeem the incumbrance in taking a long lease of 
 
 * These exploits of Mr. Lyndon are not related in the narrative. He probably, 
 in the cases above alluded to, took the law into his own hands.
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARKY LYNDON, ESQ. 297 
 
 certain property of ours, which was still pretty free, upon the 
 countess's signature, and provided they could be assured of her 
 free will in giviug it. They said they heard she lived in terror of 
 her life from me, and meditated a separation, in which case she 
 might repudiate any deeds signed by her while in durance, and 
 subject them, at any rate, to a doubtful and expensive litigation, 
 and demanded to be made assured of her ladyship's perfect free 
 will in the transaction before they advanced a shilling of their 
 capital. 
 
 Their terms were so exorbitant, that I saw at once their offer 
 must be sincere, and, as my lady was in her gracious mood, had 
 no difficulty in persuading her to write a letter, in her own hand, 
 declaring that the accounts of our misunderstandings were utter 
 calumnies, that we lived in perfect union, and that she was quite 
 ready to execute any deed which, her husband might desire her 
 to sign. 
 
 This proposal was a very timely one, and filled me with great 
 hopes. I have not pestered my readers with many accounts of my 
 debts and law affairs, which were by this time so vast and com- 
 plicated that I never thoroughly knew them myself, and was 
 rendered half wild by their urgency. Suffice it to say, my money 
 was gone — my credit was done. I was living at Castle Lyndon 
 off my own beef and mutton, and the bread, turf, and potatoes, 
 off my own estate ; I had to watch Lady Lyndon within, and the 
 bailiffs without. For the last two years, since I went to Dublin 
 to receive money, which I unluckily lost at play there, to the dis- 
 appointment of my creditors, I did not venture to show in that 
 city, and could only appear at our own county town at rare 
 intervals, and because I knew the sheriffs, whom I swore I would 
 murder if any ill chance happened to me. A chance of a good 
 loan, then, was the most welcome prospect possible to me, and I 
 hailed it with all the eagerness imaginable. 
 
 In reply to Lady Lyndon's letter, came, in course of time, an 
 answer from the confounded London merchants, stating, that if 
 her ladyship would confirm by word of mouth, at their counting- 
 house in Birchin Lane, London, the statement of her letter, they, 
 having surveyed her property, would no doubt come to terms ; 
 but they declined incurring the risk of a visit to Castle Lyndon
 
 29S THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 to negotiate, as they were aware Low other respectable parties, 
 such as Messrs. Sharp and Salmon of Dublin, had been treated 
 there. This was a hit at me ; but there are certain situations 
 in which people can't dictate their own terms, and, faith, I 
 was so pressed now for money, that I could have signed a bond 
 with Old Nick himself, if he had come provided with a good 
 round sum. 
 
 I resolved to go and take the countess to London. It was in 
 vain that my mother prayed and warned me. " Depend on it," 
 says she, " there is some artifice. When once you get into that 
 wicked town, you are not safe. Here you may live for years and 
 years, in luxury and splendour, barring claret and all the windows 
 broken ; but, as soon as they have you in London, they'll get the 
 better of my poor innocent lad ; and the first thing I shall hear of 
 you will be, that you are in trouble." 
 
 " Why go, Eedmond ? " said my wife. " I am happy here, as 
 long as you are kind to me, as you are now. We can't appear in 
 London as we ought ; the little money you will get will be spent, 
 like all the rest has been. Let us turn shepherd and shepherdess, 
 and look to our flocks and be content." And she took my hand, 
 and kissed it, while my mother only said, " Humph ! I believe 
 she's at the bottom of it — the wicked schamer ! " 
 
 I told my wife she was a fool ; bade Mrs. Barry not be uneasy, 
 and was hot upon going, and would take no denial from either 
 party. How I was to get the money to go was the question : but 
 that was solved by my good mother, who was always ready to help 
 me on a pinch, and who produced sixty guineas from a stocking, 
 which was all the ready money that Barry Lyndon, of Castle 
 Lyndon, and married to a fortune of twenty thousand a-year, 
 could command, such had been the havoc made in this fine 
 fortune by my own extravagance (as I must confess), but chiefly 
 by my misplaced confidence and the rascality of others. 
 
 We did not start in state, you may be sure. We did not let 
 the country know we were going, or leave notice of adieu with 
 our neighbours. The famous Mr. Barry Lyndon and his noble 
 wife travelled in a hack-chaise and pair to Waterford, under the 
 name of Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and thence took shipping for Bristol, 
 where we arrived quite without accident. When a man is going
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 299 
 
 to the deuce, how easy and pleasant the journey is ! The thought 
 of the money quite put me in a good humour, and my wife, as she 
 lay on my shoulder in the post-chaise going to London, said it 
 was the happiest ride she had taken since our marriage. 
 
 One night we stayed at Reading, whence I despatched a note 
 to my agent at Gray's Inn, saying I would he with him during the 
 day, and begging him to procure me a lodging, and to hasten the 
 preparations for the loan. My lady and I agreed that we would 
 go to France, and wait there for better times, and that night, 
 over our supper, formed a score of plans both for pleasure and 
 retrenchment. Tou would have thought it was Darby and Joan 
 together over their supper. Oh, woman ! woman ! when I 
 recollect Lady Lyndon's smiles and blandishments, how happy 
 she seemed to be on that night ! what an air of innocent con- 
 fidence appeared in her behaviour, and what affectionate names 
 she called me ! I am lost in wonder at the depth of her hypocrisy. 
 ~\Y\io can be surprised that an unsuspecting person like myself 
 should have been a victim to such a consummate deceiver ? 
 
 We were in London at three o'clock, and half-an-hour before 
 the time appointed, our chaise drove to Gray's Inn. I easily found 
 out Mr. Tapewell's apartments— a gloomy den it was, and in an 
 unlucky hour I entered it ! As we went up the dirty back-stair, 
 lighted by a feeble lamp and the dim sky of a dismal London 
 afternoon, my wife seemed agitated and faint. " Eedmond," said 
 she, as we got up to the door, " don't go in : I am sure there is 
 danger. There's time yet, let us go back — to Ireland — any- 
 where ! " And she put herself before the door, in one of her 
 theatrical attitudes, and took my hand. 
 
 I just pushed her away to one side. " Lady Lyndon," said I, 
 " you are an old fool ! " 
 
 " Old fool ! " said she ; and she jumped at the bell, which was 
 quickly answered by a mouldy-looking gentleman, in an unpowdered 
 wig, to whom she cried, " Say Lady Lyndon is here ; " and stalked 
 down the passage, muttering, " Old fool." Itwas"o/J" which 
 was the epithet that touched her. I might call her anything 
 but that. 
 
 Mr. Tapewell was in his musty room, surrounded by his parch- 
 ments and tin boxes. He advanced and bowed ; begged her
 
 SOO I HE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 ladyship to be seated ; pointed towards a chair for roe, which I 
 took, rather wondering at his insolence ; and then retreated to a 
 side-door, saying he would be back in one moment. 
 
 And back he did corne in one moment, bring with him — whom 
 do you think ? Another lawyer, six constables in red waistcoats, 
 with bludgeons and pistols, my Lord George Poynings, and his 
 aunt, Lady Jane Peckover. 
 
 When my Lady Lyndon saw her old flame, she flung herself 
 into his arms in a hysterical passion. She called him her saviour, 
 her preserver, her gallant knight, and then, turning round to me, 
 poured out a flood of invective which quite astonished me. 
 
 " Old fool, as I am," said she, " I have outwitted the most 
 crafty and treacherous monster under the sun. Tes, I was a fool 
 when I married you, and gave up other and nobler hearts for your 
 sake — yes, I was a fool when I forgot my name and lineage to 
 unite myself with a base-born adventurer — a fool to bear, without 
 repining, the most monstrous tyranny that ever woman suffered ; 
 to allow my property to be squandered ; to see women, as base 
 and low-born as yourself " 
 
 " For Heaven's sake, be calm ! " cries the lawyer ; and then 
 bounded back behind the constables, seeing a threatening look iu 
 my eye, which the rascal did not like. Indeed, I could have torn him 
 to pieces, had he come near me. Meanwhile, my lady continued 
 in a strain of incoherent fury, screaming against me, and against 
 my mother, especially, upon whom she heaped abuse worthy of 
 Billingsgate, and always beginning and ending the sentence with 
 the word fool. 
 
 " You don't tell all, my lady," says I, bitterly; " I said old fool." 
 
 "I have no doubt you said and did, sir, everything that a 
 blackguard could say or do," interposed little Poynings. " This 
 lady is now safe under the protection of her relations and the law, 
 and need fear your infamous persecutions no longer." 
 
 " But you are not safe," roared I ; " and, as sure as I am a man 
 of honour, and have tasted your blood once, I will have your 
 heart's blood now." 
 
 " Take down his words, constables ; swear the peace against 
 him ! " screamed the little lawyer, from behind his tipstaffs. 
 
 " I would hot sully my sword with the blood of such a ruffian,"
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 301 
 
 cried my lord, relying on the same doughty protection. " If the 
 scoundrel remains in London another day, he will be seized as a 
 common swindler." And this threat indeed made me wince, for 
 I knew that there were scores of writs out against me in town, 
 and that once in prison, my case was hopeless. 
 
 " Where's the man will seize me ? " shouted I, drawing my 
 sword, and placing my back to the door. " Let the scoundrel 
 come. You — you cowardly braggart, come first, if you have the 
 soul of a man ! " 
 
 " We're not going to seize you ! " said the lawyer ; my ladyship, 
 her aunt, and a division of the bailiffs moving off as he spoke. 
 " My dear sir, we don't wish to seize you ; we will give you a hand- 
 some sum to leave the country, only leave her ladyship in peace ! " 
 " And the country will be well rid of such a villain ! " says my 
 lord, retreating too, and not sorry to get out of my reach ; and 
 the scoundrel of a lawyer followed him, leaving me in pos- 
 session of the apartment, and in company of the three bullies 
 from the police-office, who were all armed to the teeth. I was no 
 longer the man I was at twenty, when I should have charged the 
 ruffians sword in hand, and have sent at least one of them to his 
 account. I was broken in spirit, regularly caught in the toils, 
 utterly baffled and beaten by that woman. Was she relenting at 
 the door when she paused and begged me turn back ? Had she 
 not a lingering love for me still ? Her conduct showed it, as I 
 came to reflect on it. It was my only chance now left in the 
 world, so I put down my sword upon the lawyer's desk. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said I, " I shall use no violence; you may tell 
 Mr. Tapewell I am quite ready to speak with him when he is at 
 leisure!" and I sat down and folded my arms quite peaceably. 
 What a change from the Barry Lyndon of old days ! but, as I 
 have read in an old book about Hannibal the Carthaginian general, 
 when he invaded the Bomans, his troops, which were the most 
 gallant in the world, and carried all before them, went into 
 cantonments in some city where they were so sated with the 
 luxuries and pleasures of life, that they were easily beaten in the 
 next campaign. It was so with me now. My strength of mind 
 and body were no longer those of the brave youth who shot his 
 man at fifteen, and fought a score of battles within six years
 
 302 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 
 
 afterwards. Now, in the Fleet Prison, where I write this, there is 
 a small man who is always jeering me and making game of me, 
 who risks me to fight, and I haven't the courage to touch him. 
 But I am anticipating the gloomy and wretched events of my 
 history of humiliation, and had better proceed in order. 
 
 I took a lodging in a coffee-house near Gray's Inn, taking care 
 to inform Mr. Tapewell of my whereabouts, and anxiously expect- 
 ing a visit from him. He came and brought me the terms which 
 Lady Lyndon's friends proposed,— a paltry annuity of 2001. 
 a-year, to be paid on the condition of my remaining abroad out of 
 the three kingdoms, and to be stopped on the instant of my return. 
 He told me what I very well knew, that my stay in London would 
 infallibly plunge me in gaol, that there were writs innumerable 
 taken out against me here and in the west of England, that my 
 credit was so blown upon that I could not hope to raise a shilling, 
 and he left me a night to consider of his proposal, saying 
 that, if I refused it, the family would proceed ; if I acceded, 
 a quarter's salary should be paid to me at any foreign port I 
 should prefer. 
 
 AVhat was the poor, lonely, and broken-hearted man to do ? I 
 took the annuity, and was declared outlaw in the course of next 
 week. The rascal Quin had, I found, been, after all, the cause of 
 my undoing. It wa3 he devised the scheme for bringing me up 
 to London, sealing the attorney's letter with a seal which had 
 been agreed upon between him and the countess formerly ; indeed 
 he had always been for trying the plan, and had proposed it at 
 first, but her ladyship, with her inordinate love of romance, pre- 
 ferred the project of elopement. Of these points my mother 
 wrote me word in my lonely exile, offering at the same time to 
 come over and share it with me, which proposal 1 declined. She 
 left Castle Lyndon a very short time after I had quitted it, and 
 there was silence in that hall where, under my authority, had been 
 exhibited so much hospitality and splendour. She thought she 
 would never see me again, and bitterly reproached me for neglect- 
 ins her; but she was mistaken in that and in her estimate of me. 
 She is very old, and is sitting by my side at this moment in the 
 prison working, and has a bedroom in Fleet Market over the way ; 
 and, with the fifty pound annuity which she has kept with a wise
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 303 
 
 prudence, we managed to eke out a miserable existence, quite 
 unworthy of the famous and fashionable Barry Lyndon. 
 
 Mr. Barry Lyndon's personal narrative finishes here, for the 
 hand of death interrupted the ingenious author soon after the 
 period at which the Memoir was compiled, after he had lived 
 nineteen years an inmate of the Fleet Prison, where the prison 
 records state he died of delirium tremens. His mother attained 
 a prodigious old age, and the inhabitants of the place in her time 
 can record with accuracy the daily disputes which used to take 
 place between mother and son, until the latter, from habits of 
 intoxication, falling into a state of almost imbecility, was tended 
 by his tough old parent as a baby almost, and would cry if 
 deprived of his necessary glass of brandy. 
 
 His life on the Continent we have not the means of following 
 accurately, but he appears to have resumed his former profession 
 of a gambler without his former success. 
 
 He returned secretly to England, after some time, and made an 
 abortive attempt to extort money from Lord George Poynings, 
 under a threat of publishing his correspondence with Lady 
 Lyndon, and so preventing his lordship's match with Miss Driver, 
 a great heiress, of strict principles, and immense property in 
 slaves in the West Indies. Barry narrowly escaped being taken 
 prisoner by the bailiff's who were despatched after him by his 
 lordship, who would have stopped his pension, but his wife would 
 never consent to that act of justice, and, indeed, broke with my 
 Lord George the very moment he married the "West India lady. 
 
 The fact is, the old countess thought her charms were perennial, 
 and was never out of love with her husband. She was living at 
 Bath, her property being carefully nursed by her noble relatives 
 the Tiptoffs, who were to succeed to it in default of direct heirs ; 
 and such was the address of Barry, and the sway he still held over 
 the woman, that he actually had almost persuaded her to go and 
 live with him again, when his plan and hers were interrupted by 
 the appearance of a person that had been deemed dead for several 
 years. 
 
 This was no other than Viscount Bullingdon, who started up to 
 the surprise of all, and especially to that of his kinsman of the
 
 304 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ, 
 
 house of Tiptoff. This young nobleman made his appearance at 
 Bath, with the letter from Barry to Lord George in his hand, in 
 which the former threateued to expose his connection with Lady 
 Lyndon — a connection, we need not state, which did not reflect 
 the slightest dishonour upon either party, and only showed that 
 her ladyship was in the habit of writing exceedingly foolish letters, 
 as many ladies, nay, gentlemen, have done ere this. For calling 
 the honour of his mother in question, Lord Bullingdon assaulted 
 his step-father (living at Batli under the name of Mr. Jones), 
 and administered to him a tremendous castigation in the Pump- 
 room. 
 
 His lordship's history, since his departure, was a romantic one, 
 which we do not feel bound to narrate. He had been wounded 
 in the American War, reported dead, left prisoner, and escaped. 
 The remittances which were promised him were never sent ; the 
 thought of the neglect almost broke the heart of the wild and 
 romantic young man, and he determined to remain dead to the 
 world at least, and to the mother w T ho had denied him. It was in 
 the woods of Canada, and three years after the event had occurred, 
 that he saw the death of his half-brother chronicled in the Gentle- 
 man's Magazine, under the title of " Fatal Accident to Lord 
 Yiscount Castle Lyndon," on which he determined to return to 
 England, where, though he made himself known, it was with very 
 great difficulty, indeed, that he satisfied Lord Tiptoff of the 
 authenticity of his claim. He was about to pay a visit to his 
 lady mother at Bath, when he recognised the well-known face of 
 Mr. Barry Lyndon, in spite of the modest disguise which that 
 gentleman wore, and revenged upon his person the insults of 
 former days. 
 
 Lady Lyndon was furious when she heard of the rencounter, 
 declined to see her son, and was for rushing at once to the arms 
 of her adored Barry ; but that gentleman had been carried oft', 
 meanwhile, from gaol to gaol, until he was lodged in the hands of 
 Mr. Bendigo, of Chancery Lane, an assistant to the Sheriff of 
 Middlesex, from whose house he went to the Fleet Prison. The 
 sheriff and his assistant, the prisoner, nay, the prison itself, are 
 now no more. 
 
 As long as Lady Lyndon lived, Barry enjoyed his income, and
 
 THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON, ESQ. 305 
 
 was perhaps as happy in prison as at any period of his existence ; 
 when her ladyship died, her successor sternly cut off the annuity, 
 devoting the sum to charities, which, he said, would make a nobler 
 use of it than the scoundrel who had enjoyed it hitherto. At his 
 lordship's death, in the Spanish campaign, in the year 1811, his 
 estate ; fell into the family of the Tiptoffs, and his title merged 
 in their superior rank ; hut it does not appear that the Marquis of 
 Tiptoff (Lord George succeeded to the title on the demise of his 
 brother) renewed either the pension of Mr. Barry or the charities 
 which the late lord had endowed. The estate has vastly improved 
 under his lordship's careful management. The trees in Brackton 
 Park are all about forty years old, and the Irish property is reuted 
 in exceedingly small farms to the peasantry, who still entertain 
 the stranger with stories of the daring, and the devilry, and the 
 wickedness, and the fall of Barry Lyndon. 
 
 VOL. III.
 
 BURLESQUES. 
 
 x 2
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 It was in the good old days of chivalry, when every mountain 
 that bathes its shadow in the Ehine had its castle — not inhabited 
 as now by a few rats and owls, nor covered with moss and wall- 
 flowers, and funguses, and creeping ivy — no, no ! where the ivy 
 now clusters there grew strong portcullis and bars of steel; 
 where the wall-flower now quivers in the rampart there were 
 silken banners embroidered with wonderful heraldry ; men-at-arms 
 marched where now you shall only see a bank of moss or a 
 hideous black champignon ; and in place of the rats and owlets', I 
 warrant me there were ladies and knights to revel in the great 
 halls, and to feast and to dance, and to make love there. They 
 are passed away : — those old knights and ladies : their golden 
 hair first changed to silver, and then the silver dropped off and 
 disappeared for ever ; their elegant legs, so slim and active in the 
 dance, became swollen and gouty, and then, from being swollen and 
 gouty, dwindled down to bare bone shanks ; the roses left their 
 cheeks, and then their cheeks disappeared, and left their skulls, and 
 then their skulls powdered into dust, and all sign of them was gone. 
 And as it was with them so shall it be with us. Ho, seneschal ! 
 fill me a cup of liquor ! put sugar in it, good fellow, yea, and a 
 little hot water — a very little, for my soul is sad, as I think of 
 those days and knights of old. 
 
 They, too, have revelled and feasted, and where are they ? — 
 gone ? — nay, not altogether gone ; for doth not the eye catch 
 glimpses of them as they walk yonder in the gray limbo of
 
 310 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 romance, shining faintly in their coats of steel, wandering by the 
 side of long-haired ladies, with long-tailed gowns that little pages 
 carry ? Tes ; one sees them : the poet sees them still in the far- 
 off Cloudland, and hears the ring of their clarions as they hasten to 
 battle or tourney — and the dim echoes of their lutes chanting of 
 love and fair ladies ! Gracious privilege of poesy ! It is as the 
 Dervish's collyrium to the eyes, and causes them to see treasures 
 that to the sight of donkeys are invisible. Blessed treasures of 
 fancy ! I would not change ye ; no, not for many donkey-loads of 
 gold. * * * piU again, jolly seneschal, thou brave wag ; chalk 
 me up the produce on the hostel door — surely the spirits of old 
 are mixed up in the wondrous liquor, and gentle visions of by-gone 
 princes and princesses look blandly down on us from the cloudy 
 perfume of the pipe. Do you know in what year the fairies left 
 the Rhine ? — long before Murray's Guide-Book was wrote — long 
 before squat steamboats, with snorting funnels, came paddling 
 down the stream. Do you not know that once upon a time the 
 appearance of eleven thousand British virgins was considered at 
 Cologne as a wonder ? Now there come twenty thousand such 
 annually, accompanied by their ladies'-maids. But of them we 
 will say no more — let us back to those who went before them. 
 
 Many, many hundred thousand years ago, and at the exact 
 period when chivalry was in full bloom, there occurred a little 
 history upon the banks of the Rhine, which has been already 
 written in a book, and hence must be positively true. 'Tis a 
 story of knights and ladies — of love and battle and virtue 
 rewarded, a story of princes and noble lords, moreover the best of 
 company. Gentles, an ye will, ye shall hear it. Fair dames and 
 damsels, may your loves be as happy as those of the heroine of 
 this romaunt. 
 
 On the cold and rainy evening of Thursday, the 26th of 
 October, in the year previously indicated, such travellers as might 
 have chanced to be abroad in that bitter night, might have re- 
 marked a fellow-wayfarer journeying on the road from Oberwinter 
 to Godesberg. He was a man not tall in stature, but of the most 
 athletic proportions, and Time, which had browned and furrowed 
 his cheek, and sprinkled his locks with gray, declared pretty 
 clearly that He must have been acquainted with the warrior for
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 311 
 
 some fifty good years. He was armed in mail, and rode a 
 powerful and active battle-horse, which (though the way the pair 
 had come that day was long and weary indeed,) yet supported the 
 warrior, his armour and luggage, with seeming ease. As it was in 
 a friend's country, the knight did not think fit to wear his heavy 
 destrier, or helmet, which hung at his saddle-bow over his port- 
 manteau. Both were marked with the coronet of a count ; and 
 from the crown which surmounted the helmet, rose the crest of 
 his knightly race, an arm proper lifting a naked sword. 
 
 At his right hand and convenient to the warrior's grasp, hung 
 his mangonel or mace — a terrific weapon which had shattered the 
 brains of many a turbaned soldan; while over his broad and 
 ample chest there fell the triangular shield of the period, whereon 
 were emblazoned his arms — argent, a gules-wavy, on a saltire 
 reversed of the second ; the latter device was awarded for a 
 daring exploit before Ascalon, by the Emperor Maximilian, and a 
 reference to the German Peerage of that day, or a knowledge of 
 high families which every gentleman then possessed, would have 
 sufficed to show at once that the rider we have described was of 
 the noble house of Hombourg. It was, in fact, the gallant knight 
 Sir Ludwig of Hombourg — his rank as a count, and chamberlain 
 of the Emperor of Austria, was marked by the cap of maintenance 
 with the peacock's feather which he wore (when not armed for 
 battle), and his princely blood was denoted by the oiled silk 
 umbrella which he carried (a very meet protection against the 
 pitiless storm), and which, as it is known, in the middle ages, 
 none but princes were justified in using. A bag, fastened with a 
 brazen padlock, and made of the costly produce of the Persian 
 looms, (then extremely rare in Europe,) told that he had travelled 
 in Eastern climes. This, too, was evident from the inscription 
 writ on card or parchment and sewed on the bag. It first ran 
 " Count Ludwig de Hombourgh Jerusalem ; " but the name of 
 the Holy City had been dashed out with the pen, and that of 
 " Godesberg" substituted— so far indeed had the cavalier tra- 
 velled '.—and it is needless to state that the bag in question 
 contained such remaining articles of the toilet, as the high-born 
 noble deemed unnecessary to place in his valise. 
 
 " By Saint Bugo of Katzenellenbogen ! " said the good knight,
 
 312 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 shivering, " 'tis colder here than at Damascus ! Marry, I am so 
 hungry I could eat one of Saladin's camels. Shall I be at Godesberg 
 in time for dinner ? " And taking out his horologe, (which hung 
 in a small side pocket of his embroidered surcoat,) the crusader 
 consoled himself by finding that it was but seven of the night, 
 and that he would reach Godesberg ere the warder had sounded 
 the second gong. 
 
 His opinion was borne out by the result. His good steed, 
 which could trot at a pinch fourteen leagues in the hour, brought 
 him to this famous castle, just as the warder was giving the first 
 welcome signal which told that the princely family of Count Karl 
 Margrave of Godesberg were about to prepare for their usual 
 repast at eight o'clock. Crowds of pages and horsekeepers were 
 in the Court, when the portcullis being raised, and amidst the 
 respectful salutes of the sentinels, the most ancient friend of the 
 house of Godesberg entered into its castle yard. The under- 
 butler stepped forward to take his bridle-rein. " Welcome, 
 Sir Count, from the Holy Land," exclaimed the faithful old man. 
 " Welcome, Sir Count, from the Holy Land," cried the rest of the 
 servants in the hall; and a stable was speedily found for the 
 count's horse, Streithengst, and it was not before the gallant 
 soldier had seen that true animal well cared for, that he entered 
 the castle itself, and was conducted to his chamber. Wax candles 
 burning bright on the mantel, flowers in china vases, every 
 variety of soap, and a flask of the precious essence, manufactured 
 at the neighbouring city of Cologne, were displayed on his toilet- 
 table ; a cheering fire " crackled in the hearth," and showed 
 that the good knight's coming had been looked and cared for. 
 The serving-maidens, bringing him hot-water for his ablutions, 
 smiling asked, " would he have his couch warmed at eve ? " 
 One might have been suro from their blushes that the tough old 
 soldier made an arch reply. The family tonsor came to know 
 whether the noble count had need of his skill. " By Saint 
 Bugo," said the knight, as seated in an easy settle by the fire, the 
 tonsor rid his chin of its stubbly growth, and lightly passed the 
 tongs and pomatum through "the sable silver" of his hair; 
 ' : By Saint Bugo, this is better than my dungeon at Grand 
 Cairo. How is my godson Otto, master barber ; and the lady
 
 A LEGEND OP THE RHINE. 313 
 
 countess, his mother ; and the noble Count Karl, my dear 
 brother-in-arms ? " 
 
 " They are well," said the tonsor, with a sigh. 
 
 " By Saint Bugo, I'm glad on't ; but why that sigh ? " 
 
 " Things are not as they have been -with my good lord," 
 answered the hairdresser, " ever since Count Gottfried's arrival." 
 
 " He here," roared Sir Ludwig. " Good never came where 
 Gottfried was!" and the while he donned a pair of silken hose, that 
 showed admirably the proportions of his lower limbs, and exchanged 
 his coat of mail for the spotless vest and black surcoat collared with 
 velvet of Genoa, which was the fitting costume for " knight in 
 ladye's bower," — the knight entered into a conversation with the 
 barber, who explained to him with the usual garrulousness of his 
 tribe, what was the present position of the noble family of 
 Godesberg. 
 
 This will be narrated in the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE GODESBEEGERS. 
 
 'Tis needless to state that the gallant warrior Ludwig, of 
 Hombourg, found in the bosom of his friend's family a cordial 
 welcome. The brother-in-arms of the Margrave Karl, he was the 
 esteemed friend of the margravine, the exalted and beautiful 
 Theodora, of Boppum, and (albeit no theologian, and although the 
 first princes of Christendom coveted such an honour,) he was 
 selected to stand as sponsor for the margrave's son Otto, the only 
 child of his house. 
 
 It was now seventeen years since the count and countess had 
 been united : and although Heaven had not blessed then* couch 
 with more than one child, it may be said of that one, that it was a 
 prize, and that surely never lighted on the earth a more delightful 
 vision. When Count Ludwig, hastening to the holy wars, had 
 quitted his beloved godchild, he had left him a boy ; he now found 
 him, as the latter rushed into his arms, grown to be one of the
 
 314 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 finest young men in Germany : tall and excessively graceful in 
 proportion, with the blush of health mantling upon his cheek, that 
 was likewise adorned with the first down of manhood, and with 
 magnificent golden ringlets, such as a Eowland might envy, curling 
 over his brow and his shoulders. His eyes alternately beamed 
 with the fire of daring, or melted with the moist glance of 
 benevolence. "Well might a mother be proud of such a boy! 
 "Well might the brave Ludwig exclaim, as he clasped the youth to 
 his breast, " By St. Bugo, of Katzenellenbogen, Otto ! thou art fit 
 to be one of Coeur de Lion's grenadiers ; " — and it was the fact, 
 the " childe " of Godesberg measured six feet three. 
 
 He was habited for the evening meal in the costly, though 
 simple attire of the nobleman of the period— and his costume a 
 good deal resembled that of the old knight whose toilet we have 
 just described; with the difference of colour, however. The 
 pourpoint worn by young Otto, of Godesberg, was of blue, hand- 
 somely decorated with buttons of carved and embossed gold : his 
 liaut-de-cliausses or leggings were of the stuff of Nanquin, then 
 brought by the Lombard argosies at an immense price from China. 
 The neighbouring country of Holland had supplied his wrist and 
 bosom with the most costly laces ; and thus attired, with an opera- 
 hat placed on one side of his head, ornamented with a single flower 
 (that brilliant one, the tulip), the boy rushed into his godfather's 
 dressing-room, and warned him that the banquet was ready. 
 
 It was indeed : a frown had gathered on the dark brows of the 
 Lady Theodora, and her bosom heaved with an emotion akin to 
 indignation — for she feared lest the. soups in the refectory and 
 the splendid fish now smoking there were getting cold — she feared 
 not for herself, but for her lord's sake. " Godesberg," whispered 
 she to Count Ludwig, as trembling on his arm they descended 
 from the drawing-room, " Godesberg is sadly changed of late." 
 
 " By St. Bugo ! " said the burly knight, starting ; " these are the 
 very words the barber spake ! " 
 
 The lady heaved a sigh, and placed herself before the soup-tureen. 
 Eor some time the good knight Ludwig of Hombourg was too 
 much occupied in ladling out the forced-meat balls and rich calvea'- 
 head of which the delicious pottage was formed (in ladling them 
 out, did we say ? ay, marry, and in eating them too,) to look at
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 315 
 
 his brother-in-arms at the bottom of the table, where he sat with 
 his son on his left-hand, and the Baron Gottfried on his right. 
 
 The margrave was indeed changed. " By St. Bugo," whispered 
 Ludwig to the countess, " your husband is as surly as a bear that 
 hath been wounded o' the head." Tears falling into her soup- 
 plate were her only reply. The soup, the turbot, the haunch of 
 mutton Count Ludwig remarked that the_margrave sent all away 
 untasted. 
 
 " The boteler will serve ye with wine, Horuboui'g," said the 
 margrave gloomily from the end of the table ; not even an invita- 
 tion to drink ! how different was this from the old times ! 
 
 But when in compliance with this order the boteler proceeded 
 to hand round the mantling vintage of the Cape to the assembled 
 party, and to fill young Otto's goblet, (which the latter held up 
 with the eagerness of youth,) the margrave's rage knew no 
 bounds. He rushed at his son ; he dashed the wine-cup over his 
 spotless vest ; and giving him three or four heavy blows which 
 would have knocked down a bonassus, but only caused the young 
 childe to blush ; " You take wine ! " roared out the margrave ; 
 " you dare to help yourself ! Who the d-v-1 gave you leave to help 
 yourself?" and the terrible blows were reiterated over the 
 delicate ears of the boy. 
 
 " Ludwig ! Ludwig ! " shrieked the margravine. 
 
 " Hold your prate, madam," roared the prince. " By St. Buffo, 
 mayn't a father beat his own child ? " 
 
 " His own child ! " repeated the margrave with a burst, 
 almost a shriek of indescribable agony. " Ah, what did I say ? " 
 
 Sir Ludwig looked about him in amaze ; Sir Gottfried (at the 
 margrave's right-hand) smiled ghastlily; the young Otto was too 
 much agitated by the recent conflict to wear any expression but 
 that of extreme discomfiture; but the poor margravine turned 
 her head aside and blushed, red almost as the lobster which 
 flanked the turbot before her. 
 
 In those rude old times, 'tis known such table quarrels were by 
 no means unusual amongst gallant knights ; and Ludwig, who 
 had oft seen the margrave cast a leg of mutton at an offending 
 servitor, or empty a sauce-boat in the direction of the margravine, 
 thought this was but one of the usual outbreaks of his worthy
 
 316 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 though irascible friend, and wisely determined to change the 
 converse. 
 
 "How is my friend," said he, "the good knight, Sir Hilde- 
 brandt?" 
 
 " By Saint Buffo, this is too much ! " screamed the margrave, 
 and actually rushed from the room. 
 
 " By Saint Bugo," said his friend, " gallant knights, gentle sirs, 
 what ails my good lord margrave ? " 
 
 " Perhaps his nose bleeds," said Gottfried, with a sneer. 
 
 "Ah, my kind friend," said the margravine with uncontrollable 
 emotion, " I fear some of you have passed from the frying-pan into 
 the fire ; " and making the signal of departure to the ladies, they 
 rose and retired to coffee in the drawing-room. 
 
 The margrave presently came back again, somewhat more col - 
 lected than he had been. " Otto," he said sternly, " go join the 
 ladies : it becomes not a young boy to remain in the company of 
 gallant knights after dinner." The noble childe with manifest 
 unwillingness quitted the room, and the margrave, taking his 
 lady's place at the head of the table, whispered to Sir Ludwig, 
 " Hildebrandt will be here to-night to an evening party, given in 
 honour of your return from Palestine. My good friend — my true 
 friend — my old companion in arms, Sir Gottfried ! you had best 
 see that the fiddlers be not drunk, and that the crumpets be 
 gotten ready." Sir Gottfried, obsequiously taking his patron's 
 hint, bowed and left the room. 
 
 " You shall know all soon, dear Ludwig," said the margrave, 
 with a heartrending look. " You marked Gottfried, who left 
 the room anon? " 
 
 "I did." 
 
 "You look incredulous concerning his worth; but I tell thee, 
 Ludwig, that yonder Gottfried is a good fellow, and my fast friend. 
 "Why should he not be ? He is my near relation, heir to my 
 property ; should I (here the margrave's countenance assumed its 
 former expression of excruciating agony), should I have no son." 
 
 " But I never saw the boy in better health," replied Sir Ludwig. 
 
 " Nevertheless, ha ha ! it may chance that I shall soon have no 
 son." 
 
 The margrave had crushed many a cup of wine during dinner,
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 317 
 
 and Sir Ludwig thought naturally that his gallant friend had 
 drunken rather deeply. He proceeded in this respect to imitate 
 him ; for the stern soldier of those days neither shrunk before the 
 Paynim nor the punch-bowl, and many a rousing night had our 
 crusader enjoyed in Syria with lion-hearted Richard; with his 
 coadjutor, Godfrey of Bouillon ; nay, with the dauntless Saladin 
 himself. 
 
 " You knew Gottfried in Palestine ? " asked the margrave. 
 
 " I did." 
 
 " Why did ye not greet him then, as ancient comrades should, 
 with the warm grasp of friendship ? It is not because Sir Gott- 
 fried is poor ? Tou know well that he is of race as noble as 
 thine own, my early friend ! " 
 
 "I care not for his race nor for his poverty," replied the blunt 
 crusader. " What says the Minnesinger ? ' Marry, that the 
 rank is but the stamp of the guinea ; the man is the gold.' And 
 I tell thee, Kaxi of Godesberg, that yonder Gottfried is base metal." 
 
 " By St. Buffo, thou behest him, dear Ludwig." 
 
 " By Saint Bugo, dear Karl, I say sooth. The fellow was known 
 i' the camp of the crusaders — disreputably known. Ere he joined 
 us in Palestine, he had sojourned in Constantinople, and learned 
 the arts of the Greek. He is a cogger of dice, I tell thee — a 
 chanter of horseflesh. He won five thousand marks from bluff 
 Bichard of England, the night before the storming of Ascalon, 
 and I caught him with false trumps in his pocket. He warranted 
 a bay mare to Conrad of Mont Serrat, and the rogue had fired her." 
 
 " Ha, mean ye that Sir Gottfried is a leg?" cried Sir Karl, 
 knitting his brows. " Now, by my blessed patron, Saint Buffo of 
 Bonn, had any other but Ludwig of Hombourg so said, I would 
 have cloven him from skull to chine." 
 
 " By Saint Bugo of Katzenellenbogen, I will prove my words on 
 Sir Gottfried's body — not on thine, old brother in arms. And to 
 do the knave justice, he is a good lance. Holy Bugo ! but he did 
 good service at Acre ! But his character was such that, spite of 
 his bravery, he was dismissed the army, nor ever allowed to sell his 
 captain's commission." 
 
 " I have heard of it," said the margrave ; " Gottfried hath told 
 me of it. 'Twas about some silly quarrel over the wine-cup — a
 
 318 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 mere silly jape, believe me. Hugo de Brodenel would have no 
 black bottle on the board. Gottfried was wroth, and to say sooth, 
 flung the black bottle at the county's head. Hence his dismis- 
 sion and abrupt return. But you know not," continued the mar- 
 grave with a heavy sigh, " of what use that worthy Gottfried has 
 been to me. He has uncloaked a traitor to me." 
 
 " IS r ot yet" answered Hombourg satirically. 
 
 " By Saint Buffo ! a deep-dyed dastard a dangerous, damnable 
 traitor! — a nest of traitors. Hildebrandt is a traitor — Otto is a 
 traitor — and Theodora (oh, Heaven !) she — she is another" The 
 old prince burst into tears at the word, and was almost choked 
 with emotion. 
 
 "What means this passion, dear friend ?" cried Sir Ludwig, 
 seriously alarmed. 
 
 " Mark, Ludwig ; mark Hildebrandt and Theodora together ; 
 mark Hildebrandt and Otto together. Like, like I tell thee as 
 two peas. O holy saints, that I should be born to suffer this ! — 
 to have all my affections wrenched out of my bosom, aud to be 
 left alone in my old age ! But, hark ! the guests are arriving. 
 An ye will not empty another flask of claret, let us join the ladyes 
 i' the withdrawing chamber. When there, mark Hildebrandt and 
 
 ottor 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 TUE TESTIVAL. 
 
 The festival was indeed begun. Coming on horseback, or in 
 their caroches, knights and ladies of the highest rank were assem- 
 bled in the grand saloon of Godesberg, which was splendidly 
 illuminated to receive them. Servitors, in rich liveries, (they 
 were attired in doublets of the sky-blue broad-cloath of Ypres, and 
 hose of the richest yellow sammit — the colours of the house of 
 Godesberg,) bore about various refreshments on trays of silver — 
 cakes, baked in the oven, and swimming in melted butter ; 
 manchets of bread, smeared with the same delicious condiment,
 
 A LEGEND OP THE KHINE. 319 
 
 and carved so thin that you might have expected them to take 
 wing, and fly to the ceiling; coffee, introduced by Peter the 
 Hermit, after his excursion into Arabia, and tea such as only 
 Boheamia could produce, circulated amidst the festive throng, and 
 were eagerly devoured by the guests. The margrave's gloom 
 was unheeded by them — how little indeed is the smiling crowd 
 aware of the pangs that are lurking in the breasts of those who 
 bid them to the feast ! The margravine was pale ; but woman 
 knows how to deceive ; she was more than ordinarily courteous to 
 her friends, and laughed, though the laugh was hollow, and talked, 
 though the talk was loathsome to her. 
 
 " The two are together," said the margrave, clutching his 
 friend's shoulder. " Now look." 
 
 Sir Ludwig turned towards a quadrille, and there, sure enough, 
 were Sir Hildebrandt and young Otto standing side by side in the 
 dance. Two eggs were not more like! The reason of the 
 margrave's horrid suspicion at once flashed across his friend's 
 mind. 
 
 " 'Tis clear as the staff of a pike," said the poor margrave, 
 mournfully. " Come, brother, away from the scene ; let us go 
 play a game at cribbage ! " and retiring to the margravine's 
 boudoir, the two warriors sat down to the game. 
 
 But though 'tis an interesting one, and though the margrave 
 won, yet he could not keep his attention on the cards : so agitated 
 was his mind by the dreadful secret which weighed upon it. In 
 the midst of their play, the obsequious Gottfried came to whisper 
 a word in his patron's ear, which threw the latter into such a fury, 
 that apoplexy was apprehended by the two lookers on. But the 
 margrave mastered his emotion. " At toliat time, did you say ? " 
 said he to Gottfried. 
 
 " At day-break, at the outer gate." 
 
 "I will be there." 
 
 " And so will I too" thought Count Ludwig, the good knight 
 of Hombourg.
 
 320 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 How often does man, proud man, make calculations for the 
 future, and think he can bend stern fate to his will ! Alas, we are 
 but creatures in its hands ! How many a slip between the lip 
 and the lifted wine-cup ! How often, though seemingly with a 
 choice of couches to repose upon, do we find ourselves dashed to 
 earth ; and then we are fain to say the grapes are sour, because 
 we cannot attain them ; or worse, to yield to anger in consequence 
 of our own fault. Sir Ludwig, the Homhourger, was not at the 
 outer gate at day-break. 
 
 He slept until ten of the clock. The previous night's potations 
 had been heavy, the day's journey had been long and rough. The 
 knight slept as a soldier would, to whom a feather-bed is a rarity, 
 and who wakes not till he hears the blast of the reveille. 
 
 He looked up as he woke. At his bed-side sat the margrave. 
 He had been there for hours watching his slumbering comrade. 
 Watching? — no, not watching, but awake by his side, brooding over 
 thoughts unutterably bitter — over feelings inexpressibly wretched. 
 
 " What's o'clock ? " was the first natural exclamation of the 
 Hombourger. 
 
 " I believe it is five o'clock," said his friend. It was ten. It 
 might have been twelve, two, half-past four, twenty minutes to 
 six, the margrave would still have said, " I believe it is Jive o'clock." 
 The wretched take no count of time, it flies with unequal pinions, 
 indeed, for them. 
 
 " Is breakfast over ? " inquired the crusader. 
 
 " Ask the butler," said the margrave, nodding his head wildly, 
 rolling his eyes wildly, smiling wildly. 
 
 " Gracious Bugo ! " said the knight of Hombourg, " what has 
 ailed thee, my friend ? It is ten o'clock by my horologe. Tour 
 regular hour is nine. You are not — no, by Heavens ! you are 
 not shaved ! You wear the tights and silken hose of last evening's 
 banquet. Your collar is all rumpled — 'tis that of yesterday.
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 321 
 
 You have not heen to led ? What has chanced, brother of mine, 
 what has chanced ? " 
 
 "A common chance, Louis of Hombourg," said the margrave, 
 " one that chances every day. A false woman, a false friend, a 
 broken heart. This has chanced. I have not been to bed." 
 
 " What mean ye ? " cried Count Ludwig, deeply affected. " A 
 false friend ? I am not a false friend — a false woman. Surelv 
 the lovely Theodora, your wife." * * 
 
 " I have no wife, Louis, now ; I have no wife and no son." 
 ******** 
 
 In accents broken by grief, the margrave explained what had 
 occurred. Gottfried's information was but too correct. There 
 was a cause for the likeness between Otto and Sir Hildebrandt ; 
 a fatal cause ! Hildebrandt and Theodora had met at dawn at the 
 outer gate. The margrave had seen them. They walked long 
 together ; they embraced. Ah ! how the husband's, the father's, 
 feelings were harrowed at that embrace ! They parted ; and then 
 the margrave, coming forward, coldly signified to his lady that she 
 was to retire to a convent for life, and gave orders that the boy 
 should be sent too, to take the vows at a monastery. 
 
 Both sentences had been executed. Otto, iu a boat, and 
 guarded by a company of his father's men-at-arms, was on the 
 river going towards Cologne to the monastery of Saint Buffo there. 
 The lady Theodora, under the guard of Sir Gottfried and an 
 attendant, were on their way to the convent of Nonnenwerth, 
 which many of our readers have seen — the beautiful Green Island 
 Convent, laved by the bright waters of the Bhine ! 
 
 " What road did Gottfried take ? " asked the knight of Hom- 
 bourg, grinding his teeth. 
 
 "You cannot overtake him," said the margrave. " My good 
 Gottfried, he is my only comfort, now : he is my kinsman, and 
 shall be my heir. He will be back anon." 
 
 " Will he so ? " thought Sir Ludwig. " I will ask him a few 
 questions ere he return." And springing from his couch, he 
 began forthwith to put on his usual morning dress of complete 
 armour ; and, after a hasty ablution, donned not his cap of 
 maintenance, but his helmet of battle. He rang the bell 
 violently. 
 
 VOL. III. t
 
 322 A LEGEND OF THE EHINE. 
 
 " A cup of coffee, straight," said he, to the servitor, who 
 answered the summons ; " bid the cook pack me a sausage and 
 bread in paper, and the groom saddle Streithengst ; we have far 
 to ride." 
 
 The various orders were obeyed. The horse was brought ; the 
 refreshments disposed of; the clattering steps of the departing 
 steed were heard in the court-yard ; but the margrave took no 
 notice of his friend, and sate, plunged in silent grief, quite 
 motionless by the empty bed-side. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THE TEAITOR'S DOOM. 
 
 The Hombourger led his horse down the winding path which 
 conducts from the hill and castle of Godesberg into the beautiful 
 green plain below. "Who has not seen that lovely plain, and who 
 that has seen it has not loved it ? A thousand sunny vineyards 
 and cornfields stretch around in peaceful luxuriance ; the mighty 
 Rhine floats by it in silver magnificence, and on the opposite bank 
 rise the seven mountains robed in majestic purple, the monarchs 
 of the royal scene. 
 
 A pleasing poet, Lord Byron, in describing this very scene, has 
 mentioned that " peasant girls, with dark blue eyes, and hands 
 thafoffer cake and wine" are perpetually crowding round the 
 traveller in this delicious district, and proffering to him their rustic 
 presents. This was no doubt the case in former days, when the 
 noble bard wrote his elegant poems — in the happy ancient days ! 
 when maidens were as yet generous, and men kindly ! Now the 
 degenerate peasantry of the district are much more inclined to 
 ask than to give, and their blue eyes seem to have disappeared with 
 their generosity. 
 
 But as it was a long time ago that the events of our story 
 occurred, 'tis probable that the good knight Ludwig of Hombourg 
 was greeted upon his path by this fascinating peasantry, though 
 we know not how he accepted their welcome. He continued his 
 ride across the flat green country, until he came to Bolandseck,
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 323 
 
 whence he could command the Island of Xonnenwerth (that lies 
 in the Ehine opposite that place), and all who went to it or passed 
 from it. 
 
 Over the entrance of a little cavern in one of the rocks hanging 
 above the Ehine-stream at Eolandseck, and covered with odorife- 
 rous cactuses and silveiy magnolia, the traveller of the present day 
 may perceive a rude broken image of a saint ; that image repre- 
 sented the venerable Saint Buffo of Bonn, the patron of the 
 Margrave, and Sir Ludwig kneeling on the greensward, and 
 reciting a censer, an ave, and a couple of acolytes before it, felt 
 encouraged to think that the deed he meditated was about to be 
 performed under the very eyes of his friend's sanctified patron. 
 His devotion done (and the knight of those days was as pious as 
 he was brave), Sir Louis, the gallant Hombourger, exclaimed with 
 a loud voice : — 
 
 " Ho ! hermit ! holy hermit, art thou in thy cell ? " 
 
 "Who calls the poor servant of Heaven and Saint Buffo?" 
 exclaimed a voice from the cavern ; and presently, from beneath 
 the wreaths of geranium and magnolia, appeared an intensely 
 venerable, ancient, and majestic head — 'twas that, we need not 
 say, of Saint Buffo's solitary. A silver beard hanging to his knees 
 gave his person an appearance of great respectability ; his body 
 was robed in simple brown serge, and girt with a knotted cord : 
 his ancient feet were only defended from the prickles and stones 
 by the rudest sandals, and his bald and polished head was bare. 
 
 "Holy hermit," said the knight, in a grave voice, " make ready 
 thy ministry, for there is some one about to die." 
 
 " Where, son ? " 
 
 " Here, father." 
 
 "Is he here, now ? " 
 
 "Perhaps," said the stout warrior, crossing himself, "but not 
 so if right prevail." At this moment he caught sight of a ferry- 
 boat putting off from JNonnenwerth, with a knight on board. 
 Ludwig knew at once by the sinople reversed, and the truncated 
 gules on his surcoat, that it was Sir Gottfried of Godesberg. 
 
 "Be ready, father," said the good knight, pointing towards the 
 advancing boat ; and, waving his hand by way of respect, to the 
 reverend hermit, and without a further word, he vaulted into his 
 
 y 2
 
 324 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 saddle, and rode back for a few score of paces, where he wheeled 
 round, and remained steady. His great lance and pennon rose in 
 the air. His armour glistened in the sun ; the chest and head of 
 his battle-horse were similarly covered with steel. As Sir Gottfried, 
 likewise armed and mounted (for his horse had been left at the 
 ferry hard by), advanced up the road, he almost started at the 
 figure before him — a glistening tower of steel. 
 
 " Are you the lord of this pass, Sir Knight ? " said Sir Gottfried, 
 haughtily, " or do you hold it against all comers, in honour of 
 your lady-love ? " 
 
 " I am not the lord of this pass. I do not hold it against all 
 comers. I hold it but against one, and he is a liar and a traitor." 
 " As the matter concerns me not, I pray you let me pass," 
 said Gottfried. 
 
 " The matter does concern thee, Gottfried of Godesberg. Liar 
 and traitor ! art thou coward, too ? " 
 
 "Holy Saint Buffo! 'tis a fight!" exclaimed the old hermit 
 (who, too, had been a gallant warrior in his day) ; and like the old 
 war-horse that hears the trumpet's sound, and spite of his 
 clerical profession, he prepared to look on at the combat with no 
 ordinary eagerness, and sat down on the overhanging ledge of the 
 rock, lighting his pipe, and affecting unconcern, but in reality 
 most deeply interested in the event which was about to ensue. 
 
 As soon as the word "coward" had been pronounced by Sir 
 Ludwig, his opponent, uttering a curse far too horrible to be 
 inscribed here, had wheeled back his powerful piebald, and brought 
 his lance to the rest. 
 
 "Ha! Beauseant!" cried he. " Allah humdillah ! " 'Twas 
 the battle-cry in Palestine of the irresistible knights-hospitallers. 
 " Look to thyself, Sir Knight, and for mercy from Heaven ! .Twill 
 give thee none." 
 
 "A Bugo for Katzenellenbogcn ! " exclaimed Sir Ludwig, 
 piously; that, too, was the well-known war-cry of his princely 
 race. 
 
 " I will give the signal," said the old hermit, waving his 
 pipe. "Knights, are you ready? One, two, three. Los!'' 
 (let go.) 
 
 At the signal, the two steeds tore up the ground like whirl-
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 325 
 
 ■winds ; the two knights, two flashing perpendicular masses of 
 steel, rapidly converged ; the two lances met upon the two shields 
 of either, and shivered, splintered, shattered into ten hundred 
 thousand pieces, which whirled through the air here and there, 
 among the rocks, or in the trees, or in the river. The two horses 
 fell back trembling on their haunches, where they remained for 
 half a minute or so. 
 
 "Holy Buffo ! a brave stroke ! " said the old hermit. " Marry, 
 but a splinter well nigh took off my nose ! " The honest hermit 
 waved his pipe in delight, not perceiving that one of the splinters 
 had carried off the head of it, and rendered his favourite amuse- 
 ment impossible. " Ha ! they are to it again ! Oh, my ! how 
 they go to with their great swords ! "Well stricken, grey ! "Well 
 parried, piebald ! Ha, that was a sheer ! Go it, piebald ! go it, 
 grey! — go it, grey! go it, pye *. Peccavi! peccavi ! " 
 
 said the old man, here suddenly closing his eyes, and falling down 
 on his knees. " I forgot I was a man of peace ; " and the next 
 moment, muttering a hasty matin, he sprung down the ledge of 
 rock, and was by the side of the combatants. 
 
 The battle was over. Good knight as Sir Gottfried was, his 
 strength and skill had not been able to overcome Sir Ludwig the 
 Hombourger, with eight on his side. He was bleeding at every 
 point of his armour : he had been run through the body several 
 times, and a cut in tierce, delivered with tremendous dexterity, 
 had cloven the crown of his helmet' of Damascus steel, and 
 passing through the cerebellum and sensorium, had split his nose 
 almost in twain. 
 
 His mouth foaming — his face almost green — his eyes full of 
 blood — his brains spattered over his forehead, and several of his 
 teeth knocked out, — the discomfited warrior presented a ghastly 
 spectacle ; as, reeling under the effects of the last tremendous 
 blow which the knight of Hombourg dealt, Sir Gottfried fell 
 heavily from the saddle of his piebald charger ; the frightened 
 animal whisked his tail wildly with a shriek and a snort, plunged 
 out his hind legs, trampling for one moment upon the feet of the 
 prostrate Gottfried, thereby causing him to shriek with agony, and 
 then galloped away riderless. 
 
 Away ! aye, away ! — away amid the green vineyards and golden
 
 326 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 cornfields ; away up the steep mountains, where he frightened the 
 eagles in their eyries ; away down the clattering ravines, where 
 the flashing cataracts tumble ; away through the dark pine forests, 
 where the hungry wolves are howling ; away over the dreary 
 wolds, where the wild wind walks alone ; away through the 
 plashing quagmires, where the will-o'-the-wisps slunk frightened 
 among the reeds ; away through light and darkness, storm and 
 sunshine ; away by tower and town, high-road and hamlet. Once 
 a turnpike-man would have detained him ; but, ha, ha ! he charged 
 the 'pike, and cleared it at a bound. Once the Cologne Diligence 
 stopped the way : he charged the Diligence, he knocked off the 
 cap of the conductor on the roof, and yet galloped wildly, madly, 
 furiously, irresistibly on ! Brave horse ! gallant steed ! snorting 
 child of Araby! On went the horse, over mountains, rivers, 
 turnpikes, applewomen ; and never stopped until he reached a 
 livery-stable in Cologne, where his master was accustomed to put 
 him up. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE CONFESSION. 
 
 But we have forgotten, meanwhile, that prostrate individual. 
 Having examined the wounds in his side, legs, head, and throat, 
 the old hermit (a skilful leech) knelt down by the side of the 
 vanquished one, and said, " Sir Knight, it is my painful duty to 
 state to you that you are in an exceedingly dangerous condition, 
 and will not probably survive." 
 
 "Say you so, Sir Priest ? then 'tis time I make my confession 
 — hearken you, priest, and you, Sir Knight, whoever you be." 
 
 Sir Ludwig, (who, much affected by the scene, had been tying 
 his horse up to a tree), lifted his visor and said, " Grottfried of 
 Godesberg ! I am the friend of thy kinsman, Margrave Karl, 
 whose happiness thou hast ruined ; I am the friend of his chaste 
 and virtuous lady, whose fair fame thou hast belied ; I am the 
 godfather of young Count Otto, whose heritage thou wouldst 
 have appropriated— therefore I met thee in deadly fight, and 
 overcame thee, and have well nigh finished thee. Speak on."
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 327 
 
 " I have done all this," said the dying man, "and here, in my 
 last hour, repent me. The lady Theodora is a spotless lady ; 
 the youthful Otto the true son of his father — Sir Hildebrandt is 
 not his father, but his uncle." 
 
 " Gracious Buffo ! Celestial Bugo ! " here said the hermit 
 and the knight of Hombourg simultaneously, clasping their 
 hands. 
 
 "Yes, his uncle, but with the bar-sinister in his 'scutcheon. 
 Hence he could never be acknowledged by the family ; hence, too, 
 the lady Theodora's spotless purity (though the young people 
 had been brought up together) could never be brought to own the 
 relationship." 
 
 " May I repeat your confession ? " asked the hermit. 
 " With the greatest pleasure in life — carry my confession to the 
 margrave, and pray him give me pardon. Were there — a notary, 
 public present," slowly gasped the knight, the film of dissolution 
 glazing over his eyes, " I would ask — you — two — gentlemen to 
 witness it. I would gladly — sign the deposition, that is if I could 
 wr-wr-wr-wr-ite ! " A faint shuddering smiie — a quiver, a gasp, a 
 gurgle — the blood gushed from his mouth in black volumes 
 "He will never sin more," said the Hermit, solemnly. 
 " May Heaven assoilzie him ! " said Sir Ludwig. " Hermit, he 
 was a gallant knight. He died with harness on his back, and with 
 truth on his lips ; Ludwig of Hombourg would ask no other 
 death." * 
 
 An hour afterwards the principal servants at the castle of 
 Godesberg were rather surprised to see the noble Lord Louis trot 
 into the court-yard of the castle, with a companion on the crupper 
 of his saddle. 'Twas the venerable hermit of Bolandseck, who, 
 for the sake of greater celerity, had adopted this undignified con- 
 veyance, and whose appearance and little dumpy legs might well 
 create hilarity among the "pampered menials" who are always 
 found lounging about the houses of the great. He skipped off 
 the saddle with considerable lightness, however ; and Sir Ludwig, 
 taking the reverend man by the arm, and frowning the jeeriug 
 servitors into awe, bade them lead him to the presence of his 
 Highness the margrave. 
 
 "What has chanced?" said the inquisitive servitor; "the
 
 328 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 riderless horse of Sir Gottfried was seen to gallop by the outer 
 wall anon. The margrave's Grace has never quitted your Lord- 
 ship's chamber, and sits as one distraught." 
 
 " Hold thy prate, knave, and lead us on." And so saying, the 
 knight and his Eeverence moved into the well-known apartment, 
 where, according to the servitor's description, the wretched 
 margrave sate like a stone. 
 
 Ludwig took one of the kind broken-hearted man's hands, the 
 hermit seized the other, and began (but on account of his great 
 age, with a prolixity which we shall not endeavour to imitate) to 
 narrate the events which we have already described. Let the 
 dear reader fancy, the while his Eeverence speaks, the glazed eyes 
 of the margrave gradually lighting up with attention ; the flush 
 of joy which mantles in his countenance — the start — the throb — the 
 almost delirious outburst of hysteric exultation with which, when 
 the whole truth was made known, he clasped the two messengers 
 of glad tidings to his breast, with an energy that almost choked 
 the aged recluse ! " Eide, ride this instant to the margravine — 
 say I have wronged her, that it is all right, that she may 
 comeback — that I forgive her— that I apologise if you will " — 
 and a secretary forthwith despatched a note to that effect, which 
 was carried off by a fleet messenger. 
 
 " jSow write to' the Superior of the monastery at Cologne, and 
 bid him send me back my boy, my darling, my Otto — my Otto of 
 roses ! " said the fond father, making the first play upon 
 words he had ever attempted in his life. But what will not- 
 paternal love effect? The secretary (smiling at the joke) wrote 
 another letter, and another fleet messenger was despatched on 
 another horse. 
 
 " And now," said Sir Ludwig, playfully, " let us to lunch. Holy 
 hermit, are you for a snack ? " 
 
 The hermit could not say nay on an occasion so festive, and the 
 three gentles seated themselves to a plenteous repast, for which 
 the remains of the feast of yesterday offered, it need not be said, 
 ample means. 
 
 " They will be home by dinner-time," said the exulting father, 
 " Ludwig ! reverend hermit ! "VVe will carry on till then ; " and 
 the cup passed gaily round, and the laugh and jest circulated,
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 329 
 
 ■while the three happy friends sate confidentially awaiting the 
 return of the margravine and her son. 
 
 But alas ! said we not rightly at the commencement of a former 
 chapter, that betwixt the lip and the raised wine-cup there is 
 often many a spill ? that our hopes are high, and often, too often 
 vain ? About three hours after the departure of the first mes- 
 senger, he returned, and with an exceedingly long face knelt down 
 and presented to the margrave a billet to the following effect ; 
 
 " Convent of Nonnemverth, Friday Afternoon. 
 
 "Sir, — I have submitted too long to your ill-usage, and am disposed to bear it 
 no more. I -will no longer be made the butt of your ribald satire, and the object 
 of your coarse abuse. Last week you threatened me with your cane ! Ou 
 Tuesday last you threw a wine-decanter at me, which hit the butler it is true, but 
 the intention was evident. This morning, in the presence of all the servants, you 
 called me by the most vile, abominable name, which Heaven forbid I should 
 repeat ! You dismissed me from your house under a false accusation. You sent 
 me to this odious convent to be immured for life. Be it so, I will not come back, 
 because, forsooth, you relent. Anything is better than a residence with a wicked, 
 coarse, violent, intoxicated, brutal monster like yourself. I remain here for ever, 
 and blush to be obliged to sign myself " Theodora vox Godesberg." 
 
 " P. 8. I hope you do not intend to keep all my best gowns, jewels, and wearing 
 apparel ; and make no doubt you dismissed me from your house in order to make 
 way for some vile hussey, whose eyes I would like to tear out. " T. Y. G." 
 
 CHAPTER YII. 
 
 The singular document, illustrative of the passions of women at 
 all times, and particularly of the manners of the early ages, struck 
 dismay into the heart of the margrave. 
 
 "Are her ladyship's insinuations correct?" asked the hermit, 
 in a severe tone. " To correct a wife with a cane is a venial, I may 
 say a justifiable, practice ; but to fling a bottle at her, is a ruin 
 both to the liquor and to her." 
 
 " But she sent a carving-knife at me first," said the heart-broken 
 husband. " Oh, jealousy, cursed jealousy, why, why did I ever 
 listen to thy green and yellow tongue ? " 
 
 " They quarrelled, but they loved each other sincerely," whis- 
 pered Sir Ludwig to the hermit, who began to deliver forthwith a 
 lecture upon family discord and marital authority, -which would
 
 330 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 have sent his two hearers to sleep, but for the arrival of the second 
 messenger, whom the margrave had despatched to Cologne for his 
 son. This herald wore a still longer face than that of his comrade 
 who preceded him. 
 
 " Where is my darling ? " roared the agonised parent. " Have 
 ye brought him with ye ? " 
 
 "N — no," said the man, hesitating. 
 
 " I will flog the knave soundly when he comes," cried the father, 
 vainly endeavouring, under an appearance of sternness, to hide his 
 inward emotion and tenderness. 
 
 " Please, your highness," said the messenger, making a desperate 
 effort, " Count Otto is not at the convent." 
 
 " Know ye, knave, where he is ? " 
 
 The swain solemnly said, " I do. He is there" He pointed as 
 he spake to the broad Rhine that was seen from the casement, 
 lighted up by the magnificent hues of sunset. 
 
 " There ! How mean ye there ? " gasped the margrave, wrought 
 to a pitch of nervous fury. 
 
 " Alas ! my good lord, when he was in the boat which was to 
 conduct him to the convent, he — he jumped suddenly from it, and 
 is dr — dr — owned." 
 
 " Cany that knave out and hang him ! " said the margrave, 
 with a calmness more dreadful than any outburst of rage. " Let 
 every man of the boat's crew be blown from the mouth of the 
 cannon on the tower — except the coxswain, and let him be * * " 
 
 What was to be done with the coxswain, no one knows ; for at 
 that moment, and overcome by his emotion, the margrave sunk 
 down lifeless on the floor. 
 
 CHAPTEll VIII. 
 
 THE CUILDE OF GODESBEKG. 
 
 It must be clear to the dullest intellect (if amongst our readers 
 we dare venture to presume that a dull intellect should be found) 
 that the cause of the margrave's fainting fit, described in the last 
 chapter, was a groundless apprehension, on the part of that too
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 331 
 
 solicitous and credulous nobleman, regarding the fate of his beloved 
 child. No, young Otto was not drowned. Was ever hero of 
 romantic story done to death so early in the tale ? Young Otto 
 was not drowned. Had such been the case, the Lord Margrave 
 would infallibly have died at the close of the last chapter ; and a 
 few gloomy sentences at its close would have denoted how the 
 lovely Lady Theodora became insane in the convent, and how Sir 
 Ludwig determined, upon the demise of the old hermit (conse- 
 quent upon the shock of hearing the news), to retire to the vacant 
 hermitage, and assume the robe, the beard, the mortifications of 
 the late venerable and solitary ecclesiastic. Otto was not drowned, 
 and all those personages of our history are consequently alive and 
 well. 
 
 The boat containing the amazed young count — for he knew not 
 the cause of his father's anger, and hence rebelled against the 
 unjust sentence which the margrave had uttered — had not rowed 
 many miles, when the gallant boy rallied from his temporary sur- 
 prise and despondency, and, determined not to be a slave in any 
 convent of any order, determined to make a desperate effort for 
 escape. At a moment when the men were pulling hard against 
 the tide, and Kuno, the coxswain, was looking carefully to steer 
 the barge between some dangerous rocks and quicksands, which. 
 are frequently met with in the majestic though dangerous river, 
 Otto gave a sudden spring from the boat, and with one single 
 flounce was in the boiling, frothing, swirling eddy of the stream. 
 
 Fancy the agony of the crew at the disappearance of their young 
 lord ! All loved him ; all would have given their lives for him ; 
 but as they did not know how to swim, of course they declined to 
 make any useless plunges in search of him, and stood on their oars 
 in mute wonder and grief. Once, his fair head and golden ringlets 
 were seen to arise from the water ; twice, puffing and panting, it 
 appeared for an instant again ; thrice, it rose but for one single 
 moment : it was the last chance, and it sunk, sunk, sunk. Know- 
 ing the reception they would meet with from their liege lord, the 
 men naturally did not go home to Godesberg, but putting in at 
 the first creek on the opposite bank, fled into the duke of Nassau's 
 territory, where, as they have little to do with our tale, we will 
 leave them.
 
 332 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 But they little knew how expert a swimmer was young Otto. 
 He had disappeared, it is true ; but why ? because he had dived. 
 He calculated that his conductors would consider him drowned, 
 and the desire of liberty lending him wings, or we had rather say 
 fins, in this instance, the gallant boy swam on beneath the water, 
 never lifting his head for a single moment between Godesberg and 
 Cologne — the distance being twenty-five or thirty miles. 
 
 Escaping from observation, he landed on the Deutz side of the 
 river, repaired to a comfortable and quiet hostel there, saying he 
 had had an accident from a boat, and thus . accounting for the 
 moisture of his habiliments, and while these were drying before a 
 fire in his chamber went snugly to bed, where he mused, not with- 
 out amaze, of the strange events of the day. " This morning," 
 thought he, " a noble, and heir to a princely estate — this evening 
 an outcast, with but a few bank-notes which my mamma luckily 
 gave me on my birthday. What a strange entry into life is this 
 for a young man of my family ! Well, I have courage and reso- 
 lution ; my first attempt in life has been a gallant and successful 
 one ; other dangers will be conquered by similar bravery." And 
 recommending himself, his unhappy mother, and his mistaken 
 father to the care of their patron saint, Saint Buffo, the gallant- 
 hearted boy fell presently into such a sleep, as only the young, the 
 healthy, the innocent, and the extremely fatigued can enjoy. 
 
 The fatigues of the day (and very few men but would be fatigued 
 after swimming well nigh thirty miles under water) caused young 
 Otto to sleep so profoundly, that he did not remark how, after 
 Friday's sunset, as a natural consequence, Saturday's Phcebus 
 illumined the world, ay, and sunk at his appointed hour. The 
 serving-maidens of the hostel, peeping in, marked him sleeping, 
 and blessing him for a pretty youth, tripped lightly from the 
 chamber ; the boots tried haply twice or thrice to call him (as 
 boots will fain), but the lovely boy, giving another snore, turned 
 on his side, and was quite unconscious of the interruption. In a 
 word, the youth slept for six-and-thirty hours at an elongation ; 
 and the Sunday sun was shining, and the bells of the hundred 
 churches of Cologne were clinking and tolling in pious festivity, 
 and the burghers and burgheresses of the town were trooping to 
 vespers and morning service when Otto woke.
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 333 
 
 As he donned his clothes of the richest Genoa velvet, the 
 astonished boy could not at first account for his difficulty in 
 putting them on, "Marry," said he, "these breeches that my 
 blessed mother (tears filled his fine eyes as he thought of her), 
 that my blessed mother had made long on purpose, are now ten 
 inches too short for me ; Whir-r-r ! my coat cracks i' the back, 
 as in vain I try to buckle it round me ; and the sleeves reach no 
 farther than my elbows ! What is this mystery ? Am I grown 
 fat and tall in a single night ? Ah ! ah ! ah ! ah ! I have it." 
 
 The young and good-humoured Childe laughed merrily. He 
 bethought him of the reason of his mistake : his garments had 
 shrunk from being five-and-twenty miles under water. 
 
 But one remedy presented itself to his mind ; and that we need 
 not say was to purchase new ones. Inquiring the way to the most 
 genteel ready-made clothes establishment in the city of Cologne, 
 and finding it was kept in the Minoriten Strasse, by an ancestor 
 of the celebrated Moses of London, the noble Childe hied him 
 towards the emporium, but you may be sure did not neglect to 
 perform his religious duties by the way. Entering the cathedral, 
 he made straight for the shrine of Saint Buffo, and hiding himself 
 behind a pillar there (fearing he might be recognised by the arch- 
 bishop, or any of his father's numerous friends in Cologne), he 
 proceeded with his devotions, as was the practice of the young 
 nobles of the age. 
 
 But though exceedingly intent upon the service, yet his eye 
 could not refrain from wandering a little round about him, and he 
 remarked with surprise that the whole church was filled with 
 archers ; and he remembered, too, that he had seen in the streets 
 numerous other bands of men similarly attired in green. On 
 asking at the cathedral porch the cause of this assemblage, one of 
 the green ones said (in a jape), " Marry, youngster, you must be 
 green, not to know that we are all bound to the castle of his 
 Grace Duke Adolf of Cleves, who gives an archery meeting once a 
 year, and prizes for which we toxophilites muster strong." 
 
 Otto, whose course hitherto had been undetermined, now imme- 
 diately settled what to do. He straightway repaired to the ready- 
 made emporium of Herr Moses, and bidding that gentleman furnish 
 him with an archer's complete dress, Moses speedily selected a suit
 
 33.1 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 from his vast stock, which fitted the youth to a t, and we need not 
 sav was sold at an exceedingly moderate price. So attired (and 
 biddin" - Herr Moses a cordial farewell), young Otto was a gor- 
 geous, a noble, a soul-inspiring boy to gaze on. A coat and 
 breeches of the most brilliant pea-green, ornamented with a pro- 
 fusion of brass buttons, and fitting him with exquisite tightness, 
 showed ofi" a figure unrivalled for slim symmetry. His feet were 
 covered with peaked buskins of buff leather, and a belt round his 
 slender waist of the same material, held bis knife, his tobacco-pipe 
 and pouch, and his long shining dirk, which, though the adven- 
 turous youth had as yet only employed it to fashion wicket-bails, 
 or to cut bread-and-cheese, he was now quite ready to use against 
 the enemy. His personal attractions were enhanced by a neat 
 white hat, flung carelessly and fearlessly on one side of his open 
 smiling countenance, and his lovely hair, curling in ten thousand 
 yellow ringlets, fell over his shoulder like golden epaulettes, and 
 down his back as far as the waist-buttons of his coat. I warrant 
 me, many a lovely Colnerinn looked after the handsome Childe 
 witli anxiety, and dreamed that night of Cupid under the guise of 
 " a bonny boy in green." 
 
 So accoutred, the youth's next thought was, that he must 
 supply himself with a bow. This he speedily purchased at the 
 most fashionable bowyer's, and of the best material and make. 
 It was of ivory, trimmed with pink ribbon, and the cord of silk. 
 An elegant quiver, beautifully painted and embroidered, was slung 
 across his back, with a dozen of the finest arrows, tipped with 
 steel of Damascus, formed of the branches of the famous Upas- 
 tree of Java, and feathered with the wings of the ortolan. These 
 purchases being completed (together with that of a knapsack, 
 dressing-case, change, &c), our young adventurer asked where 
 was the hostel at which the archers were wont to assemble ? and 
 being informed that it was at the sign of the Golden Stag, hied 
 him to that house of entertainment, where, by calling for quanti- 
 ties of liquor and beer, he speedily made the acquaintance and 
 acquired the good will of a company of his future comrades, who 
 happened to be sitting in the collee-room. 
 
 After they had eaten and drunken for all, Otto said, addressing 
 them, " When go ye forth, gentles ? I am a stranger here,
 
 A LEGEND OE THE RHINE. 335 
 
 bound as you to the archery meeting of Duke Adolf ; an ye 'will 
 admit a youth into your company 'twill gladden me upon my 
 lonely way?" 
 
 The archers replied, "You seem so young and jolly, and you 
 spend your gold so very like a gentleman, that we'll receive you 
 in our band with pleasure. Be ready, for we start at half-past 
 two!" At that hour accordingly the whole joyous company 
 prepared to move, and Otto not a little increased his popularity 
 among them by stepping out and having a conference with the 
 landlord, which caused the latter to come into the room where 
 the archers were assembled previous to departure, and to say, 
 " Gentlemen, the bill is settled ! " — words never ungrateful to an 
 archer yet : no, marry, nor to a man of auy other calling that I 
 wot of. 
 
 They marched joyously for several leagues, singing and joking, 
 and telling of a thousand feats of love and chase and war. "While 
 thus engaged, some one remarked to Otto, that he was not dressed 
 in the regular uniform, having no feathers in his hat. 
 
 " I daresay I will find a feather," said the lad, smiling. 
 
 Then another gibed because his bow was new. 
 
 " See that you can use your old one as well, Master "Wolfgang," 
 said the undisturbed youth. His answers, his bearing, his gene- 
 rosity, his beauty, and his wit, inspired all his new toxophilite 
 friends with interest and curiosity, and they longed to see 
 whether his skill with the bow corresponded with their secret 
 sympathies for him. 
 
 An occasion for manifesting this skill did not fail to present 
 itself soon — as indeed it seldom does to such a hero of romance as 
 young Otto was. Pate seems to watch over such ; events occur 
 to them just in the nick of time ; they rescue virgins just as ogres 
 are on the point of devouring them ; they manage to be present 
 at court and interesting ceremonies, and to see the most interest- 
 ing people at the most interesting moment ; directly an adventure 
 is necessary for them, that adventure occurs, and I, for my part, 
 have often wondered with delight (and never could penetrate the 
 mystery of the subject) at the way in which that humblest of 
 romance heroes, Signor Clown, when he wants anything in the 
 Pantomime, straightway finds it to his hand. How is it that, —
 
 336 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 suppose he wishes to dress himself up like a woman for instance, 
 that minute a coalheaver walks in with a shovel-hat that answers 
 for a bonnet ; at the very next instant a butcher's lad passing 
 with a string of sausages and a bundle of bladders unconsciously 
 helps Master Clown to a necklace and a tournure, and so on 
 through the whole toilet ? Depend upon it there is something 
 we do not wot of in that mysterious overcoming of circumstances 
 by great individuals, that apt and wondrous conjuncture of the 
 Hour and the Man ; and so, for my part, when I heard the above 
 remark of one of the archers, that Otto had never a feather in his 
 bonnet, I felt sure that a heron would spring up in the next 
 sentence to supply him with an aigrette. 
 
 And such indeed was the fact ; rising out of a morass by which 
 the archers were passing, a gallant heron, arching his neck, 
 swelling his crest, placing his legs behind him, and his beak and 
 red eyes against the wind, rose slowly, and offered the fairest 
 mark in the world. 
 
 " Shoot, Otto," said one of the archers. " You would not shoot 
 just now at a crow because it was a foul bird, nor at a hawk 
 because it was a noble bird ; bring us down yon heron. It flies 
 slowly." 
 
 But Otto was busy that moment tying his shoe-string, and 
 Eudolf, the third best of the archers, shot at the bird and 
 missed it. 
 
 " Shoot, Otto," said Wolfgang, a youth who had taken a 
 liking to the young archer, " the bird is getting further and 
 further." 
 
 But Otto was busy that moment whittling a willow-twig he had 
 just cut. Max, the second best archer, shot and missed. 
 
 " Then," said "Wolfgang, " I must try myself; a plague on you, 
 voung pringald, you have lost a noble chance !" 
 
 "Wolfgang prepared himself with all his care, and shot at the 
 bird. "It is out of distance," said he, "and a murrain on the 
 bird ! " 
 
 Otto, who by this time had done whittling his willow-stick 
 (having carved a capital caricature of "Wolfgang upon it), flung 
 the twig down and said carelessly, "Out of distance! Psliaw! 
 We have two minutes yet," and fell to asking riddles and cutting
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 337 
 
 jokes, to the which none of the archers listened, as they were all 
 engaged, their noses in air, watching the retreating bird. 
 
 " Where shall I hit him ?" said Otto. 
 
 " Go to," said Eudolf, " thou canst see no limb of him, he is no 
 bigger than a flea." 
 
 "Here goes for his right eye!" said Otto; and stepping for- 
 ward in the English manner (which his godfather having learnt in 
 Palestine, had taught him), he brought his bow-string to his ear, 
 took a good aim, allowing for the wind and calculating the para- 
 bola to a nicety, whizz ! his arrow went off. 
 
 He took up the willow twig again and began carving a head 
 of Eudolf at the other end, chatting and laughing, and singing a 
 ballad the while. 
 
 The archers, after standing a long time looking skywards with 
 their noses in the air, at last brought them down from the perpen- 
 dicular to the horizontal position, and said, " Pooh, this lad is a 
 humbug ! The arrow's lost, let's go !" 
 
 "Heads!" cried Otto, laughing. A speck was seen rapidly 
 descending from the heavens ; it grew to be as big as a crown- 
 piece, then as a partridge, then as a tea-kettle, and flop ! down fell 
 a magnificent heron to the ground, flooring poor Max in its fall. 
 
 " Take the arrow out of his eye, Wolfgang," said Otto, without 
 looking at the bird, " wipe it and put it back into my quiver." 
 The arrow indeed was there, having penetrated right through the 
 pupil. 
 
 "Are you in league with Der Preischiitz ? " said Eudolf, quite 
 amazed. 
 
 Otto laughingly whistled the " Huntsman's Chorus," and said, 
 " No, my friend. It was a lucky shot, only a lucky shot. I was 
 taught shooting, look you, in the fashion of merry England, where 
 the archers are archers indeed." 
 
 And so he cut off the heron's wing for a plume for his hat ; 
 and the archers walked on, much amazed, and saying, " What a 
 wonderful country that merry England must be !" 
 
 Ear from feeling any envy at their comrade's success, the jolly 
 archers recognised his superiority with pleasure ; aud Wolfgang 
 and Eudolf especially held out their hands to the youuker, and 
 besought the honour of his friendship. They continued their 
 
 VOL. III. z
 
 333 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 ■walk all day, and when, night fell made choice of a good hostel 
 you may be sure, where over beer, punch, Champagne, and every 
 luxury, they drank to the health of the Duke of Cleves, and indeed 
 each other's healths all round. Next day they resumed their 
 march, and continued it without interruption, except to take in a 
 supply of victuals here and there (and it "was found on these occa- 
 sions that Otto, young as he "was, could eat four times as much a3 
 the oldest archer present, and drink to correspond), and these 
 continued refreshments having given them more than ordinary 
 strength, they determined on making rather a long march of it, 
 and did not halt till after nightfall at the gates of the little town 
 of Windeck. 
 
 What -was to be done ? the town-gates were shut. " Is there 
 no hostel, no castle -where -we can sleep?" asked Otto of the 
 sentinel at the gate. " I am so hungry that in lack of better food 
 I think I could eat my grandmamma." 
 
 The sentinel laughed at this hyperbolical expression of hunger, 
 and said, " Tou had best go sleep at the Castle of "Windeck 
 yonder;" and adding with a peculiarly knowing look, "Nobody 
 will disturb you there." 
 
 At that moment the moon broke out from a cloud, and showed 
 on a hill hard by a castle indeed — but the skeleton of a castle. 
 The roof was gone, the windows were dismantled, the towers were 
 tumbling, and the cold moonlight pierced it through and through. 
 One end of the building was, however, still covered in, and stood 
 looking still more frowning, vast, and gloomy, even than the other 
 part of the edifice. 
 
 " There is a lodging, certainly," said Otto to the sentinel, who 
 pointed towards the castle with his bartizan; " but tell me, good 
 fellow, what are we to do for a supper?" 
 
 " the castellan of Windeck will entertain you," said the man- 
 at-arms with a grin, and marched up the embrasure, the while the 
 ai-chers, taking counsel among themselves, debated whether or not 
 they should take up their quarters in the gloomy and deserted 
 edifice. 
 
 " Y\'e shall get nothing but an owl for supper there," said 
 young Otto. "Marry, lads, let us storm the town ; w r e are thirty 
 gallant fellows, and I have heard the garrison is not more than
 
 A LEGEND OP THE RHINE. 339 
 
 three hundred." But the rest of the party thought such a way 
 of getting supper was not a very cheap one, and, grovelling 
 knaves, preferred rather to sleep ignohly and without victuals, 
 than dare the assault with Otto and die, or conquer something 
 comfortahle. 
 
 One and all then made their way towards the castle. They 
 entered its vast and silent halls, frightening the owls and bats 
 that fled before them with hideous hootings and flappiugs of 
 wings, and passing by a multiplicity of mouldy stairs, dank reek- 
 ing roofs, and rickety corridors, at last came to an apartment 
 which, dismal and dismantled as it was, appeared to be in rather 
 better condition than the neighbouring chambers, and they there- 
 fore selected it as their place of rest for the night. They then 
 tossed up which should mount guard. The first two hours of 
 watch fell to Otto, who was to be succeeded by his young though 
 humble friend Wolfgang ; and, accordingly, the Childe of Godes- 
 berg, drawing his dirk, began to pace upon his weary round; 
 while his comrades, by various gradations of snoring, told how 
 profoundly they slept, spite of their lack of supper. 
 
 'Tis needless to say what were the thoughts of the noble Childe 
 as he performed his two hours' watch; what gushing memories 
 poured into his full soul; what ' ; sweet and bitter" recollections 
 of home inspired his throbbing heart ; and what manly aspirations 
 after fame buoyed him up. " Youth is ever confident," says the 
 bard. Happy, happy season ! The inoon-lit hours passed by on 
 silver wings, the twinkling stars looked friendly down upon him. 
 Confiding in their youthful sentinel, sound slept the valorous 
 toxopholites, as up and down, and there and back again, marched 
 ■on the noble Childe. At length his repeater told him, much to 
 his satisfaction, that it was half-past eleven, the hour when his 
 watch was to cease, and so giving a playful kick to the slumbering 
 AVolfgang, that good-humoured fellow sprung up from his lair, and, 
 drawing his sword, proceeded to relieve Otto. 
 
 The latter laid him down for warmth's sake in the very spot 
 which his comrade had left, and for some time could not sleep. 
 ^Realities and visions then besian to minsle in his mind, till he 
 scarce knew which was which. He dozed for a minute ; then he 
 woke with a start ; then he went off again ; then woke up again. 
 
 z 2
 
 340 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 In one of these half-sleeping moments he thought he saw a figure, 
 as of a woman in white, sliding into the room, and beckoning 
 Wolfgang from it. He looked again. Wolfgang was gone. At 
 that moment twelve o'clock clanged from the town, and Otto 
 started up. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE LADY OF WENDECK. 
 
 As the bell with iron tongue called midnight, "Wolfgang the 
 Archer, pacing on his watch, beheld before him a pale female 
 figure. He did not know whence she came : but there suddenly 
 she stood close to him. Her blue, clear, glassy eyes were fixed 
 upon him. Her form was of faultless beauty ; her face pale as the 
 marble of the fairy statue, ere yet the sculptor's love had given it 
 life. A smile played upon her features, but it was no warmer 
 than the reflection of a moonbeam on a lake ; and yet it was 
 wondrous beautiful. A fascination stole over the senses of young 
 "Wolfgang. He stared at the lovely apparition with fixed eyes 
 and distended jaws. She looked at him with ineffable archness. 
 She lifted one beautifully rounded alabaster arm, and made a sign 
 as to beckon him towards her. Did "Wolfgang — the young and 
 lusty "Wolfgang — follow ? Ask the iron whether it follows the 
 magnet ? — ask the pointer whether it pursues the partridge 
 through the stubble ? — ask the youth whether the lollypop-shop 
 does not attract him ? Wolfgang did follow. An antique door 
 opened as if by magic. There was no light, and yet they saw 
 quite plain; they passed through the innumerable ancient chambers, 
 and yet they did not wake any of the owls and bats roosting there. 
 We know not through how many apartments the young couple 
 passed ; but at last they came to one where a feast was prepared ; 
 and on an antique table, covered with massive silver, covers were 
 laid for two. The lady took her place at one end of the table, and 
 with her sweetest nod beckoned Wolfgang to the other seat. He
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 341 
 
 took it. The table was small, and their knees met. He felt as 
 cold in his legs as if he were kneeling against an ice-well. 
 
 " Gallant archer," said she, "you must be hungry after your 
 day's march. What supper will you have ? Shall it be a delicate 
 lobster-salad ? or a dish of elegant tripe and onions ? or a slice of 
 boar's-head and truffles ? or a Welsh rabbit, a la cave an cidre ? 
 or a beefsteak and shallot ? or a couple of rognons a la brocliette? 
 Speak, brave bowyer : you have but to order." 
 
 As there was nothing on the table but a covered silver dish, 
 "Wolfgang thought that the lady who proposed such a multiplicity 
 of delicacies to him was only laughing at him ; so he determined 
 to try her with something extremely rare. 
 
 "Fair princess," he said, "I should like very much a pork- 
 chop and some mashed potatoes." 
 
 She lifted the cover : there was such a pork-chop as Simpson 
 never served, with a dish of mashed potatoes that would have 
 formed at least six portions in our degenerate days in Kupert- 
 street. 
 
 When he had helped himself to these delicacies, the lady put 
 the cover on the dish again, and watched him eating with interest. 
 He was for some time too much occupied with his own food to 
 remark that his companion did not eat a morsel ; but big as it 
 was, his chop was soon gone ; the shining silver of his plate was 
 scraped quite clean with his knife, and, heaving a great sigh, he 
 confessed a humble desire for something to drink. 
 
 " Call for what you like, sweet sir," said the lady, lifting up a 
 silver fillagree bottle, with an India-rubber cork, ornamented with 
 gold. 
 
 " Then," said Master Wolfgang — for the fellow's tastes were, 
 in sooth, very humble — " I call for half-and-half." According to 
 his wish, a pint of that delicious beverage was poured from the 
 bottle, foaming, into his beaker. 
 
 Having emptied this at a draught, and declared that on his 
 conscience it was the best tap he ever knew in his life, the young- 
 man felt his appetite renewed ; and it is impossible to say how 
 many different dishes he called for. Only enchantment, he was 
 afterwards heard to declare (though none of his friends believed 
 him), could have given him the appetite he possessed on that
 
 342 A LEGEND OP THE RHINE. 
 
 extraordinary night. He called for another pork-chop and potatoes, . 
 then for pickled salmon ; then he thought he would try a devilled 
 turkey-wing. "I adore the devil," said he. 
 
 "So do I," said the pale lady, with unwonted animation, and 
 the dish was served straightway. It was succeeded by black- 
 puddings, tripe, toasted cheese, and — what was most remarkable 
 • — every one of the dishes which he desired came from under the 
 same silver cover — which circumstance, when he had partaken 
 of about fourteen different articles, he began to find rather 
 mysteriou.3. 
 
 " Oh," said the pale lady, with a smile, " the mystery is easily 
 accounted for : the servants hear you, and the kitchen is below." 
 But this did not account for the manner in which more half-and- 
 half, bitter ale, punch (both gin and rum), and even oil and 
 vinegar, which he took with cucumber to his salmon, came out of 
 the self-same bottle from which the lady had first poured out his 
 pint of half-and-half. 
 
 " There are more things in heaven and earth, Voracio," said his 
 arch entertainer, when he put this question to her, " than are 
 dreamt of in your philosophy : " and, sooth to say, the archer was 
 by this time in such a state, that he did not find anything won- 
 derful more. 
 
 " Are you happy, dear youth ? " said the lacly, as, after his 
 collation, he sank back in his chair. 
 
 " Oh, miss, aint I ! " was his interrogative and yet affirmative 
 reply. 
 
 " Should you like such a supper every night, "Wolfgang ? " 
 continued the pale one. 
 
 ' \\ hy, no," said he ; " no, not exactly ; not every night : some 
 nights I should like oysters." 
 
 "Dear youth," said she, " be but mine, and you may have them 
 all the year round ! " The unhappy boy Avas too far gone to 
 suspect anything, otherwise this extraordinary speech would have 
 told him that he was in suspicious company. A person who can 
 offer oysters all the year round can live to no good purpose. 
 
 "Shall I sing you a song, dear archer?" said the lady. 
 " Sweet love ! " said he, now much excited, " strike up, and I will 
 join the chorus."
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 343 
 
 She took down her mandolin, and commenced a ditty. 'Twas 
 a sweet and wild one. It told how a lady of high lineage, cast 
 her eyes on a peasant page ; it told how nought could her love 
 assuage, her suitor's wealth and her father's rage : it told how 
 the youth did his foes engage ; and at length they went off in 
 the Gretna stage, the high-born dame and the peasant page. 
 "Wolfgang beat time, waggled his head, sung wofully out of tune 
 as the song proceeded; and if he had not been too intoxicated 
 with love and other excitement, he would have remarked how the 
 pictures on the wall, as the lady sung, began to waggle their heads 
 too, and nod and grin to the music. The song ended, I am the 
 lady of high lineage : Archer, will you be the peasant page ? 
 
 " I'll follow you to the devil ! " said Wolfgang. 
 
 " Come," replied the lady, glaring wildly on him, "come to the 
 chapel ; we'll be married this minute ! " 
 
 She held out her hand — Wolfgang took it. It was cold, damp, 
 — deadly cold ; and on they went to the chapel. 
 
 As they passed out, the two pictures over the wall, of a gentle- 
 man and lady, tripped lightly out of their frames, skipped noise- 
 lessly down to the ground, and making the retreating couple a 
 profound curtsey and bow, took the places which they had left at 
 the table. 
 
 Meanwhile the young couple passed on towards the chapel, 
 threading innumerable passages, and passing through chambers of 
 great extent. As they came along, all the portraits on the wall 
 stepped out of their frames to follow them. One ancestor, of whom 
 there was only a bust, frowned in the greatest rage, because, having 
 no legs, his pedestal would not move ; and several sticking-plaster 
 profiles of the former lords of Windeck looked quite black at being, 
 for similar reasons, compelled to keep their places. However, there 
 was a goodly procession formed behind Wolfgang and his bride ; 
 and by the time they reached the church, they had near a hundred 
 followers. 
 
 The church was splendidly illuminated ; the old banners of the 
 old knights glittered as they do at Drury Lane. The organ set 
 up of itself to play the " Bridesmaid's Chorus." The choir-chairs 
 were filled with people in black. 
 
 " Come, love," said the pale lady.
 
 Mi A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 " I don't see the parson," exclaimed Wolfgang, spite of himself 
 rather alarmed. 
 
 " Oh, the parson ! that's the easiest thing in the world ! I say, 
 hishop ! " said the lady, stooping down. 
 
 Stooping down — and to what ? Why, upon my word and 
 honour, to a great brass plate on the floor, over which they were 
 passing, and on which was engraven the figure of a bishop — and a 
 very ugly bishop, too — with crosier and mitre, and lifted finger, 
 on which sparkled the episcopal ring. " Do, my dear lord, come 
 and marry us," said the lady, with a levity which shocked the 
 feelings of her bridegroom. 
 
 The bishop got up ; and directly he rose, a dean, who was 
 sleeping under a large slate near him, came bowing and cringing 
 up to him ; while a canon of the cathedral (whose name was 
 Schidnischmidt) began grinning and making fun at the pair. The 
 ceremony was begun, and 
 
 As the clock struck twelve, young Otto bounded up, and 
 remarked the absence of his companion Wolfgang. The idea he 
 had had, that his friend disappeared in company with a white-robed 
 female, struck him more and more. " I will follow them," said 
 he ; and, calling to the next on the watch (old Snozo, who was 
 right unwilling to forego his sleep), he rushed away by the door 
 through which he had seen Wolfgang and his temptress take 
 their way. 
 
 That he did not find them was not his fault. The castle was 
 vast, the chamber dark. There were a thousand doors, and what 
 wonder that, after he had once lost sight of them, the intrepid 
 Childe should not be able to follow in their steps ? As might be 
 expected, lie took the wrong door, and wandered for at least 
 three hours about the dark enormous solitary castle, calling out 
 Wolfgang's name to the careless and indifferent echoes, knocking 
 his young shins against the ruins scattered in the darkness, but 
 still with a spirit entirely undaunted, and a firm resolution to aid 
 his absent comrade. Brave Otto ! thy exertions were rewarded 
 at last ! 
 
 Tor he lighted at length upon the very apartment where 
 Wolfgang had partaken of supper, and where the old couple who
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 345 
 
 had been in the picture-frames, and turned out to be the lady's 
 father and mother, were now sitting at the table. 
 
 " Well, Bertha has got a husbaud at last," said the lady. 
 
 " After waiting four hundred and fifty-three years for one, it 
 was quite time," said the gentleman. (He was dressed in powder 
 and a pigtail, quite in the old fashion.) 
 
 " The husband is no great things," continued the lady, taking 
 snuff. " A low fellow, my dear : a butcher's son, I believe. Did 
 you see how the wretch ate at supper ? To think my daughter 
 should have to marry an archer ! " 
 
 " There are archers and archers," said the old man. " Some 
 archers are snobs, as your ladyship states ; some, on the contrary, 
 are gentlemen by birth, at least, though not by breeding. Witness 
 young Otto, the Landgrave of Godesberg's son, who is listening 
 at the door like a lackey, and whom I intend to run through 
 the—" 
 
 " Law, baron ! " said the lady. 
 
 " I will, though," replied the baron, drawing an immense sword, 
 and glaring round at Otto : but though at the sight of that sword 
 and that scowl a less valorous youth would have taken to his heels, 
 the undaunted Childe advanced at once into the apartment. He 
 wore round his neck a relic of St. Bufib (the tip of the saint's 
 ear, which had been cut off at Constantinople). " Fiends ! I 
 command you to retreat ! " said he, holding up this sacred charm, 
 which his mamma had fastened on him ; and at the sight of it, 
 with an unearthly yell, the ghost of the baron and the baroness 
 sprung back into their picture-frames, as clown goes through a 
 clock in a pantomime. 
 
 He rushed through the open door by which the unlucky 
 Wolfgang had passed with his demoniacal bride, and went on and 
 on through the vast gloomy chambers lighted by the ghastly 
 moonshine : the noise of the organ in the chapel, the lights in the 
 kaleidoscopic windows, directed him towards that edifice. He 
 rushed to the door : 'twas barred ! He knocked : the beadles 
 were deaf. He applied his inestimable relic to the lock, and — 
 whizz ! crash ! clang ! bang ! whang ! — the gate flew open ! the 
 organ went ofi" in a fugue — the lights quivered over the tapers, 
 and then went off towards the ceiling: — the ghosts assembled
 
 346 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 rushed away with a skurry and a scream — the bride howled, and 
 vanished — the fat bishop waddled back under his brass plate — the 
 dean flounced down into his family vault — and the canon Schid- 
 nischmidt, who was making a joke, as usual, on the bishop, was 
 obliged to stop at the very point of his epigram, and to disappear 
 into the void whence he came. 
 
 Otto fell fainting at the porch, while Wolfgang tumbled lifeless 
 down at the altar-steps ; and in this situation the archers, when 
 they arrived, found the two youths. They were resuscitated, as 
 we scarce need say ; but when, in incoherent accents, they came 
 to tell their wondrous tale, some sceptics among the archers said — 
 " Pooh ! they were intoxicated ! " while others, nodding their 
 older heads, exclaimed — " They have seen the Lady of WindecJe ! " 
 and recalled the stories of many other young men, who, inveigled 
 by her devilish arts, had not been so lucky as Wolfgang, and had 
 disappeared — for ever ! 
 
 This adventure bound Wolfgang heart and soul to his gallant 
 preserver ; and the archers — it being now morning, and the cocks 
 crowing lustily round about — pursued their way without farther 
 delay to the castle of the noble patron of toxophilites, the gallant 
 Duke of Cleves. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE BATTLE OE THE BOWMEN. 
 
 Although there lay an immense number of castles and abbeys 
 between Windeck and Cleves, for every one of which the guide- 
 books have a legend and a ghost, who might, with the commonest 
 stretch of ingenuity, be made to waylay our adventurers on the 
 road ; yet, as the journey would be thus almost interminable, let 
 us cut it short by saying that the travellers reached Cleves without 
 any farther accident, and found the place thronged with visitors 
 for the meeting next day. 
 
 And here it would be easy to describe the company which 
 arrived, and make display of antiquarian lore. Now we would
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 317 
 
 represent a cavalcade of knights arriving, with, their pages carry- 
 ing their shining helms of gold, and the stout esquires, bearers 
 of lance and banner. Anon would arrive a fat abbot on his 
 ambling pad, surrounded by the white-robed companions of his 
 convent. Here should come the gleemen and jongleurs, the 
 minstrels, the mountebanks, the party-coloured gipsies, the dark- 
 eyed nut-brown Zigeunerinnen ; then a troop of peasants, chanting 
 Rhine-songs, and leading in their ox-drawn carts the peach- 
 cheeked girls from the vine-lands. Next we would depict the 
 litters blazoned with armorial bearings, from between the broidered 
 curtains of which peeped out the swan-like necks and the haughty 
 faces of the blonde ladies of the castles. But for these descrip- 
 tions we have not space ; and the reader is referred to the account 
 of the tournament in the ingenious novel of " Ivanhoe," where 
 the above phenomena are described at length. Suffice it to say, 
 that Otto and his companions arrived at the town of Cleves, and, 
 hastening to a hostel, reposed themselves after the day's march, 
 and prepared them for the encounter of the morrow. 
 
 That morrow came ; and as the sports were to begin early, 
 Otto and his comrades hastened to _the field, armed with their 
 best bows and arrows, you may be sure, and eager to distinguish 
 themselves, as were the multitude of other archers assembled. 
 They were from all neighbouring countries — crowds of English, as 
 you may fancy, armed with Murray's guide-books, troops of chat- 
 tering Frenchmen, Frankfort Jews Avith roulette-tables, and 
 Tyrolese, with gloves and trinkets — all hied towards the field 
 where the butts were set up, and the archery practice was to be 
 held. The Childe and his brother archers were, it need not be 
 said, early on the ground. 
 
 But what words of mine can describe the young gentleman's 
 emotion when, preceded by a band of trumpets, bagpipes, ophi- 
 cleides, and other wind instruments, the Prince of Cleves appeared 
 with the Princess Helen, his daughter ? And, ah ! what expres- 
 sions of my humble pen can do justice to the beauty of that young 
 lady ? Fancy every charm which decorates the person, every 
 virtue which ornaments the mind, every accomplishment w-hich 
 renders charming mind and charming person doubly charming, 
 and then you will have but a faint and feeble idea of the beauties
 
 343 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 of her highness the Princess Helen. Taney a complexion such as 
 they say (I know not with what justice) Rowland's Kalydor 
 imparts to the users of that cosmetic ; fancy teeth to which orient 
 pearls are like "Wallsend coals ; eyes, which were so blue, tender, 
 and bright, that while they run you through with their lustre, 
 they healed you with their kindness ; a neck and waist, so ravish- 
 ingly slender and graceful, that the least that is said about them 
 the better ; a foot which fell upon the flowers no heavier than a 
 dewdrop — and this charming person, set oft" by the most elegant 
 toilet that ever milliner devised ! The lovely Helen's hair (which 
 was as black as the finest varnish for boots) was so long, that it 
 was borne on a cushion several yards behind her by the maidens 
 of her train; and a hat, set off with moss-roses, sun-flowers, 
 bugles, birds of paradise, gold lace, and pink ribbon, gave her a 
 distingue air, which would have set the editor of the " Morning 
 Post " mad with love. 
 
 It had exactly the same effect upon the noble Childe of Godes- 
 berg, as leaning on his ivory bow, with his legs crossed, he stood 
 and gazed on her, as Cupid gazed on Psyche. Their eyes met : it 
 was all over with both of them. A blush came at one and the 
 same minute budding to the cheek of either. A simultaneous 
 throb beat in those young hearts ! They loved each other for ever 
 from that instant. Otto still stood, cross-legged, enraptured, 
 leaning on his ivory bow ; but Helen, calling to a maiden for her 
 pocket-handkerchief, blew her beautiful Grecian nose in order to 
 hide her agitation. Bless ye, bless ye, pretty ones ! I am old 
 now ; but not so old but that I kindle at the tale of love. Theresa 
 Mac Whirter too has lived and loved. Heigho ! 
 
 "Who is yon chief that stands behind the truck whereon are 
 seated the princess and the stout old lord, her father ? AVho is 
 he whose hair is of the carroty hue ? whose eyes, across a snubby 
 bunch of a nose, are perpetually scowling at each other ; who has 
 a hump-back, and a hideous mouth, surrounded with bristles, and 
 crammed full of jutting yellow odious teeth. Although he wears 
 a sky-blue doublet laced with silver, it only serves to render his 
 vulgar punchy figure doubly ridiculous ; although his nether gar- 
 ment is of salmon-coloured velvet, it only draws the more attention 
 to his legs, which are disgustingly crooked and bandy. A rose"
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 349 
 
 coloured hat, with towering pea-green, ostrich plumes, looks 
 absurd on his bull head ; and though it is time of peace, the 
 wretch is armed with a multiplicity of daggers, knives, yataghans, 
 dirks, sabres, and scimitars, which testify his truculent and bloody 
 disposition. "Tis the terrible Rowsky de Donnerblitz, Margrave 
 of Eulenschreckenstein. Report says he is a suitor for the hand 
 of the lovely Helen. He addresses various speeches of gallantry 
 to her, and grins hideously as he thrusts his disgusting head over 
 her lily shoulder. But she turns away from him ! turns and 
 shudders — aye, as she would at a black dose ! 
 
 Otto stands gazing still, and leaning on his bow. " What is 
 the prize ? " asks one archer of another. There are two prizes — 
 a velvet cap, embroidered by the hand of the princess, and a 
 chain of massive gold, of enormous value ; both lie on cushions 
 before her. 
 
 "I know which I shall choose, when I win the first prize," 
 says a swarthy, savage, and bandy-legged archer, who bears the 
 owl gules on a black shield, the cognisance of the Lord Rowsky 
 de Donnerblitz. 
 
 " Which, fellow ? " says Otto, turning fiercely upon him. 
 
 "The chain, to be sure!" says the leering archer. "You do 
 not suppose I am such a flat as to choose that velvet gimcrack 
 there ? " Otto laughed in scorn, and began to prepare his bow. 
 The trumpets sounding proclaimed that the sports were about to 
 commence. 
 
 Is it necessary to describe them ? No : that has already been 
 done in the novel of "Ivanhoe," before mentioned. Fancy the 
 archers clad in Lincoln green, all coming forward in turn, and 
 firing at the targets. Some hit, some missed ; those that missed 
 were fain to retire amidst the jeers of the multitudinous spec- 
 tators. Those that hit began new trials of skill ; but it was easy 
 to see, from the first, that the battle lay between Squintoff (the 
 Rowsky archer) and the young hero with the golden hair and the 
 ivory bow. SquintofF's fame as a marksman was known through- 
 out Europe ; but who was his young competitor ? Ah ! there was 
 one heart in the assembly that beat most anxiously to know. 
 'Twas Helen's. 
 
 The crowning trial arrived. The bull's-eye of the target, set up
 
 350 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 at three quarters of a mile distance from the archers, was so small, 
 that it required a very clever man indeed to see, much more to 
 liit it ; and as Squintoff was selecting his arrow for the final trial, 
 the Rowsky flung a purse of gold towards his archer, saying — 
 " Squintoff, an ye win the prize, the purse is thine." " I may as 
 well pocket it at once, your honour," said the bowman, with a 
 sneer at Otto. " This young chick, who has been lucky as yet, will 
 hardly hit such a mark as that ; " and, taking his aim, Squintoff 
 discharged his arrow right into the very middle of the bull's-eye. 
 
 " Can you mend that, young springald ? " said he, as a shout 
 rent the air at his success, as Helen turned pale to think that the 
 champion of her secret heart was likely to be overcome, and as 
 Squintoff, pocketing the Eowsky's money, turned to the noble boy 
 of Godesberg. 
 
 " Has anybody got a pea ? " asked the lad. Everybody laughed 
 at his droll request ; and an old woman, who was selling porridge 
 in the crowd, handed hiin the vegetable which he demanded. It 
 was a dry and yellow pea. Otto, stepping up to the target, 
 caused Squintoff to extract his arrow from the bull's-eye, and 
 placed in the orifice made by the steel point of the shaft, the pea 
 which he had received from the old woman. He then came back 
 to his place. As he prepared to shoot, Helen was so overcome by 
 emotion, that 'twas thought she would have fainted. Never, 
 never had she seen a being so beautiful as the young bero now 
 before her ! » 
 
 He looked almost divine. He flung back his long clusters of 
 bair from his bright eyes and tall forehead ; the blush of health 
 mantled on his cheek, from which the barber's weapon had never 
 shorn the down. He took his bow, and one of his most elegant 
 arrows, and, poising himself lightly on his right leg, he flung 
 himself forward, raising his left leg on a level with his ear. He 
 looked like Apollo, as he stood balancing himself there. He dis- 
 charged his dart from the thrumming bowstring : it clove the blue 
 air — whizz ! 
 
 " He has split the pea ! " said the princess, and fainted. The 
 Eowslcy, with one eye, hurled an indignant look at the boy, while 
 with the other, he levelled (if aught so crooked can be said to 
 level anything) a furious glance at his archer.
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 351 
 
 The archer swore a sulky oath. "He is the better man!" 
 said he. " I suppose, young chap, you take the gold chain ? '' 
 
 "The gold chain? " said Otto. " Prefer a gold chain to a cap 
 worked by your august hand ? Never ! " and, advancing to the 
 balcony where the princess, who now came to herself, was sitting, 
 he kneeled down before her, and received the velvet cap, which, 
 blushing as scarlet as the cap itself, the Princess Helen placed on 
 his golden ringlets. Once more their eyes met — their hearts 
 thrilled. They had never spoken, but they knew they loved each 
 other for ever. 
 
 " Wilt thou take service with the Rowsky of Donnerblitz ? " 
 said that individual to the youth. " Thou shalt be captain of my 
 archers in place of yon blundering nincompoop, whom thou hast 
 overcome." 
 
 " Yon blundering nincompoop is a skilful and gallant archer," 
 replied Otto, haughtily; "and I will not take service with the 
 Eowsky of Donnerblitz." 
 
 " Wilt thou enter the household of the Prince of Cleves ? " 
 said the father of Helen, laughing, and not a little amused at the 
 haughtiness of the humble archer. 
 
 " I would die for the Duke of Cleves and Ids family" said Otto, 
 bowing low. He laid a particular and a tender emphasis on the 
 word family. Helen knew what he meant. She was the family. 
 In fact, her mother was no more, and her papa had no other 
 offspring. 
 
 " What is thy name, good fellow ? " said the prince, " that my 
 steward may enrol thee." 
 
 " Sir," said Otto, again blushing, "I am Otto the Archer."
 
 352 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE MAKTTE OF LOVE. 
 
 The archers who had travelled in company with young Otto, 
 gave a handsome dinner in compliment to the success of our hero ; 
 at which his friend distinguished himself as usual in the eating 
 and drinking department. Squintoff, the Kowski bowman, de- 
 clined to attend, so great was the envy of the brute at the youth- 
 ful hero's superiority. As for Otto himself, he sate on the right 
 hand of the chairman, but it was remarked that he could not eat. 
 Gentle reader of my page ! thou knowest why full well. He was 
 too much in love to have any appetite ; for though I myself, when 
 labouring under that passion, never found my consumption of 
 victuals diminish, yet remember our Otto was a hero of romance, 
 and they never are hungry when they're in love. 
 
 The next day, the young gentleman proceeded to enrol himself 
 in the corps of Archers of the Prince of Cleves, and with him 
 came his attached squire, who vowed he never would leave him. 
 As Otto threw aside his own elegant dress, and donned the liverv 
 of the House of Cleves, the noble Childe sighed not a little — 'twas 
 a splendid uniform 'tis true, but still it teas a livery, and one of 
 his proud spirit ill bears another's cognizances. " They are the 
 colours of the prince's, however," said he, consoling himself; "and 
 what suffering would I not undergo for her ? " As for "Wolfgang^ 
 the squire, it may well be supposed that the good-natured, low- 
 born fellow had no such scruples ; but he was glad enough to 
 exchange for the pink hose, the yellow jacket, the pea-green cloak, 
 and orange-tawny hat, with which the duke's steward supplied 
 him, the homely patched doublet of green which he had worn for 
 years past. 
 
 " Look at yon two archers," said the Prince of Cleves to his 
 guest the Eowski of Donncrblitz, as they were strolling on the 
 battlements after dinner, smoking their cigars as usual. His 
 highness pointed to our two young friends, who were mounting
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 353 
 
 guard for the first time. " See yon two bowmen — mark their 
 bearing ! One is the youth who beat thy Squintoff, and t'other, 
 an I mistake not, won the third prize at the butts. Both wear 
 the same uniform — the colours of my house — yet, would' st not 
 swear that the one was but a churl, and the other a noble 
 gentlemen ? " 
 
 "Which looks like the nobleman ? " said the Eowski, as black 
 as thunder. 
 
 " Which? why, young Otto, to be sure," said the Princess 
 Helena, eagerly. The young lady was following the pair, but 
 under pretence of disliking the odour of the cigar, she had refused 
 the Eowski's proffered arm, and was loitering behind with her 
 parasol. 
 
 Her interposition in favour of her young protege only made the 
 black and jealous Eowski more ill-humoured. " How long is it, 
 Sir Prince of Cleves," said he, " that the churls who wear your 
 livery permit themselves to wear the ornaments of noble knights ? 
 What but a noble dare wear ringlets such as yon springald's ? 
 Ho, archer ! " roared he, " come hither, fellow." And Otto stood 
 before him. As he came, and presenting arms stood respectfully 
 before the prince and his savage guest, he looked for one moment 
 at the lovely Helena — their eyes met, their hearts beat simul- 
 taneously : and, quick, two little blushes appeared in the cheek of 
 either. I have seen one ship at sea answering another's signal so. 
 While they are so regarding each other let us just remind our 
 readers of the great estimation in which the hair was held in the 
 jSorth. Only nobles were permitted to wear it long. When a 
 man disgraced himself, a shaving was sure to follow. Penalties 
 were inflicted upon villains or vassals who sported ringlets. See 
 the works of Aurelius Tonsor ; Hirsutus de Nobilitate Capillari ; 
 Eolandus de Oleo Macassari : Schnurrbart Frisirische Alterthum- 
 skunde, &c. 
 
 " We must have those ringlets of thine cut, good fellow," said 
 the Duke of Cleves good-naturedly, but wishing to spare the feel- 
 ings of his gallant recruit. " 'Tis against the regulation cut of my 
 archer guard." 
 
 " Cut off. my hair ! " cried Otto agonised. 
 
 " Ay, and thine ears with it, yokel," roared Donnerblitz. 
 
 VOL. III. A A
 
 3 r 4 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 " Peace, noble Eulenschreekenstein," said the duke with dignity, 
 "let the Duke of Cleves deal as ke will with his own men-at-arms 
 — and you, young sir, unloose tke grip of thy dagger." 
 
 Otto, indeed, had convulsively grasped his snickersnee, with 
 intent to plunge it into the heart of the Eowski, but his politer 
 feelings overcame him. "The count need not fear, my lord," said 
 he— "a lady is present." And he took off his orange-tawny cap 
 and bowed low. Ah! what a pang shot through the heart of 
 Helena, as she thought that those lovely ringlets must be shorn 
 from that beautiful head ! 
 
 Otto's mind was too in commotion. His feelings as a gentle- 
 man — let us add, his pride as a man — for who is not, let us ask, 
 proud of a good head of hair ? — waged war within his soul. He 
 expostulated with the prince. " It was never in his contempla- 
 tion," he said, "on taking service, to undergo the operation of 
 hair-cutting." 
 
 "Thou art free to go or stay, sir archer," said the prince 
 pettishly. " I will have no churls imitating noblemen in my ser- 
 vice; I will bandy no conditions with archers of my guard." 
 
 "My resolve is taken," said Otto, irritated too in his turn. 
 
 "I will . . ." 
 
 " What!" cried Helena, breathless with intense agitation. 
 
 " I will stay" answered Otto. The poor girl almost fainted 
 with joy. The Eowski frowned with demoniac fury, and grinding 
 his teeth and cursing in the horrible German jargon stalked away. 
 "So be it," said the Prince of Cleves, taking his daughter's arm — 
 " and here comes Snipwitz, my barber, who shall do the business 
 for you." With this the prince too moved on, feeling in his heart 
 not a little compassion for the lad ; for Adolf of Cleves had been 
 handsome in his youth, and distinguished for the ornament of 
 which lie was now depriving his archer. 
 
 Snipwitz led the poor lad into a side-room, and there — in a word 
 — operated upon him. The golden curls — fair curls that his mother 
 bad so often played with! — fell under the shears and round the lad's 
 knees, until he looked as if he was sitting in a bath of sunbeams. 
 
 When the frightful act had been performed. Otto, who entered 
 the little chamber in the tower, ringletted like Apollo, issued from 
 it as cropped as a charity-boy.
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 355 
 
 See how melancholy he looks, now that the operation is over ! — 
 And no wonder. He was thinking what would be Helena's opinion 
 of him, now that one of his chief personal ornaments was gone. 
 " Wfll she know me ? " thought he, " will she love me after this 
 hideous mutilation ? '' 
 
 Yielding to these gloomy thoughts, and, indeed, rather unwill- 
 imr to be seen bv his comrades, now that he was so disfigured, the 
 voung gentleman had hidden himself behind one of the buttresses 
 of the wall, a prey to natural despondency, when he saw something 
 which instantly restored him to good spirits. He saw the lovely 
 Helena cominsr towards the chamber where the odious barber had 
 performed upon him, — coming forward timidly, looking round her 
 anxiously, blushing with delightful agitation, — and presently seeing, 
 as she thought, the coast clear, she entered the apartment. She 
 stooped down, and, ah ! what was Otto's joy when he saw her pick 
 up a beautiful golden lock of his hair, press it to her lips, and then 
 hide it in her bosom ! JSo carnation ever blushed so redly as 
 Helena did when she came out after performing this feat. Then 
 she hurried straightway to her own apartments in the castle, and 
 Otto, whose first impulse was to come out from his hiding-place, 
 and, falling at her feet, call Heaven and Earth to witness to his 
 passion, with difficulty restrained his feelings, and let her pass : 
 but the love-stricken young hero was so delighted with this evi- 
 dent proof of reciprocated attachment, that all regret at losing his 
 ringlets at once left him, and he vowed he would sacrifice not onlv 
 his hair, but his head, if need were, to do her service. 
 
 That very afternoon, no small bustle and conversation took place 
 in the castle, on account of the sudden departure of the Rowski of 
 Eulenschreckenstein, with all his train and equipage. He went 
 away in the greatest wrath, it was said, after a long and loud con- 
 versation with the prince. As that potentate conducted his guest 
 to the gate, walking rather demurely and shamefacedly by his side, 
 as he gathered his attendants in the court, and there mounted his 
 charger, the Eowski ordered his trumpets to sound, and scornfully 
 flung a largesse of gold among the servitors and men-at-arms of 
 the house of Cleves, who were marshalled in the court. " Fare- 
 well, sir prince," said he to his host ; " I quit you now suddenly ; 
 but remember, it is not my last visit to the Castle of Cleves ; " 
 
 a a 2
 
 356 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 and, ordering his baud to play " See the Conquering Hero comes," 
 he clattered away through the drawbridge. The Princess Helena 
 was not present at his departure ; and the venerable Prince of 
 Cleves looked rather moody and chapfallen when his guest left 
 him. He visited all the castle defences pretty accurately that 
 night, and inquired of his officers the state of the ammunition, 
 provisions, &c. He said nothing ; but the Princess Helena's maid 
 did : and everybody knew that the Eowski had made his proposals, 
 had been rejected, and, getting up in a violent fur} r , had called for 
 his people, and sworn by his great gods that he would not enter 
 the castle again until he rode over the breach, lance in hand, the 
 conqueror of Cleves and all belonging to it. 
 
 No little consternation was spread through the garrison at the 
 news. Por everybody knew the Eowski to be one of the most 
 intrepid and powerful soldiers in all Germany, — one of the most 
 skilful generals. Generous to extravagance to his own followers, 
 he was ruthless to the enemy : and a hundred stories were told of 
 the dreadful barbarities exercised by him in several towns and 
 castles which he had captured and sacked. And poor Helena had 
 the pain of thinking, that in consequence of her refusal she was 
 dooming all the men, women, and children of the principality to 
 indiscriminate and horrible slaughter. 
 
 The dreadful surmises regarding a war received in a few days 
 dreadful confirmation. It was noon, and the worthy Prince of 
 Cleves was taking his dinner (though the honest warrior had little 
 appetite for that meal for some time past), when trumpets were 
 heard at the gate; and presently the herald of the Eowski of 
 Donnerblitz, clad in a tabard on which the arms of the count 
 were blazoned, entered the dining-hall. A page bore a steel 
 gauntlet on a cushion; Bleu Sanglier had his hat on his head. 
 The Prince of Cleves put on his own as the herald came up to the 
 chair of state where the sovereign sate. 
 
 " Silence for Bleu Sanglier," cried the prince, gravely. " Say 
 your say, sir herald. 
 
 " Iu the name of the high and mighty Eowski, Prince of Don- 
 nerblitz, Margrave of Eulenschreckenstein, Count of Krotenwald, 
 Nchnaiizestadt, and Galgenhiigel, hereditary Grand Corkscrew of 
 the Holy Roman Empire— to you, Adolf the Twenty-third, Prince
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 357 
 
 of Cleves, I, Bleu Sanglier, bring war and defiance. Alone, and 
 lance to lance, or twenty to twenty in field or in fort, on plain or 
 on mountain, the noble Bowski defies you. Here, or wherever he 
 shall meet you, he proclaims war to the death between you and 
 him. In token whereof, here is his glove." And taking the steel 
 glove from the page, Bleu Boar flung it clanging on the marble 
 floor. 
 
 The Princess Helena turned deadly pale : but the prince with a 
 good assurance flung down his own glove, calling upon some one 
 to raise the Bowski' s ; which Otto accordingly took up and pre- 
 sented to him, on his knee. 
 
 " Boteler, fill my goblet," said the prince to that functionary, 
 who, clothed in tight black hose with a white kerchief, and a 
 napkin on his dexter arm, stood obsequiously by his master's 
 chair. The goblet was filled with Malvoisie : it held about three 
 quarts ; a precious golden hanap carved by the cunning artificer, 
 Benvenuto the Florentine. 
 
 " Drink, Bleu Sanglier," said the prince, " and put the goblet in 
 thy bosom. AVear this chain, furthermore, for my sake." And 
 so saying, Prince Adolf flung a precious chain of emeralds round 
 the herald's neck. " An invitation to battle was ever a welcome 
 call to Adolf of Cleves." So saying, and bidding his people take 
 good care of Bleu Sanglier's retinue, the prince left the hall with 
 his daughter. All were marvelling at his dignity, courage, and 
 generosity. 
 
 But, though affecting unconcern, the mind of Prince Adolf was 
 far from tranquil. He was no longer the stalwart knight who, in 
 the reign of Stanislaus Augustus, had, with his naked fist, beaten 
 a lion to death in three minutes; and alone had kept the postern 
 of Peterwaradin for two hours against seven hundred Turkish 
 janissaries, Avho were assailing it. Those deeds which had made 
 the heir of Cleves famous were done thirty years syne. A free 
 liver since he had come into his principality, and of a lazy turn, 
 he had neglected the athletic exercises which had made him in 
 youth so famous a champion, and indolence had borne its usual 
 fruits. He tried his old battle-sword — that famous blade with 
 which, in Palestine, he had cut an elephant-driver in two pieces, 
 and split asunder the skull of the elephant which he rode. Adolf
 
 353 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 of Cleves could scarcely now lift the weapon over his head. He 
 tried his armour. It was too tight for him. And the old soldier 
 hurst into tears, when he found he could not buckle it. Such a 
 man was not fit to encouuter the terrible Tiowski in single combat. 
 
 !Nbr could he hope to make head against him for any time in the 
 field. The prince's territories were small. His vassals proverbially 
 lazy and peaceable. His treasury empty. The dismallest prospects 
 were before him : and he passed a sleepless night writing to his 
 friends for succour, and calculating with his secretary the small 
 amount of the resources which he could bring to aid him against 
 his advancing and powerful enemy. 
 
 Helena's pillow that evening was also unvisited by slumber. 
 Sbe lay awake thinking of Otto, — thinking of the danger and the 
 ruin her refusal to marry had brought upon her dear papa. Otto, 
 too, slept not : but Ms waking thoughts were brilliant and heroic : 
 the noble Childe thought how he should defend the princess, and 
 win los and honour in the ensuing combat ! 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE CHAMPION. 
 
 And now the noble Cleves began in good earnest to prepare his 
 castle for the threatened siege. He gathered in all the available 
 cattle round the property, and the pigs round many miles ; and a 
 dreadful slaughter of horned and snouted animals took place, — 
 the whole castle resounding with the lowing of the oxen and the 
 squeaks of the gruntlings, destined to provide food for the garrison. 
 These, when slain, (her gentle spirit, of course, would not allow of 
 her witnessing that disagreeable operation,) the lovely Helena, 
 with the assistance of her maidens, carefully salted and pickled. 
 Corn was brought in in great quantities, the prince paying for the 
 same when he had money, giving bills when he could get credit 
 or occasionally, marry, sending out a few stout men-at-arms to 
 forage, who brought in wheat without money or credit either. 
 The charming princess, amidst the intervals of her labours, went
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 359 
 
 about encouraging the garrison, who vowed to a man they ■would 
 die for a single sweet smile of hers ; and in order to make their 
 inevitable sufferings as easy as possible to the gallant fellows, she 
 and the apothecaries got ready a plenty of efficacious simples, and 
 scraped a vast quantity of lint to bind their warriors' wounds 
 withal. All the fortifications were strengthened ; the fosses care- 
 fully filled with spikes and water ; large stones placed over the 
 gates, convenient to tumble on the heads of the assaulting parties ; 
 and cauldrons prepared, with furnaces to melt up pitch, brimstone, 
 boiling oil, &c, wherewith hospitably to receive them. Having 
 the keenest eye in the whole garrison, young Otto was placed on 
 the topmost tower, to watch for the expected coming of the 
 belea^uerius: host. 
 
 They were seen only too soon. Long ranks of shining spears 
 were seen glittering in the distance, and the army of the Eowski 
 soon made its appearance in battle's magnificently stern array. 
 The tents of the renowned chief and his numerous warriors were 
 pitched out of arrow-shot of the castle, but in fearful proximity ; 
 and when his army had taken up its position, an officer with a 
 flag of truce and a trumpet was seen advancing to the castle-gate. 
 It was the same herald who had previously borne his master's 
 defiance to the Prince of Cleves. He came once more to the castle- 
 gate, and there proclaimed that the noble Count of Eulenschreck- 
 enstein was in arms without, ready to do battle with the Prince 
 of Cleves, or his champion ; that he would remain in arms for 
 three days, ready for combat. If no man met him, at the end of 
 that period he would deliver an assault, and would give quarter to 
 no single soul in the garrison. So saying, the herald nailed his 
 lord's gauntlet on the castle-gate. As before, the prince flung him 
 over another glove from the wall ; though how he was to defend 
 himself from such a warrior, or get a champion, or resist the piti- 
 less assault that must follow, the troubled old nobleman knew not 
 in the least. 
 
 The Princess Helen passed the night in the chapel, vowing tons 
 of wax-candles to all the patron saints of the House of Cleves, if 
 they would raise her up a defender. 
 
 But how did the noble girl's heart sink — how were her notions 
 of the purity of man shaken within her gentle bosom, by the dread
 
 360 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 intelligence which reached her the next morning after the defiance 
 of the Bowski. At roll-call it was discovered that he on whom 
 she principally relied — he whom her fond heart had singled out as 
 her champion, had proved faithless ! Otto, the degenerate Otto, 
 had fled! His comrade, "Wolfgang, had gone with him. A rope 
 was found dangling from the casement of their chamber, and they 
 must have swum the moat and passed over to the enemy in the 
 darkness of the previous night. " A pretty lad was this fair 
 spoken archer of thine ! " said the prince her father to her ; " and 
 a pretty kettle offish hast thou cooked for the fondest of fathers." 
 She retired weeping to her apartment. Never before had that 
 young heart felt so wretched. 
 
 That morning, at nine o'clock, as they were going to breakfast, 
 the Eowski's trumpets sounded. Clad in complete armour, and 
 mounted on his enormous piebald charger, he came out of his 
 pavilion, and rode slowly up and down in front of the castle. He 
 was ready there to meet a champion. 
 
 Three times each day did the odious trumpet sound the same 
 notes of defiance. Thrice daily did the steel-clad Bowski come 
 forth challenging the combat. The first day passed, and there was 
 no answer to his summons. The second day came and went,' but 
 no champion had risen to defend. The taunt of his shrill clarion 
 remained without answer ; and the sun went down upon the 
 wretchedest father and daughter in all the land of Christendom. 
 
 The trumpets sounded an hour after sunrise, an hour after 
 noon, and an hour before sunset. The third day came, but with 
 it brought no hope. The first and second summons met no 
 response. At five o'clock the old prince called his daughter and 
 blessed her. " I go to meet this Bowski," said he. " It may be 
 we shall meet no more, my Helen— my child — the innocent cause 
 of all this grief. If I shall fall to-night the Bowski's victim, 'twill 
 be that life is nothing without honour." And so saying, he put 
 into her hands a dagger, and bade her sheathe it in her own breast 
 so soon as the terrible champion had carried the castle by storm. 
 
 This Helen most faithfully promised to do ; and her aged father 
 retired to his armoury, and donned his ancient war-worn corslet. 
 It had borne the shock of a thousand lances ere this, but it was 
 now so tight as almost to choke the knightly wearer.
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 361 
 
 The last trumpet sounded — tantara! tantara! — its shrill call rang 
 over the wide plains, and the wide plains gave back no answer. 
 Again ! — but when its notes died away, there was only a mournful, 
 an awful silence. " Farewell, my child," said the prince, bulkily 
 lifting himself into his battle- sad die. " Bemember the dagger. 
 Hark ! the trumpet sounds for the third time. Open, warders ! 
 Sound, trumpeters ! and good Saint Bendigo, guard the right." 
 
 But Puffendorf, the trumpeter, had not leisure to lift the 
 trumpet to his lips ; when, hark ! from without there came 
 another note of another clarion ! — a distant note at first, then 
 swelling fuller. Presently, in brilliant variations, the full rich 
 notes of the " Huntsman's Chorus " came clearly over the breeze ; 
 and a thousand voices of the crowd gazing over the gate, exclaimed 
 — " A champion ! a champion ! " 
 
 And, indeed, a champion had come. Issuing from the forest 
 came a knight and squire: the knight gracefully cantering an 
 elegant cream-coloured Arabian, of prodigious power — the squire 
 mounted on an unpretending grey cob, which nevertheless was an 
 animal of considerable strength and sinew. It was the squire 
 who blew the trumpet through the bars of his helmet ; the knight's 
 visor was completely down. A small prince's coronet of gold, 
 from which rose three pink ostrich feathers, marked the warrior's 
 rank : his blank shield bore no cognizance. As ffracefullv noisinir 
 his lance he rode into the green space where the Bowski's tents 
 were pitched, the hearts of all present beat with anxiety, and the 
 poor Prince of Cleves, especially, had considerable doubts about 
 his new champion. " So slim a figure as that can never compete 
 with Donnerblitz," said he, moodily, to his daughter; "but who- 
 ever he be, the fellow puts a good face on it, and rides like a man. 
 See he has touched the Bowski's shield with the point of his 
 lance ! By Saint Bendigo, a perilous venture ! " 
 
 The unknown knight had indeed defied the Bowski to the 
 death, as the Prince of Cleves remarked from the battlement 
 where he and his daughter stood to witness the combat ; and so 
 having defied his enemy, the Incognito galloped round under the 
 castle-wall, bowing elegantly to the lovely princess there, and then 
 took his ground and waited for the foe. His armour blazed in 
 the sunshine as lie sate there, motionless, on his cream-coloured
 
 •362 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 steed. He looked like one of those faiiy knights one has read of 
 — one of those celestial champions who decided so many victories 
 before the invention of gunpowder. 
 
 The Eowski's horse was speedily brought to the door of his 
 pavilion ; and that redoubted warrior, blazing in a suit of mag- 
 nificent brass armour, clattered into his saddle. Lous: waves of 
 blood-red feathers bristled over his helmet, which was farther 
 ornamented by two huge horns of the aurochs. His lance was 
 painted white and red, and he whirled the prodigious beam in the 
 air and caught it with savage glee. He laughed when he saw the 
 slim form of his antagonist ; and his soul rejoiced to meet the 
 coming battle. He dug his spurs into the enormous horse he 
 rode. The enormous horse snorted, and squealed, too, with fierce 
 pleasure. He jerked and curvetted him with a brutal playfulness, 
 and after a few minutes' turning and wheeling;, during: which 
 everybody had the leisure to admire the perfection of his equita- 
 tion, he cantered round to a point exactly opposite his enemy, and 
 pulled up his eager charger. 
 
 The old prince on the battlement was so eager for the combat, 
 that he seemed quite to forget the danger which menaced himself, 
 should his slim champion be discomfited by the tremendous knight 
 of Donnerblitz. " Go it ! " said he, flinging his truncheon into 
 the ditch ; and at the word, the two warriors rushed with whirling 
 rapidity at each other. 
 
 And now ensued a combat so terrible, that a weak female hand, 
 like that of her who pens this tale of chivalry, can never hope to 
 do justice to the terrific theme. You have seen two engines on 
 the Great Western line rush past each other with a pealing scream ? 
 So rapidly did the two warriors gallop towards one another, the 
 feathers of either streamed yards behind their backs as they 
 converged. Their shock as they met was as that of two cannon- 
 balls ; the mighty horses trembled and reeled with the con- 
 cussion ; the lance aimed at the Eowski's helmet bore off the 
 coronet, the horns, the helmet itself, and hurled them to an 
 incredible distance : a piece of the Eowski's left ear was carried off 
 on the point of the nameless warrior's weapon. How had he fared ? 
 J I is adversary's weapon had glanced harmless along the blank sur- 
 face of his polished buckler ; and the victory so far was with him.
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 363 
 
 The expression of the Eowski's face, as, bare-headed, he glared 
 on his enemy with fierce blood-shot eyeballs, was one worthy of a 
 demon. The imprecatory expressions which he made use of can 
 never be copied by a feminine pen. 
 
 His opponent magnanimously declined to take advantage of the 
 opportunity thus offered him of finishing the combat, by splitting 
 his opponent's skull with his curtal-axe, and, riding back to his 
 starting-place, bent his lance's point to the ground, in token that 
 he would wait until the Count of Eulenschreckeustein was 
 helmeted afresh. 
 
 "Blessed Bendigo!" cried the prince, "thou art a gallant 
 lance ; but why didst not rap the schelm's brain out ? " 
 
 " Bring me a fresh helmet ! " yelled the Eowski. Another 
 casque was brought to him by his trembling squire. 
 
 As soon as he had braced it, he drew his great flashing sword 
 from his side, and rushed at his enemy, roaring hoarsely his cry 
 of battle. The unknown knight's sword was unsheathed in a 
 moment, and at the next the two blades were clanking together 
 the dreadful music of the combat! 
 
 The Donnerblitz wielded his with his usual savageness and 
 activity. It whirled round his adversary's head with frightful 
 rapidity. Now it carried away a feather of his plume ; now it 
 shore off a leaf of his coronet. The flail of the thrasher does not 
 fall more swiftly upon the corn. Tor many minutes it was the 
 Unknown's only task to defend himself from the tremendous 
 activity of the enemy. 
 
 But even the Eowski's strength would slacken after exertion. 
 The blows began to fall less thick anon, and the point of the 
 unknown knight began to make dreadful play. It found and 
 penetrated every joint of the Donnerblitz's armour. Now it 
 nicked him in the shoulder, where the vambraee was buckled to 
 the corslet ; now it bored a shrewd hole under the light brassart, 
 and blood followed ; now, with fatal dexterity, it darted through the 
 vizor, and came back to the recover deeply tinged with blood. A 
 scream of rage followed the last thrust ; and no wonder ; — it had 
 penetrated the Eowski's left eye. 
 
 His blood was trickling through a dozen orifices ; he was almost 
 choking in his helmet with loss of breath, and loss of blood, and
 
 364 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 rage. Gasping with fury, he drew back his horse, flung his great 
 sword at his opponent's head, and once more plunged at him, 
 wielding his curtal-axe. 
 
 Then you should have seen the unknown knight employing the 
 same dreadful weapon ! Hitherto he had been on his defence ; 
 now he began the attack ; and the gleaming axe whirred in his 
 hand like a reed, but descended like a thunder-bolt ! " Yield ! 
 yield ! Sir Rowski," shouted he, in a calm, clear voice. 
 
 A blow dealt madly at his head was the reply. 'Twas the last 
 blow that the Count of Eulenschreckenstein ever struck in battle ! 
 The curse was on his lips as the crushing steel descended into his 
 brain, and split it in two. He rolled like a log from his horse ; 
 and his enemy's knee was in a moment on his chest, and the 
 dagger of mercy at his throat, as the knight once more called 
 upon him to yield. 
 
 But there was no answer from within the helmet. When it 
 was withdrawn, the teeth were crunched together; the mouth 
 that should have spoken, grinned a ghastly silence ; one eye still 
 glared with hate and fury, but it was glazed with the film of 
 death ! 
 
 The red orb of the sun was just then dipping into the Rhine. 
 The unknown knight, vaulting once more into his saddle, made a 
 graceful obeisance to the Prince of Cleves and his daughter, 
 without a word, and galloped back into the forest, whence he had 
 issued an hour before sunset. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Tue consternation which ensued on the death of the Rowski, 
 speedily sent all his camp-followers, army, &c, to the right-about. 
 They struck their tents at the first news of his discomfiture; and 
 each man laying hold of what he could, the whole of the gallant 
 force which had marched under his banner in the morning had 
 disappeared ere the sun rose. 
 
 On that night, as it may be imagined, the gates of the Castle 
 of Cleves were not shut. Everybody was free to come in. Wine-
 
 A LEGEND OF THE KHINE. 365 
 
 butts were broached in all the courts ; the pickled meat prepared 
 in such lots for the siege was distributed among the people, who 
 crowded to congratulate their beloved sovereign on his victory; 
 and the prince, as was customary with that good man, who never 
 lost an opportunity of giving a dinner-party, had a splendid enter" 
 tainment made ready for the upper classes, the whole concluding 
 with a tasteful display of fireworks. 
 
 In the midst of these entertainments, our old friend the Count 
 of Hombourg arrived at the Castle. The stalwart old warrior 
 swore by Saint Bugo that he was grieved the killing of the 
 Eowski had been taken out of his hand. The laughing Cleves 
 vowed by Saint Beudigo, Hombourg could never have finished off 
 his enemy so satisfactorily as the unknown knight had just done. 
 
 But who was he ? was the question which now agitated the 
 bosom of these two old nobles. How to find him — how to reward ' 
 the champion and restorer of the honour and happiness of Cleves ? 
 They agreed over supper that he should be sought for everywhere. 
 Beadles were sent round the principal cities within fifty miles, 
 and the description of the knight advertised in the Journal de 
 Francfort and the Allgemeine Zeitunrj. The hand of the Princess 
 Helena was solemnly offered to him in these advertisements, with 
 the reversion of the Prince of Cleves' s splendid, though somewhat 
 dilapidated, property. 
 
 " But we don't know him, my dear papa," faintly ejaculated 
 that young lady. " Some impostor may come in a suit of plain 
 armour, and pretend that he was the champion who overcame the 
 Rowski (a prince who had his faults certainly, but whose attach- 
 ment for me I can never forget) ; and how are you to say whether 
 he is the real knight or not ? There are so many deceivers in this 
 world," added the princess in tears, " that one can't be too cautious 
 now." The fact is, that she was thinking of the desertion of Otto 
 in the morning, by which instance of faithlessness her heart was 
 well-nigh broken. 
 
 As for that youth and his comrade "Wolfgang, to the astonish- 
 ment of everybody at their impudence, they came to the archers' 
 mess that night, as if nothing had happened ; got their supper, 
 partaking both of meat and drink most plentifully ; fell asleep 
 when their comrades began to describe the events of the day, and
 
 366 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 the admirable achievements of the unknown warrior: and, turning 
 into their hammocks, did not appear on parade in the morning 
 until twenty minutes after the names were called. 
 
 When the Prince of Cleves heard of the return of these deserters 
 he was in a towering passion. " Where were you, fellows," shouted 
 he, " during the time my castle was at its utmost need?" 
 
 Otto replied, " We were out on particular business." 
 
 "Does a soldier ieave his post on the day of battle, sir?" 
 exclaimed the prince. " You know the reward of such — Death I 
 and death you merit. But you are a soldier only of yesterday, 
 and yesterday's victory has made me merciful. Hanged you shall 
 not be, as you merit— only flogged, both of you. Parade the men, 
 Colonel Tickelstern, after breakfast, and give these scoundrels five 
 hundred a piece." 
 
 You should have seen how young Otto bounded, when this 
 information was thus abruptly conveyed to him. " Plog one," 
 cried he. " Plog Otto, of ." 
 
 "Not so, my father," said the Princess Helena, who had been 
 standing by during the conversation, and who had looked at Otto 
 all the while with the most ineffable scorn. " Not so, although 
 these persons have forgotten their duty," (she laid a particularly 
 sarcastic emphasis on the word persons,) " we have had no need 
 of their services, and have luckily found others more faithful. 
 You promised your daughter a boon, papa ; it is the pardon of 
 these two 2>ersons. Let them go, and q ait a service they have dis- 
 graced ; a mistress— that is, a master— they have deceived." 
 
 • Drum 'em out of the castle, Tickelstern ; strip their uniforms 
 from their backs, and never let me hear of the scoundrels again." 
 So saying, the old prince angrily turned on his heel to breakfast, 
 leaving the two young men to the fun and derision of their sur- 
 rounding comrades. 
 
 The noble Count of 11 ombourg, who was taking his usual airing 
 on the ramparts before breakfast, came up at this juncture, and 
 asked what Mas the row ? Otto blushed when he saw him, and 
 turned away rapidly; but the count, too, catching a glimpse of 
 him, with a hundred exclamations of joyful surprise seized upon 
 the lad, hugged him to his manly breast, kissed him most affec- 
 tionately, and almost burst into tears as he embraced him. Por,
 
 A LEGEND OF THE EHINE. 367 
 
 in sooth, the good count had thought his godson long ere this at 
 the bottom of the silver Ehine. 
 
 The Prince of Cleves, who had come to the breakfast-parlour 
 window (to invite his guest to enter, as the tea was made), 
 beheld this strange scene from the window, as did the lovely 
 tea-maker likewise, with breathless and beautiful agitation. The 
 old count and the archer strolled up and down the battlements 
 in deep conversation. By the gestures of surprise and delight 
 exhibited by the former, 'twas easy to see the young archer was 
 conveying some very strange and pleasing news to him, though 
 the nature of the conversation was not allowed to transpire. 
 
 "A godson of mine," said the noble count, when interrogated 
 over his muffins. " I know his family ; worthy people ; sad 'scape- 
 grace ; run away ; parents longing for him ; glad you did not flog 
 him ; devil to pay, and so forth." The count was a man of few 
 words, and told his tale in this brief, artless manner. But why, at 
 its conclusion, did the gentle Helena leave the room, her eyes 
 filled with tears ? She left the room once rnore to kiss a certain 
 lock of yellow hair she had pilfered. A dazzling, delicious thought, 
 a strange wild hope, arose in her soul ! 
 
 When she appeared again, she made some side-handed inquiries 
 regarding Otto (with that gentle artifice oft employed by women) ;. 
 but he was gone. He and his companion were gone. The Count 
 of Hombourg had likewise taken his departure, under pretext of 
 particular business. How lonely the vast castle seemed to Helena, 
 now that he was no longer there. The transactions of the last few 
 clays ; the beautiful archer-boy ; the offer from the Eowski (always 
 an event in a young lady's life) ; the siege of the castle ; the death 
 of her truculent admirer ; all seemed like a fevered dream to her; 
 all was passed away, and had left no trace behind. JN"o trace ? 
 yes ! oue ; a little insignificant lock of golden hair, over which the 
 young creature wept so much that she put it out of curl : passing 
 hours and hours in the summer-house, where the operation had 
 been performed. 
 
 On the second day (it is my belief she would have gone into a 
 consumption and died of languor, if the event had been delayed a 
 day longer) a rnesseuger, with a trumpet, brought a letter in haste 
 to the Prince of Cleves, who was, as usual, taking refreshment.
 
 363 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 
 
 11 To the High and Mighty Prince," &c, the letter ran. " The 
 Champion who had the honour of engaging on "Wednesday last 
 with his late Excellency the Eowski of Donnerblitz, presents his 
 compliments to II.S.H. the Prince of Cleves. Through the 
 medium of the public prints the C. has been made acquainted 
 with the flattering proposal of His Serene Highness relative to a 
 union between himself (the Champion) and Her Serene Highness 
 the Princess Helena of Cleves. The Champion accepts with 
 pleasure that polite invitation, and will have the honour of waiting 
 upon the Prince and Princess of Cleves about half an hour after 
 the receipt of this letter." 
 
 " Tol lol de rol, girl," shouted the prince with heartfelt joy. 
 (Have you not remarked, dear friend, how often in novel books, 
 and on the stage, joy is announced by the above burst of insensate 
 monosyllables ?) " Tol lol de rol. Don thy best kirtle, child ; 
 thy husband will be here anon." And Helena retired to arrange 
 her toilet for this awful event in the life of a young woman. 
 "When she returned, attired to welcome her defender, her young 
 cheek was as pale as the white satin slip and orange sprigs she wore. 
 
 She was scarce seated on the dais by her father's side, when a 
 huge flourish of trumpets from without proclaimed the arrival of 
 the Champion. Helena felt quite sick; a draught of ether was 
 necessary to restore her tranquillity. 
 
 The great door was flung open. He entered, — the same tall 
 warrior, slim, and beautiful, blazing in shining steel. He approached 
 the prince's throne, supported on each side by a friend likewise in 
 armour. He knelt gracefully on one knee. 
 
 " I come," said he, in a voice trembling with emotion, " to 
 claim, as per advertisement, the hand of the lovely Lady 
 Helena;" and he held out a copy of the AUgemeine Zeitung, as 
 he spoke. 
 
 "Art thou noble, sir knight?" asked the Prince of Cleves. 
 
 "As noble as yourself," answered the kneeling steel. 
 
 " "Who answers for thee ?" 
 
 " I, Carl Margrave of Godesberg, his father!" said the knight 
 on the right hand, lifting up his visor. 
 
 "And I— Ludwig, Count of Hombourg, his godfather!" said 
 the knight on the left, doing likewise.
 
 A LEGEND OF THE RHINE. 369 
 
 The kneeling knight lifted up his visor now, and looked on 
 Helena. 
 
 " I knew it was" said she, and fainted as she saw Otto, the 
 archer. 
 
 But she was soon brought to, gentles, as I have small need to 
 tell ye. In a very few days after, a great marriage took place a± 
 Cleves, under the patronage of Saint Bugo, Saint Buffo, and Saint 
 Bendigo. After the marriage ceremony, the happiest and hand- 
 somest pair in the world drove off in a chaise-and-four, to pass the 
 honey-moon at Kissingen. The Lady Theodora, -whom we left 
 locked up in her convent a long while since, was prevailed to come 
 back to Godesberg, where she was reconciled to her husband. 
 Jealous of her daughter-in-law, she idolised her son, and spoiled 
 all her little grandchildren. And so all are happy, and my simple 
 tale is done. 
 
 I read it in an old — old book, in a mouldy old circulating 
 library. 'Twas written in the French tongue, by the noble 
 Alexandre Dumas ; but 'tis probable that he stole it from some 
 other, and that the other had filched it from a former tale-teller. 
 For nothing is new under the sun. Things die and are repro- 
 duced only. And so it is that the forgotten tale of the great 
 Dumas reappears under the signature of 
 
 Theresa Mac "Whirter. 
 
 Whistlebmkie, N.B., December 1. 
 
 VOL. III. B B
 
 
 EEBECCA AND ROWEXA. 
 
 OR ROMANCE UPON ROMANCE. 
 
 B b 2
 
 EEBECOA AND BOWENA. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 THE OTEETUEE. — COMMENCEMENT OF THE BUSINESS. 
 
 "Well-beloved novel readers and gentle patronesses of romance, 
 assuredly it has often occurred to every one of you, that the books 
 •we delight in have very unsatisfactory conclusions, and end quite 
 prematurely with page 320 of the third volume. At that epoch 
 of the history it is well known that the hero is seldom more than 
 thirty years old, and the heroine by consequence some seven or 
 eight years younger ; and I "would ask any of you whether it is 
 fair to suppose that people after the above age have nothing 
 worthy of note in their lives, and cease to exist as they drive 
 away from Saint George's, Hanover Square? You, dear young 
 ladies, who get your knowledge of life from the circulating library, 
 may be led to imagine that when the marriage business is done, 
 and Emilia is whisked off in the new travelling carriage, by the 
 side of the enraptured Earl ; or Belinda, breaking away from the 
 tearful embraces of her excellent mother, dries her own lovely 
 eyes upon the throbbing waistcoat of her bridegroom — you may 
 be apt, I say, to suppose that all is over then, that Emilia and the 
 Earl are going to be happy for the rest of their lives in his Lord- 
 ship's romantic castle in the north, and Belinda and her young 
 clergyman to enjoy uninterrupted bliss in their rose-trellised 
 parsonage in the west of England : but some there be among the 
 novel-reading classes — old experienced folks — who know better 
 than this. Some there be who Lave been married, and found that 
 they have still something to see and to do and to suffer mayhap ;
 
 374 KEBECCA AND EOWENA. 
 
 and that adventures, and pains, and pleasures, and taxes, and 
 sunrises and settings, and the business and joys and griefs of life 
 go on after as before the nuptial ceremony. 
 
 Therefore I say, it is an unfair advantage, which the novelist 
 takes of hero and heroine, as of his inexperienced reader, to say 
 good-bye to the two former, as soon as ever they are made 
 husband and wife; and have often wished that additions should 
 be made to all works of fiction, which have been brought to abrupt 
 terminations in the manner described ; and that we should hear 
 what occurs to the sober married man, as well as to the ardent 
 bachelor ; to the matron, as well as to the blushing spinster. 
 And in this respect I admire (and would desire to imitate,) the 
 noble and prolific French author, Alexandre Dumas, who carries 
 his heroes from early youth down to the most venerable old 
 age ; and does not let them rest until they are so old, that it 
 is full time the poor fellows should get a little peace and 
 quiet. A hero is much too valuable a gentleman to be put 
 upon the retired list, in the prime and vigour of his youth ; 
 and I wish to know, what lady among us would like to be 
 put on the shelf, and thought no longer interesting, because 
 she has a family growing up, and is four or five-and-thirty years 
 of age ? I have known ladies at sixty, with hearts as tender, 
 and ideas as romantic, as anv voun» misses' of sixteen. Let us 
 have middle-aged novels then, as well as your extremely juvenile 
 legends : let the young ones be warned, that the old folks have a 
 right to be interesting : and that a lady may continue to have a 
 heart, although she is somewhat stouter than she was when a 
 school-girl, and a man his feelings, although he gets his hair from 
 Truefitt's. 
 
 Thus I would desire, that the biographies of many of our most 
 illustrious personages of romance, should be continued by fitting 
 hands, and that they should be heard of, until at least a decent 
 age. — Look at Mr. James's heroes : they invariably marry young. 
 Look at Mr. Dickens's : they disappear from the scene when they 
 are mere chits. I trust these authors, who are still alive, will see 
 the propriety of telling us something more about people in whom 
 we took a considerable interest, and who must be at present strong 
 and hearty, and in the full vigour of health and intellect. And in
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 375 
 
 the tales of the great Sir Walter (may honour be to his name), I 
 am sure there are a number of people who are untimely carried 
 away from us, and of whom we ought to hear more. 
 
 My dear Eebecca, daughter of Isaac of York, has always, in my 
 mind, been one of these; nor can I ever believe that such a 
 woman, so admirable, so tender, so heroic, so beautiful, could 
 disappear altogether before such another woman as Eowena, that 
 vapid, flaxen-headed creature, who is, in my humble opinion, 
 unworthy of Ivanhoe, and unworthy of her place as heroine. Had 
 both of them got their rights, it ever seemed to me that Eebecca 
 would have had the husband, and Eowena would have gone off to 
 a convent and shut herself up, where I, for pne, would never have 
 taken the trouble of inquiring for her. 
 
 But after all she married Ivanhoe. "What is to be done ? 
 There is no help for it. There it is in black and white at the end 
 of the third volume of Sir Walter Scott's chronicle, that the 
 couple were joined together in matrimony. And must the Disin- 
 herited Knight, whose blood has been fired by the suns of 
 Palestine, and whose heart has been warmed in the company of 
 the tender and beautiful Eebecca, sit down contented for life by 
 the side of such a frigid piece of propriety as that icy, faultless, 
 prim, niminy-piminy Eowena ? Forbid it fate, forbid it poetical 
 justice ! There is a simple plan for setting matters right, and 
 giving all parties their due, which is here submitted to the novel- 
 reader. Ivanhoe's history must have had a continuation ; and it 
 is this which ensues. I may be wrong in some particulars of the 
 narrative, — as what writer will not be ? — but of the main incidents 
 of the history, I have in my own mind no sort of doubt, and 
 confidently submit them to that generous public which likes to see 
 virtue righted, true love rewarded, and the brilliant Eairy descend 
 out of the blazing chariot at the end of the pantomime, and make 
 Harlequin and Columbine happy. What, if reality be not so, 
 gentlemen and ladies ; and if, after dancing a variety of jigs and 
 antics, and jumping in and out of endless trap-doors and windows, • 
 through life's shifting scenes, no fairy comes down to make us 
 comfortable at the close of the performance? Ah! let us give 
 our honest novel-folks the benefit of their position, and not 
 be envious of their good luck.
 
 376 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 No person who has read the preceding volumes of this history, 
 as the famous chronicler of Abbotsford has recorded them, can 
 doubt for a moment what was the result of the marriage between 
 Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe and Lady Rowena. Those who have 
 marked her conduct during her maidenhood, her distinguished 
 politeness, her spotless modesty of demeanour, her unalterable 
 coolness under all circumstances, and her lofty and gentlewoman- 
 like bearing, must be sure that her married conduct would equal 
 her spinster behaviour, and that Eowena the wife would be a 
 pattern of correctness for all the matrons of England. 
 
 Such was the fact. For miles around Rotherwood her character 
 for piety was known. Her castle was a rendezvous for all the 
 clergy and monks of the district, whom she fed with the richest 
 viands, while she pinched herself upon pulse and water. There 
 was not an invalid in the three Ridings, Saxon or Norman, but 
 the palfrey of the Lady Rowena might be seen journeying to his 
 door, in company with Father Glauber her almoner, and Brother 
 Thomas of Epsom, her leech. She lighted up all the churches in 
 Yorkshire with wax-candles, the offerings of her piety. The bells 
 of her chapel began to ring at two o'clock in the morning ; and 
 all the domestics of Rotherwood were called upon to attend at 
 matins, at complins, at nones, at vespers, and at sermon. I need 
 not say that fasting was observed with all the rigours of the 
 Church ; and that those of the servants of the Lady Rowena were 
 looked upon with most favour whose hair shirts were the roughest, 
 and who flagellated themselves with the most becoming perse- 
 verance. 
 
 Whether it was that this discipline cleared poor Wamba's wdts 
 or cooled his humour, it is certain that he became the most 
 melancholy fool in England, and if ever he ventured upon a pun 
 to the shuddering, poor servitors, who were mumbling their dry 
 crusts below the salt, it was such a faint and stale joke, that 
 nobody dared to laugh at the inuendoes of the unfortunate wag, 
 and a sickly smile was the best applause he could muster. Once, 
 indeed, when Guffo, the goose-boy (a half-witted, poor wretch) 
 laughed outright at a lamentably stale pun which Wamba palmed 
 upon him at supper-time, (it was dark, and the torches being 
 brought in, Wamba said, " Guffo, they can't see their way in the
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 377 
 
 argument, and are going to throw a little light upon the subject") 
 the Lady Eowena, being disturbed in a theological controversy 
 with Father Willibald (afterwards canonised as St. Willibald, of 
 Bareacres, hermit and confessor), called out to know what was 
 the cause of the unseemly interruption, and Guffo and Wamba 
 being pointed out as the culprits, ordered them straightway into 
 the court-yard, and three dozen to be administered to each of 
 them. 
 
 " I got you out of Front-de-Bceuf's castle," said poor Wainba, 
 piteously, appealing to Sir "Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, " and canst thou 
 not save me from the lash ? " 
 
 " Yes, from Front-de'Boeuf's castle, where yon were locked up 
 with the Jewess in the tower ! " eaid Bowena, haughtily replying 
 to the timid appeal of her husband ; " Gurth, give him four 
 dozen! " 
 
 And this was all poor Wamba got by applying for the mediation 
 of his master. 
 
 In fact, Bowena knew her own dignity so well as a princess of 
 the royal blood of England, that Sir "Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, her con- 
 sort, could scarcely call his life his own, and was made, in all 
 things, to feel the inferiority of his station. And which of us is 
 there acquainted with the sex that has not remarked this propen- 
 sity in lovely woman, and how often the wisest in the council are 
 made to be as fools at her board, and the boldest in the battle-field 
 are craven when facing her distaff ? 
 
 " Wliere you were locked up with the Jewess in the tower" was a 
 remark, too, of which "Wilfrid keenly felt, and perhaps the reader 
 will understand, the significancy. "When the daughter of Isaac of 
 York brought her diamonds and rubies — the poor, gentle victim ! 
 — and, meekly laying them at the feet of the conquering Eowena, 
 departed into foreign lands to tend the sick of her people, and to 
 brood over the bootless passion which consumed her own pure 
 heart, one would have thought that the heart of the royal lady 
 would have melted before such beauty and humility, and that she 
 would have been generous in the moment of her victory. 
 
 But did you ever know a right-minded woman pardon another 
 for being handsome and more love-worthy than herself? The 
 Lady Eowena did certainly say with mighty magnanimity to the
 
 378 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 Jewish maiden, " Come and live with me as a sister," as the far- 
 mer part of this history shows ; but Eebecca knew in her heart 
 that her ladyship's proposition was what is called bosh (in that 
 noble Eastern language w T ith which Wilfrid the Crusader was 
 familiar), or fudge, in plain Saxon ; and retired with a broken, 
 gentle spirit, neither able to bear the sight of her rival's happiness, 
 nor willing to disturb it by the contrast of her own wretchedness. 
 Eowena, like the most high-bred and virtuous of women, never 
 forgave Isaac's daughter her beauty, nor her flirtation with 
 Wilfrid (as the Saxon lady chose to term it), nor, above all, her 
 admirable diamonds and jewels, although Eowena was actually in 
 possession of them. 
 
 In a word, she was always flinging Eebecca into Ivanhoe's 
 teeth. There was not a day in his life but that unhappy warrior 
 was made to remember that a Hebrew damsel had been in love 
 with him, and that a Christian lady of fashion could never forgive 
 the insult. Eor instance, if Gurth, the swine-herd, who was now 
 promoted to be a gamekeeper and verderer, brought the account 
 of a famous wild-boar in the wood, and proposed a hunt, Eowena 
 would say, " Do, Sir Wilfrid, persecute these poor pigs — you 
 know your friends the Jews can't abide them ! " Or when, as it 
 oft would happen, our lion-hearted monarch, Eichard, in order to 
 get a loan or a benevolence from the Jews, would roast a few of 
 the Hebrew capitalists, or extract some of the principal rabbis' 
 teeth, Eowena would exult and say, " Serve them right, the mis- 
 believing wretches ! England can never be a happy country 
 until everyone of these monsters is exterminated!" Or else, 
 adopting a strain of still more savage sarcasm, would exclaim, 
 " Ivanhoe, my dear, more persecution for the Jews ! Hadn't you 
 better interfere, my love ? His majesty will do anything for 
 you ; and, you know, the Jews were always such favourites of 
 yours" or words to that effect. But, nevertheless, her ladyship 
 never lost an opportunity of wearing Eebecca's jewels at court, 
 whenever the queen held a drawing-room ; or at the York assizes 
 and ball, when she appeared there, not of course because she 
 took any interest in such things, but because she considered it 
 her duty to attend as one of the chief ladies of the county. 
 
 Thus Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, having attained the height of his
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 379 
 
 wishes, was, like many a man when he has reached that dangerous 
 elevation, disappointed. Ah, dear friends, it is hut too often so 
 in life ! Many a garden, seen from a distance, looks fresh and 
 green, which, when beheld closely, is dismal and weedy; the shady 
 walks melancholy and grass grown ; the bowers you would fain 
 repose in, cushioned with stinging nettles. I have ridden in a 
 caique upon the waters of the Bosphorus, and looked upon the 
 capital of the Soldan of Turkey. As seen from those blue waters,, 
 with palace and pinnacle, with gilded dome and towering cypress, 
 it seemeth a very Paradise of Mahound ; but, enter the city, and 
 it is but a beggarly labyrinth of ricketty huts and dirty alleys, 
 where the ways are steep and the smells are foul, tenanted by 
 mangy dogs and ragged beggars — a dismal illusion ! Life is such, 
 ah, well-a-day ! It is only hope which is real, and reality is a 
 bitterness and a deceit. 
 
 Perhaps a man, with Ivanhoe's high principles, would never 
 bring himself to acknowledge this fact ; but others did for him. 
 He grew thin, and pined away as much as if he had been in a 
 fever under the scorching sun of Ascalon. He had no appetite 
 for his meals ; he slept ill, though he was yawning all day. The 
 jangling of the doctors and friars whom Eowena brought together 
 did not in the least enliven him, and he would sometimes give 
 proofs of somnolency during their disputes, greatly to the con- 
 sternation of his lady. He hunted a good deal, and, I very much 
 fear, as Eowena rightly remarked, that he might have an excuse 
 for being absent from home. He began to like wine, too, who 
 had been as sober as a hermit ; and when he came back from 
 Athelstane's (whither he would repair not unfrequently), the 
 unsteadiness of his gait and the unnatural brdliancy of his eye 
 were remarked by his lady, who, you may be sure, was sitting up 
 for him. As for Athelstane, he swore by St. "Wullstan that he 
 was glad to have escaped a marriage with such a pattern of pro- 
 priety ; and honest Cedric the Saxon (who had been very speedily 
 driven out of his daughter-in-law's castle,) vowed by St. Waltheof 
 that his son had bought a dear bargain. 
 
 So Sir "Wilfrid of Ivanhoe became almost as tired of England, 
 (as his royal master Eichard was, who always quitted the country 
 when he had squeezed from his loyal nobles, commons, clergy,
 
 380 KEBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 and Jews, all the money which he could get,) and when the lion- 
 hearted Prince began to make war against the French king, in 
 JNormandy and Gruienne, Sir "Wilfrid pined like a true servant to 
 be in company of the good champion, alongside of whom he had 
 shivered so many lances, and dealt such woundy blows of sword 
 and battle-axe on the plains of Jaffa, or the breaches of Acre. 
 Travellers were welcome at Kotherwood that brought news from 
 the camp of the good king : and I warrant me that the knight 
 listened with all his might when Father Drono, the chaplain, 
 read in the St. James's Chronykyll, (which was the paper of 
 news he of Ivanhoe took in,) of " another glorious triumph." — 
 "Defeat of the French near Blois." — " Splendid victory at Epte, 
 and narrow escape of the French king," the which deeds of arms 
 the learned scribes had to narrate. 
 
 However such tales might excite him during the reading, they 
 left the knight of Ivanhoe only the more melancholy after listening: 
 and the more moody as he sate in his great hall silently draining 
 his Gascony wine. Silently sate he and looked at his coats of 
 mail, hanging vacant on the wall, his banner covered with spider- 
 webs, and his sword and axe rusting there. "Ah, dear axe," 
 sighed he (into his drinking-horn) " ah, gentle steel ! that was a 
 merry time when I sent thee crashing into the pate of the Emir 
 Abdul Melik as he rode on the right of Saladin. Ah, my sword? 
 my dainty headsman ! my sweet split-rib ! my razor of infidel 
 beards ! is the rust to eat thine edge off, and am I never more to 
 wield thee in battle ? What is the use of a shield on a wall, or a 
 lance that has a cobweb for a pennon ? O, Bichard, my good 
 Ling, would I could hear once more thy voice in the front of the 
 onset ! Bones of Brian the Templar ! would ye could rise from 
 your grave at Templestowe, and that we might break another 
 spear for honour and — and" * * * 
 
 And Rebecca, he would have said — but the knight paused here 
 in rather a guilty panic : and Her Royal Highness the Princess 
 Jiowena (as she chose to style herself at home) looked so hard at 
 him out of her China blue eyes, that Sir Wilfrid felt as if she was 
 reading his thoughts, and was fain to drop his own eyes into 
 his flagon. 
 
 In a word his life was intolerable. The dinner hour of the
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 3S1 
 
 twelfth century it is known was very early ; in fact people 
 dined at ten o'clock in the morning : and after dinner Bowena 
 sate mum under her canopy, embroidered with the arms of Edward 
 the Confessor, working with her maidens at the most hideous 
 pieces of tapestry, representing the tortures and martyrdoms of 
 her favourite saints, and not allowing a soul to speak above his 
 breath, except when she chose to cry out in her own shrill voice 
 when a hand-maid made a wrong stitch, or let fall a ball of 
 worsted. It was a dreary life — "Waniba, we have said, never 
 ventured to crack a joke, save in a whisper, when he was ten 
 miles from home ; and then Sir "Wilfred Ivanhoe was too weary 
 and blue-devilled to laugh ; but hunted in silence, moodily 
 bringing down deer and wild-boar with shaft and quarrel. 
 
 Then he besought Robin of Huntingdon, the jolly outlaw, 
 nathless, to join him, and go to the help of their fair sire King 
 Eichard, with a score or two of lances. But the Earl of Hunting- 
 don was a very different character from Eobin Hood the forester. 
 There was no more conscientious magistrate in all the county 
 than his lordship : he was never known to miss church or quarter 
 sessions ; he was the strictest game-proprietor in all the Eiding, 
 and sent scores of poachers to Botany Bay. " A man who has a 
 stake in the country, my good Sir AVilfrid," Lord Huntingdon 
 said, with rather a patronising air (his lordship had grown 
 immensely fat since the king had taken him into grace, and 
 required a horse as strong as an elephant to mount him), "a man 
 with a stake in the country ought to stay in the country. Pro- 
 perty has its duties as well as its privileges, and a person of my 
 rank is bound to live on the land from which he gets his living." 
 
 " Amen ! " sang out the Eeverend — Tuck, his lordship's 
 domestic chaplain, who had also grown as sleek as the Abbot ot 
 Jorvaulx, who was as prim as a lady in his dress, wore bergamot 
 in his handkerchief, and had his poll shaved and his beard curled 
 every day. And so sanctified was his Eeverence grown, that he 
 thought it was a shame to kill the pretty deer, (though he ate of 
 them still hugely, both in pasties and with Erench beans and 
 currant jelly,) and being shown a quarter-staff upon a certain 
 occasion, handled it curiously, and asked " what that ugly great 
 stick was ? "
 
 382 REBECCA AND EOWENA. 
 
 Lady Huntingdon, late Maid Marian, had still some of her old 
 fun and spirits, and poor Ivanhoe begged and prayed that she 
 would come and stay at Eotherwood occasionally, and egaxjer the 
 general dulness of that castle. But her ladyship said that Eowena 
 gave herself such airs, and bored her so intolerably with stories of 
 king Edward the Confessor, that she preferred any place rather 
 than Eotherwood, which was as dull as if it had been at the top 
 of Mount Athos. 
 
 The only person who visited it was Athelstane. " His Boyal 
 Highness the Prince," Eowena of course called him, whom the 
 lady received with royal honours. She had the guns fired, and 
 the footmen turned out with presented arms when he arrived ; 
 helped him to all Ivanhoe's favourite cuts of the mutton or the 
 turkey, and forced her poor husband to light him to the state 
 bed-room, walking backwards, holding a pair of wax candles. At 
 this hour of bed time the Thane used to be in such a condition, 
 that he saw two pair of candles, and two Ivanhoes reeling before 
 him — let us hope it was not Ivanhoe that was reeling, but only 
 his kinsman's brains muddled with the quantities of drink which 
 it was his daily custom to consume. Eowena said it was the 
 crack which the wicked Bois Gruilbert, " the Jewess's other lover, 
 Wilfrid, my dear," gave him on his royal skull, which caused the 
 Prince to be disturbed so easily; but added, that drinking 
 became a person of royal blood, and was but one of the duties of 
 his station. 
 
 Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe saw it would be of no avail to ask this 
 man to bear him company on his projected tour abroad ; but still 
 he himself was "every day more and more bent upon going, and he 
 long cast about for some means of breaking to his Eowena his 
 firm resolution to join the king. He thought she would certainly 
 fall ill if he communicated the news too abruptly to her ; he 
 would pretend a journey to York to attend a grand jury ; then 
 a call to London on law business or to buy stock ; then he would 
 slip over to Calais by the packet by degrees, as it were ; and so 
 be with the King before his wife knew that he was out of sight of 
 Westminster Hall. 
 
 " Suppose your honour says you are going, as your honour would 
 say Bo to a goose, plump, short, and to the point," eaid Wamba,
 
 REBECCA AND ROWEXA. 3S3 
 
 the iester, who was Sir Wilfrid's chief counsellor and attendant ; 
 " depend on't her highness would bear the news like a Christian 
 woman." 
 
 " Tush, malapert ! I will give thee the strap," said Sir "Wilfrid, 
 in a fine tone of high tragedy indignation ; " thou knowest not 
 the delicacy of the nerves of high-born ladies. An she faint not, 
 write me down Hollander." 
 
 " I will wager my bauble against an Irish billet of exchange 
 that she will let your honour go off readily : that is, if you press 
 not the matter too strongly," Wamba answered, knowingly ; and 
 this Ivanhoe found to his discomfiture : for one morning at 
 breakfast, adopting a clegage air, as he sipped his tea, he said, 
 '•' My love, I was thinking of going over to pay his Majesty a 
 visit in Normandy : " upon which, laying down her muffin, (which, 
 since the royal Alfred baked those cakes, had been the chosen break- 
 fast cate of noble Anglo-Saxons, and which a kneeling page 
 tendered to her on a salver, chased by the Florentine Benvenuto 
 Cellini,) — " When do you think of going, Wilfrid, my dear ? " — 
 the lady said, and the moment the tea-things were removed, and 
 the tables and their trestles put away, she set about mending his 
 linen, and getting ready his carpet-bag. 
 
 So Sir Wilfrid was as disgusted at her readiness to part with 
 him as he had been weary of staying at home, which caused 
 Wamba, the fool, to say, " Marry, Gossip, thou art like the man 
 on ship-board, who, when the boatswain flogged him, did cry out, 
 ' O,' wherever the rope's end fell on him : which caused Master 
 Boatswain to say, ' Plague on thee, fellow, and a pize on thee, 
 knave, wherever I hit thee there is no pleasing thee.' " 
 
 " And truly there are some backs which Fortune is always 
 belabouring," thought Sir Wilfrid, with a groan, " and mine is one 
 that is ever sore." 
 
 So, with a moderate retinue, whereof the knave Wamba made 
 one, and a large woollen comforter round his neck, which his 
 wife's own white fingers had woven, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe left 
 home to join the King, his master. Eowena, standing on the 
 steps, poured out a series of prayers and blessings, most 
 edifying to hear, as her lord mounted his charger, which his squires 
 led to the door. " It was the duty of the British female of rank,"
 
 384 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 she said, " to suffer all, all in the cause of her Sovereign. She 
 would not fear loneliness during the campaign : she would hear 
 up against widowhood, desertion, and an unprotected situation." 
 
 "My cousin Athelstane will protect thee," said Ivanhoe, 
 with profound emotion, as the tears trickled down his basnet ; 
 and bestowing a chaste] salute upon the steel-clad warrior, 
 Eowena modestly said, " She hoped his Highness would be so 
 kind." 
 
 Then Ivanhoe's trumpet blew : then Eowena waved her 
 pocket-handkerchief: then the household gave a shout: then the 
 pursuivant of the good knight, Sir Wilfrid the Crusader, flung out 
 his banner (which was argent, a gules cramoisy with three Moors 
 impaled sable) : then Wamba gave a lash on his mule's haunch, 
 and Ivanhoe, heaving a great sigh, turned the tail of his war-horse 
 upon the castle of his fathers. 
 
 As they rode along the forest, they met Athelstane, the Thane, 
 powdering along the road in the direction of Eotherwood on his 
 great dray-horse of a charger. " Good bye, good luck to you, old 
 brick," cried the Prince, using the vernacular Saxon ; " pitch 
 into those Frenchmen ; give it 'em over the face and eyes ; and 
 I'll stop at home, and take care of Mrs. I." 
 
 " Thank you, kinsman," said Ivanhoe, looking, however, not 
 particularly well-pleased ; and the chiefs shaking hands, the train 
 of each took its different way — Athelstane's to Eotherwood, 
 Ivanhoe's towards his place of embarkation. 
 
 The poor knight had his wish, and yet his face was a yard long, 
 and as yellow as a lawyer's parchment ; and having longed to quit 
 home any time these three years past he found himself envying 
 Athelstane, because, forsooth, he was going to Eotherwood: which 
 symptoms of discontent being observed by the witless "Wamba, 
 caused that absurd madman to bring his rebeck over his shoulder 
 from his back, and to sing — 
 
 ATRA CURA. 
 
 Before I lost my five poor wits, 
 
 I mind me of a Romish clerk, 
 
 Who sang how Care, the phantom dark, 
 
 Beside the belted horseman sits. 
 
 Methought I saw the griesly sprite 
 
 Jump up but now behind my Knight.
 
 REBECCA AND ROWEXA. 335 
 
 " Perhaps thou didst, knave," said Ivauhoe, looking over his 
 shoulder ; and the knave went on with his jingle. 
 
 And though he gallop as ho may, 
 I mark that cursed monster black 
 Still sits behind his honour's back, 
 Tight squeezing of his heart alway. 
 Like two black Templars sit they there, 
 Beside one crupper, Knight and Care. 
 
 No knight am I with pennoned spear, 
 To prance upon a bold destrere : 
 I will not have black Care prevail 
 Upon my long-eared charger's tail, 
 For lo, I am a witless fool, 
 And lau^h at Grief and ride a mule. 
 
 And his hells rattled as he kicked his mule's sides. 
 
 "Silence, fool! " said Sir "Wilfrid of Ivanboe, in a voice both 
 majestic and wrathful. " If thou knowest not care and grief, it is 
 because thou knowest not love, whereof tbey are the companions. 
 "Who can love witbout an anxious heart ? How shall there be joy 
 at meeting, without tears at parting ? " (I did not see that his 
 honour or my lady shed many anon, thought Wamba the fool, but 
 he was only a zany, and his mind was not right). " I would not 
 exchange my very sorrows for thine indifference," the knight con- 
 tinued. " W r here there is a sun there must be a shadow. If the 
 shadow offend me, shall I put out my eyes and live in the dark ? 
 ]S"o ! I am content with my fate, even such as it is. The Care of 
 which thou speakest, hard though it may vex him, never yet rode 
 down an honest man. I can bear him on my shoulders, and make 
 my way through the world's press in spite of him ; for my arm is 
 strong, and my sword is keen, and my shield has no stain on it ; 
 and my heart, though it is sad, knows no guile." And here, 
 taking a locket out of his waistcoat (which was made of chain- 
 mail), the knight kissed the token, put it back under the waist- 
 coat again, heaved a profound sigh, and stuck spurs into his 
 horse. 
 
 As for Wamba he was munching a black pudding whilst Sir 
 Wilfrid was making the above speech (which implied some secret 
 grief on the knight's part, that must have been perfectly unin- 
 telligible to the fool), and so did not listen to a single word of 
 
 VOL. III. C C
 
 386 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 Ivanhoe's pompous remarks. They travelled on by slow stages 
 through the whole kingdom, until they came to Dover, whence 
 they took shipping for Calais. And in this little voyage, being 
 exceedingly sea-sick, and besides elated at the thought of meeting 
 his Sovereign, the good knight cast away that profound melan- 
 choly which had accompanied him during the whole of his land 
 journey. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LAST DATS OF THE LIOX. 
 
 Fkoii Calais Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe took the diligence across 
 country to Limoges, sending on Gurth, his squire, with the horses 
 and the rest of his attendants, with the exception of Wamba, who 
 travelled not only as the knight's fool but as his valet, and who, 
 perched on the roof of the carriage, amused himself by blowing- 
 tunes upon the conducteur's Trench horn. The good KingEichard 
 was, as Ivanhoe learned, in the Limousin, encamped before a 
 little place called Chalus, the lord whereof, though a vassal of the 
 King's, was holding the castle against his Sovereign with a reso- 
 lution and valour, which caused a great fury and annoyance on 
 the part of the Monarch with the Lion Heart. I"or brave and 
 magnanimous as he was, the Lion-hearted one did not love to be 
 baulked any more than another ; and, like the royal animal whom 
 he was said to resemble, he commonly tore his adversary to pieces, 
 and then, perchance, had leisure to think how brave the latter had 
 been. The Count of Chalus had found, it was said, a pot of 
 money ; the royal Kichard wanted it. As the Count denied that 
 he had it, why did he not open the gates of his castle at once? 
 It was a clear proof that he was guilty; and the King was deter- 
 mined to punish this rebel, and have his money and his life too. 
 
 lie had naturally brought no breaching guns with him, because 
 those instruments were not vet invented ; and thoucrh he had 
 assaulted the place a score of times with the utmost fury, his 
 . Iajesty had been beaten back on every occasion, until he was so 
 ravage that it was dangerous to approach the British Lion. The
 
 REBECCA AND ROWEXA. 387 
 
 Lion's wife, the lovely Berengaria, scarcely ventured to come near 
 him. He flung the joint-stools in his tent at the heads of the 
 officers of state, and lacked his aides-de-camp round his pavilion ; 
 and, in fact, a maid of honour, who brought a sack-posset in to his 
 Majesty from the Queen, after he came in from the assault, came 
 spinning like a foot-ball out of the royal tent just as Ivanhoe 
 entered it. 
 
 " Send me my drum-major to flog that woman," roared out the 
 infuriate King. " By the bones of St. Barnabas she has burned 
 the sack ! By St. AVittikind, I will have her flayed alive. Ha ! 
 St. George, Ha ! St. Eichard, whom have we here ? " And he 
 lifted up his demi-culverin, or curtal axe, a weapon weighing 
 about thirteen hundred weight, and was about to fling it at 
 the intruder's head, when the latter, kneeling gracefully on 
 one knee, said calmly, " It is I, my good liege, "Wilfrid of 
 Ivanhoe." 
 
 "What, "Wilfrid of Templestowe, "Wilfrid the married man, 
 "Wilfrid the hen-pecked," cried the King with a sudden burst of 
 good humour, flinging away the culverin from him, as though it 
 had been a reed, (it lighted three hundred yards off, on the foot 
 of Hugo de Bunyon, who was smoking a cigar at the door of his 
 tent, and caused that redoubted warrior to limp for some days 
 after). " "What, "Wilfrid, my gossip ? Art come to see the lion's 
 den ? There are bones in it, man, bones and carcases, and the 
 lion is angry," said the King, with a terrific glare of his eyes ; 
 "but tush ! we will talk of that anon. Ho ! bring two gallons of 
 hypoeras for the king, and the good knight, "Wilfrid of Ivanhoe. 
 Thou art come in time, "Wilfrid, for by St. Eichard, and St. 
 George, we will give a grand assault to-morrow. There will be 
 bones broken, ha! " 
 
 "I care not, my liege," said Ivanhoe, pledging the Sovereign 
 respectfully, and tossing off the whole contents of the bowl of 
 hypocras to his Highness's good health,— and he at once appeared 
 to be taken into high favour, not a little to the envy of many of 
 the persons surroundiug the king. 
 
 As his Majesty said, there was fighting and feasting in plenty 
 before Chalus. Day after day, the besiegers made assaults upon 
 the castle, but it was held so stoutly by the Count of Chalus, and 
 
 c c 2
 
 3SS REBECCA AND EOYTENA. 
 
 his eallant garrison, that each afternoon beheld the attacking 
 parties returning disconsolately to their tents, leaving behind 
 thern many of their own slain, and bringing back with them store 
 of broken heads, and maimed limbs, received in the unsuccessful 
 onset. The valour displayed by Ivanhoe, in all these contests, 
 was prodigious ; and the way in which he escaped death from the 
 discharges of mangonels, catapults, battering-rams, twenty-four 
 pounders, boiling oil, and other artillery, with which the besieged 
 received their enemies, was remarkable. After a day's fighting, 
 Gurth and Watnba used to pick the arrows out of their intrepid 
 master's coat of mail, as if they had been so many almonds in a 
 pudding. 'Twas well for the good knight, that under his first 
 coat of armour he wore a choice suit of Toledan steel, perfectly 
 impervious to arrow shots, and given to him by a certain Jew, 
 named Isaac of York, to whom he had done some considerable 
 services a few years back. 
 
 If king Eichard had not been in such a rage at the repeated 
 failures of his attacks upon the Castle, that all sense of justice 
 was blinded in the lion-hearted Monarch, he would have been the 
 first to acknowledge the valour of Sir "Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, and 
 would have given him a Peerage, and the Grand Cross of the 
 Bath, at least a dozen times in the course of the siege: for 
 Ivanhoe led more than a dozen storming parties, and with his own 
 hand killed as many men (viz. two-thousand three-hundred and 
 fifty-one), within six, as were slain by the lion-hearted Monarch 
 himself. But his Majesty was rather disgusted than pleased, by 
 bis faithful servant's prowess: and all the courtiers who hated 
 Ivanhoe for his superior valour and dexterity (for he would kill 
 you off a couple of hundred of them of Chalus, whilst the strongest 
 champions of the King's host could not finish more than their 
 two dozen of a day), poisoned the royal mind against Sir Wilfrid, 
 and made the King look upon his feats of arms with an evil eye. 
 Roger de Backbite sneeringly told the King, that Sir Wilfrid had 
 offered to bet an equal bet, that he would kill more men than 
 Eichard himself in the next assault: Peter de Toadhole said, that 
 Ivanhoe stated every where, that his Majesty was not the man he 
 used to be ; that pleasures and drink had enervated him ; that he 
 could neither ride, nor strike a blow with sword or axe, as he had
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 339 
 
 been enabled to do in the old times in Palestine : and finally, in 
 the twenty-fifth assault, in which they had very nearly carried the 
 place, and in which onset Ivanhoe slew seven, and his Majesty 
 six, of the sons of the Count de Chalus, its defender, Ivanhoe 
 almost did for himself, by planting his banner before the King's, 
 upon the wall ; and only rescued himself from utter disgrace, by 
 saving his Majesty's life several times in the course of this most 
 desperate onslaught. 
 
 Then the luckless knight's very virtues (as, no doubt, my 
 respected readers know) made him enemies amongst the men — 
 nor was Ivanhoe liked by the women frequenting the camp of the 
 gay King Eichard. His young Queen, and a brilliant court of 
 ladies, attended the pleasure-loving Monarch. His Majesty 
 would transact business in the morning, then fight severely from 
 after breakfast till about three o'clock in the afternoon; from 
 which time, until after midnight, there was nothing but jigging 
 and singing, feasting and revelry, in the royal tents. Ivanhoe, 
 who was asked as a matter of ceremony, and forced to attend 
 these entertainments, not caring about the blandishments of any 
 of the ladies present, looked on at their ogling and dancing with 
 a countenance as glum as an undertaker's, and was a perfect 
 wet-blanket in the midst of the festivities. His favourite resort 
 and conversation were with a remarkably austere hermit, who 
 lived in the neighbourhood of Chalus, and with whom Ivanhoe 
 loved to talk about Palestine, and the Jews, and other grave 
 matters of import, better than to mingle in the gayest amuse- 
 ments of the court of King Richard. Many a night, when the 
 Queen and the ladies were dancing quadrilles and polkas (in 
 which his Majesty, who was enormously stout as well as tall, 
 insisted upon figuring, and in which he was about as graceful as 
 an elephant dancing a hornpipe), Ivanhoe would steal away from 
 the ball, and come and have a night's chat under the moon with 
 his reverend friend. It pained him to see a man of the King's 
 age and size dancing about with the young folks. They laughed 
 at his .Majesty whilst they flattered him : the pages and maids 
 of honour mimicked the royal mountebank almost to his face ; 
 and, if Ivanhoe ever could have laughed, lie certainly would one 
 night, when the King, in light-blue satin inexpressibles, with his
 
 390 REBECCA AND RO\YENA. 
 
 hair in powder, chose to dance the Minuet de la Cour with the 
 little Queen Berengaria. 
 
 Then, after dancing, his Majesty must needs order a guitar, 
 and begin to sing. He was said to compose his own songs, 
 words, and music — but those who have read Lord Campobello's 
 lives of the Lord Chancellors, are aware that there was a person 
 by the name of Blondel, who, in fact, did all the musical part of 
 the King's performances ; and, as for the words, when a King 
 writes verses, Ave may be sure there will be plenty of people to 
 admire his poetry. His Majesty would sing you a ballad, of 
 which he had stolen every idea, to an air that was ringing on 
 all the barrel-organs of Christendom, and, turning round to his 
 courtiers, would say, " How do you like that ? I dashed it off 
 this morning." Or, "Blondel, w T hat do you think of this move- 
 ment in B flat ? " or what not ; and the courtiers and Blondel, 
 you may be sure, would applaud with all their might, like 
 hypocrites as they were. 
 
 One evening, it was the evening of the 27th March, 1199, 
 indeed, bis Majesty, who was in the musical mood, treated the 
 court with a quantity of his so-called composition, until the 
 people were fairly tired of clapping with their hands, and laughing 
 in their sleeves. First he sang an original air and poem, 
 beginning 
 
 Cherries nice, cherries nice, nice, come choose, 
 Fresh and fair ones, who'll refuse ? &c. 
 
 The which he was ready to take his affidavit he had composed the 
 day before yesterday. Then he sang an equally original heroic 
 melody, of which the chorus was 
 
 Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the sea, 
 
 For Britons never, never, never, slaves shall be, &c. 
 
 The courtiers applauded this song as they did the other, all 
 except lvanhoe, who sate without changing a muscle of his 
 features, until the King questioned him, when the knight with a 
 bow said, " he thought lie had heard something very like the air 
 and the words elsewhere." His Majesty scowled at him a savage 
 glance from under his red bushy eye-brows; but lvanhoe had
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. S91 
 
 saved the royal life that day, and the King, therefore, with diffi- 
 culty controlled his indignation. 
 
 "Well," said he, " by St. Richard and St. Greorge but ye never 
 heard this song, for I composed it this very afternoon as I took 
 my bath after the melee. Did I not, Blondel ? " 
 
 Blondel, of course, was ready to take an affidavit that his 
 Alajesty had done as he said, and the King, thrumming on his 
 guitar with his great red fingers and thumbs, began to sing out of 
 tune, and as follows : — 
 
 COMMANDERS OF THE FAITHFUL. 
 
 The Pope he is a happy man, 
 
 His Palace is the Vatican : 
 
 And there he sits and drains his can, 
 
 The Pope he is a happy man. 
 
 I often say when I 'm at home, 
 
 I ? d like to be the Pope of Rome. 
 
 And then there 's Sultan Saladin, 
 That Turkish Soklan full of sin ; 
 He has a hundred wives at least, 
 By which his pleasure is increased ; 
 I've often wished, I hope no sin, 
 That I were Sultan Saladin. 
 
 But no, the Pope no wife may cho 
 And so I would not wear his sh< i : 
 No wine may drink the proud Paynim, 
 And so I 'd rather not be him ; 
 My wife, my wine, I love I hope, 
 And would be neither Turk nor Pope. 
 
 Encore ! Encore ! Bravo ! Bis ! Everybody applauded the 
 King's song with all his might ; everybody except Ivanhoe, who 
 preserved his abominable gravity : and when asked aloud by 
 Roger de Backbite whether he had heard that too ? said, firmly, 
 :i Tes, Roger de Backbite, and so hast thou if thou darest but tell 
 the truth." 
 
 " Now, by St. Cicely, may I never touch gittern again," bawled 
 the King in a fury, " if every note, word, and thought be not 
 mine ; may I die in to-morrow's onslaught if the song be not my 
 song. Sing thyself, Wilfrid of the Lanthorn Jaws ; thou couldst 
 sing a good song in old times : " and with all his might, and with
 
 392 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 a forced laugh, the King, who loved brutal practical jests, flung 
 his guitar at the head of Ivanhoe. 
 
 Sir Wilfrid caught it gracefully with one hand, and making an 
 elegant tow to the Sovereign, began to chant as follows : — 
 
 KING CANUTE. 
 
 King Canute was weary-hearted ; he had reigned for years a score ; 
 Battling, struggling, pushing, fighting, killing much and robbing more, 
 And he thought upon his actions, walking by the wild sea-shore. 
 
 'Twixt the Chancellor and Bishop walked the King with steps sedate, 
 Chamberlains and grooms came after, silver sticks and gold sticks great, 
 Chaplains, aides-de-camp, and pages, — all the officers of state. 
 
 Sliding after like his shadow, pausing when he chose to pause ; 
 
 If a frown his face contracted, straight the courtiers dropped their jaws ; 
 
 If to laugh the King was minded, out they burst in loud hee-haws. 
 
 But that day a something vexed him, that was clear to old and young, 
 Thrice his Grace had yawned at table, when his favourite gleeman sung, 
 Once the Queen would have consoled him, but he bade her hold her tongue. 
 
 "Something ails my gracious Master," cried the Keeper of the Seal, 
 "Sure, my lord, it is the lampreys, served at dinner, or the veal !" 
 "Psha !" exclaimed the angry Monarch, " Keeper, 'tis not that I feel. 
 
 l "Tis the heart and not the dinner, fool, that doth my rest impair; 
 
 Can a King be great as I am, prithee, and yet know no care ? 
 
 0, 1 'm sick, and tired, and weary."— Some one cried, "The KiDg's arm-chair !" 
 
 Then towards the lackeys turning, quick my lord the Keeper nodded, 
 Straight the King's great chair was brought him, b'y two footmen able-bodied, 
 Languidly he sank into it ; it was comfortably wadded. 
 
 "Leading on my fierce companions," cried he, "over storm and brine, 
 I have fou-lit jmI I have conquered ! Where was glory like to mine !" 
 Loudly all the courtiers echoed. "Where is glory like to thine 2" 
 
 "What avail mo all my kingdoms ? Weary am I uoav, and old, 
 Those fair sons I have begotten, long to see me dead and cold ; 
 Would I were, and quiet buried, underneath the silent mould ! 
 
 " 0, remorse, the writhing serpent ! at my bosom tears and bites ; 
 Horrid, horrid things I look on, though I put out all the lights; 
 Ghosts of ghastly recollections troop about my bed of nights. 
 
 "Cities burning, convents blazing, red with sacrilegious fires; 
 
 Mothers weeping, virgins screaming, vainly for their slaughtered sires — " 
 
 — " Such a tender conscience," cries the Bishop, "every one admires."
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 393 
 
 "But for such unpleasant bygones, cease, my gacious Lord, to search. 
 They're forgotten and forgiven by our holy Mother Church ; 
 Never, never does she leave her benefactors in the lurch. 
 
 " Look ! the land is crowned with Minsters, which your Grace's bounty raised ; 
 Abbeys filled with holy men, where you and Heaven are daily praised ; 
 you, my lord, to think of dying ? on my conscience, I'm amazed !" 
 
 "Nay, I feel," replied King Canute, "that my end is drawing near ;" 
 "Don't say so," exclaimed the coxirtiers (striving each to squeeze a tear), 
 "Sure your Grace is strong and lusty, and may live this fifty year. 
 
 ' ' Live these fifty years ! " the Bishop roared, with actions made to suit, 
 "Are you mad, my good Lord Keeper, thus to speak of King Canute ! 
 Men have lived a thousand years, and sure his Majesty will do't. 
 
 "Adam, Enoch, Lamech, Canan, Mahaleel, Methusela, 
 
 Lived nine hundred years apiece, and mayn't the King as well as thi 
 
 "Fervently," exclaimed the Keeper, " fervently, I trust he may." 
 
 "He to die," resumed the Bishop. " He a mortal like to ws ? 
 Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus ; 
 Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus. 
 
 " With his wondrous skill in healing ne'er a Doctor can compete, 
 Loathsome lepers, if he touch them, start up clean upon their feet ; 
 Surely he could raise the dead up, did his Highness think it meet. 
 
 "Did not once the Jewish Captain stay the sun upon the hill, 
 And, the while he slew the foemen, bid tbe silver moon stand still ? 
 So, no doubt, could gracious Canute, if it were his sacred will." 
 
 ' ' Might I stay the sun above us, good Sir Bishop ? " Canute cried ; 
 ' ' Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride ' 
 If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide. 
 
 ' ' Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the sign ? " 
 Said the Bishop, bowing lowly, "Land and sea, my lord, are thine." 
 Canute turned towards the ocean — " Back !" he said, " thou foaming brine 
 
 ' ' From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat ; 
 Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master's seat ; 
 Ocean, be thou still ! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet ! " 
 
 But the sullen ocean answered with a louder, deeper roar, 
 
 And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling sounding on the shore ; 
 
 Back the Keeper and the Bishop, back the King and Courtiers bore. 
 
 And he sternly bade them never more to kneel to human clay, 
 But alone to praise and worship That which earth and seas obey, 
 And his golden crown of empire never wore he from that day. 
 King Canute is dead and gone : Parasites exist alway.
 
 394 EEBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 At this ballad, which, to be sure, was awfully long, and as grave 
 as a sermon, some of the courtiers tittered, some yawned, and some 
 affected to be asleep, and snore outright. But Soger de Backbite 
 thinking to curry favour with the King by this piece of vulgarity 
 his Majesty fetched him a knock on the nose and a buffet on the 
 ear, which, I warrant me, wakened Master Eoger ; to whom the 
 King said, " Listen and be civil, slave, Wilfrid is singing about 
 thee — Wilfrid, thy ballad is long, but it is to the purpose, and I 
 have grown cool during thy homily. Give me thy hand, honest 
 friend. Ladies, good-night. Gentlemen, we give the grand assault 
 to-morrow ; when I promise thee, Wilfrid, thy banner shall not be 
 before mine " — and the King giving his arm to her Majesty, retired 
 into the private pavilion. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ST. GEOEGE FOR ENGLAND. 
 
 Whilst the Eoyal Eichard and his Court were feasting in the 
 camp outside the walls of Chalus, they of the castle were in the 
 most miserable plight that may be conceived. Hunger, as well as 
 the fierce assaults of the besiegers, had made dire ravages in 
 the place. The garrison's provisions of corn and cattle, their very 
 horses, dogs, and donkeys had been eaten up — so that it might 
 well be said by Wamba, " that famine, as well as slaughter, had 
 thinned the garrison." When the men of Chalus came on the 
 Avails to defend it against the scaling parties of King Eichard — 
 they were like so many skeletons in armour — they could hardly 
 pull their bow-strings at last, or pitch down stones on the heads of 
 his Majesty's party, so weak had their arms become, and the 
 gigantic Count of Chalus, a warrior as redoubtable for his size and 
 strength as Eichard Plantagenet himself, was scarcely able to lift up 
 Ins battle-axe upon the day of that last assault, when Sir Wilfrid of 
 Ivanhoe ran him through the but we are advancing matters. 
 
 What should prevent me from describing the agonies of hunger 
 which the Count (a man of large appetite) suffered in company 
 with bis heroic sons and garrison ?— Nothing, but that Daute has
 
 REBECCA AND EOWEKA. 395 
 
 already done the business in the notorious history of Count 
 Ugolino, so that my efforts might be considered as mere imita- 
 tions. "Why should I not, if I were minded to revel in horrifying 
 details, show you how the famished garrison drew lots, and ate 
 themselves during the siege ; and how the unlucky lot falling upon 
 the Countess of Chalus, that heroic woman, taking an affectionate 
 leave of her family, caused her large cauldron in the castle kitchen 
 to be set a-boiling, had onions, carrots and herbs, pepper and salt 
 made ready, to make a savoury soup, as the Erench like it, and 
 when all things were quite completed, kissed her children, jumped 
 into the caiddron from off a kitchen stool, and so was stewed down 
 in her flannel bed-gown ? Dear friends, it is not from want of 
 imagination, or from having no turn for the terrible or pathetic, 
 that I spare you these detads. — I could give you some description 
 that would spoil your dinner and night's rest, and make your hair 
 stand on end. — But why harrow your feelings ? Eaucy all the 
 tortures and horrors that possibly can occur in a beleaguered and 
 famished castle : fancy the feelings of men who know that no more 
 quarter will be given them than they would get if they were 
 peaceful Hungarian citizens, kidnapped and brought to trial by 
 his Majesty the Emperor of Austria, and then let us rush on to 
 the breach and prepare once more to meet the assault of dreadful 
 King Bichard and his men. 
 
 On the 29fch of March in the year 1199, the good King, having 
 copiously partaken of breakfast, caused his trumpets to blow, and 
 advanced with his host upon the breach of the castle of Chalus. 
 Arthur de Pendennis bore his banner ; Wilfrid of Ivanhoe fought 
 on the King's right hand. Molyneux, Bishop of Bullocksmithy, 
 doffed crosier and mitre for that day, and though fat and pursy, 
 panted up the breach with the most resolute spirit, roaring out 
 war-cries and curses, and wielding a prodigious mace of iron, with 
 which he did good execution. Hu^o de Backbite was forced to 
 come in attendance upon the Sovereign, but took care to keep in 
 the rear of his august master, and to shelter behind his huge 
 triangular shield as much as possible. Many lords of note followed 
 the King and bore the ladders ; and as they were placed against 
 the wall, the air was perfectly dark with the shower of arrows 
 which the French archers poured out at the besiegers ; and the
 
 396 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 cataract of stones, kettles, boot-jacks, chests of drawers, crockery, 
 umbrellas, congreve-rockets, bomb-shells, bolts and arrows, and 
 other missiles which the desperate garrison flung out on the 
 storming party. The King received a copper coal-scuttle right 
 over his eyes, and a mahogany wardrobe was discharged at his 
 morion, which would have felled an ox, and would have done for 
 the King had not Ivanhoe warded it off skilfully. Still they 
 advanced, the warriors falling around them like grass beneath the 
 scythe of the mower. 
 
 The ladders were placed in spite of the hail of death raining 
 round : the King and Ivanhoe were, of course, the first to mount 
 them. Chalus stood in the breach, borrowing strength from 
 despair; and roaring out "Ha! Plantagenet, Saint Barbacue for 
 Chalus ! " he dealt the King a crack across the helmet with his 
 battle-axe, which shore off the gilt lion and crown that surmounted 
 the steel cap. The King bent and reeled back ; the besiegers 
 were dismayed ; the garrison and the Count; of Chalus set up a 
 shout of triumph ; but it was premature. 
 
 As quick as thought Ivanhoe was into the Count with a thrust 
 in tierce, which took him just at the joint of the armour, and ran 
 him through as clean as a spit does a partridge. Uttering a horrid 
 shriek, he fell back writhing ; the King recovering staggered up 
 the parapet ; the rush of knights followed, and the union-jack was 
 planted triumphantly on the walls just as Ivanhoe,— but we must 
 leave him for a moment. 
 
 •' Ha, St. Kichard ! — ha, St. George ! " the tremendous voice 
 of the Lion-king was heard over the loudest roar of the onset. At 
 every sweep of his blade a severed head flew over the parapet, a 
 spouting trunk tumbled, bleeding, on the flags of the bartizan. 
 The world hath never seen a warrior equal to that Lion-hearted 
 Plantagenet, as lie raged over the keep, his eyes flashing fire 
 through the bars of his morion, snorting and chafing with the hot 
 lust of battle. One by one les enfans de Chalus had fallen : there 
 was only one left at last of all the brave race that had fought round 
 the gallant Count : — only one, and but a boy, a fair-haired boy, a 
 blue-eyed boy ! he had been gathering pansies in the fields but 
 yesterday— it was but a few years, and he was a baby in his 
 mother's arms ! What could his puny sword do against the most
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 397 
 
 redoubted blade in Christendom ? — and yet Boheinond faced the 
 great champion of England, and met him foot to foot ! Turn 
 away, turn away, my dear young friends and kind-hearted ladies ! 
 Do not look at that ill-fated poor boy ! his blade is crushed into 
 splinters under the axe of the conqueror, and the poor child is 
 beaten to his knee ! * * * 
 
 "Now, by St. Barbacue of Limoges," said Bertrand de Gour- 
 don, " the butcher will never strike down yonder lambling ! Hold 
 thy hand, Sir King, or, by St. Barbacue " 
 
 Swift as thought the veteran archer raised his arblast to his 
 shoulder, the whizziug bolt fled from the ringing string, and the 
 next moment crushed quivering into the corslet of Plantagenet. 
 
 'Twas a luckless shot, Bertrand of Gourdon ! Maddened by 
 the pain of the wound, the brute nature of Richard was aroused : 
 his fiendish appetite for blood rose to madness, and grinding his 
 teeth, and with a curse too horrible to mention, the flashing axe 
 of the royal butcher fell down on the blond ringlets of the child, 
 and the children of Chalus were no more ! 
 
 I just throw this off" by way of description, and to show what 
 might be done if I chose to indulge in this style of composition, 
 but as in the battles which are described by the kindly chronicler 
 of one of whose works this present masterpiece is professedly a 
 continuation, everything passes off agreeably ; the people are 
 slain, but without any unpleasant sensation to the reader ; nay, 
 some of the most savage and blood-stained characters of history, 
 such is the indomitable good humour of the great novelist, 
 become amiable jovial companions, for whom one has a hearty 
 sympathy — so, if you please, we will have this fighting business at 
 Chalus, and the garrison and honest Bertrand of Gourdon, dis- 
 posed of, the former according to the usage of the good old times, 
 having been hung up, or murdered to a man, and the latter killed 
 in the manner described by the late Dr. Goldsmith in his History. 
 
 As for the Lion-hearted, we all very well know that the shaft of 
 Bertrand de Gourdon put an end to the royal hero — and that 
 from that 29th of March he never robbed or murdered any more. 
 And we have legends in recondite books of the manner of the 
 King's death.
 
 39S REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 " Tou must die, nry son," said the venerable "Walter of Kouen, 
 as Eerengaria was carried shrieking from the King's tent. 
 " Eepent, Sir King, and separate yourself from your children ! " 
 
 " It is ill-jesting with a dying man," replied the King. " Chil- 
 dren have I none, my good lord bishop, to inherit after me." 
 
 " Kichard of England," said the archbishop, turning up his fine 
 eyes, " your vices are your children. Ambition is your eldest 
 child, Cruelty is your second child, Luxury is your third child ; 
 and you have nourished them from your youth up. Separate 
 yourself from these sinful ones, and prepare your soul, for the 
 hour of departure draweth nigh." 
 
 'Violent, wicked, sinful, as he might have been, Kichard of 
 England met his death like a Christian man. Peace be to the 
 soul of the brave ! "When the news came to King Philip of 
 Erance, he sternly forbade bis courtiers to rejoice at the death of 
 his enemy. " It is no matter of joy but of dolour," he said, "that 
 the bulwark of Christendom and the bravest king of Europe is 
 no more." 
 
 Meanwhile what has become of Sir "Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, whom 
 we left in the act of rescuing his Sovereign by running the Count 
 of Chalus through the body ? 
 
 As the good knight stooped down to pick his sword out of the 
 corpse of his fallen foe, some one coming behind him suddenly 
 thrust a dagger into his back at a place where his shirt of mail 
 was open, (for Sir Wilfrid had armed that morning in a hurry, 
 and it was his breast, not his back, that he was accustomed ordi- 
 narily to protect), and when poor Wamba came up on the 
 rampart, which he did when the fighting was over — being such a 
 fool that he could not be got to thrust his head into danger for 
 glory'3 sake — he found his dear knight with the dagger in his 
 back lying without life upon the body of the Count de Chalus 
 whom he had anon slain. 
 
 Ah, what a howl poor "Wamba set up when he found his master 
 killed ! How he lamented over the corpse of that noble knight 
 and friend ! What mattered it to him that Kichard the King- 
 was borne wounded to his tent, and that Bertrand de Gourdon 
 was flayed alive? At another time the sight of this spectacle
 
 HEBECCA AXD ROWENA. 399 
 
 miglit have amused the simple kna\"e ; but now all his thoughts 
 were of his lord, so good, so gentle, so kind, so loyal, so frank 
 with the great, so tender to the poor, so truthful of speech, so 
 modest regarding his own merit, so true a gentleman, in a word, 
 that anybody might, with reason, deplore him. 
 
 As "Wamba opened the dear knight's corslet, he found a locket 
 round his neck, in which there was some hair, not flaxen like that 
 of my Lady Eowena, who was almost as fair as an Albino, but as 
 black, "Wamba thought, as the locks of the Jewish maiden whom 
 the kuight had rescued in the lists of Templestowe. A bit of 
 Eowena's hair was in Sir Wilfrid's possession, too, but that was 
 in his purse along with his seal of arms, and a couple of groats ; 
 for the good knight never kept any money, so generous was he of 
 his largesses when money came in. 
 
 "Wamba took the purse, and seal, and groats, but he left the 
 locket of hair round his master's neck, and when he returned to 
 England never said a word about the circumstance. After all, 
 how should he know whose hair it was ? It might have been the 
 knight's grandmother's hair for aught the fool knew ; so he kept 
 his counsel when he brought back the sad news and tokens to 
 the disconsolate widow at Eotherwood. 
 
 The poor fellow would never have left the body at all, and 
 indeed sate by it all night, and until the grey of the morning, 
 when seeing two suspicious-looking characters advancing towards 
 him, he fled in dismay, supposing that they were marauders 
 who were out searching for booty among the dead bodies ; and 
 having not the least courage, he fled from these, and tumbled 
 down the breach, and never stopped running as fast as his legs 
 would carry him, until he reached the tent of his late beloved 
 master. 
 
 The news of the knight's demise, it appeared, had been known 
 at his quarters long before ; for his servants were gone, and had 
 ridden off" on his horses ; his chests were plundered, there was 
 not so much as a shirt collar left in his drawers, and the very bed 
 and blankets had been carried away by these faithful attendants. 
 W r ho had slain Ivanhoe r That remains a mystery to the present 
 day ; but Hugo de Backbite, whose nose he had pulled for defama- 
 tion, and who was behind him in the assault at Chalus, was seen
 
 400 REBECCA AND EOWENA. 
 
 two years afterwards at the Court of King John in an embroidered 
 velvet waistcoat which Eowena could have sworn she had worked 
 for Ivanhoe, and about which the widow would have made some 
 little noise, but that — but that she was no longer a widow. 
 
 That she truly deplored the death of her lord, cannot be 
 questioned, for she ordered the deepest mourning which any 
 milliner in York could supply, and erected a monument to his 
 memory as big as a minster. But she was a lady of such fine 
 principles, that she did not allow her grief to over-master her ; 
 and an opportunity speedily arising for uniting the two best 
 Saxon families in England, by an alliance between herself and the 
 gentleman who offered himself to her, Eowena sacrificed her 
 inclination to remain single, to her sense of duty ; and contracted 
 a second matrimonial engagement. 
 
 That Athelstane was the man, I suppose no reader familiar with 
 life, and novels which are a rescript of life, and are all strictly 
 natural and edifying, can for a moment doubt. Cardinal Pandulfo 
 tied the knot for them : and lest there should be any doubt about 
 Ivanhoe's death, (for his body was never sent home after all, nor 
 seen after "Wamba ran away from it), his eminence procured a 
 papal decree, annulling the former marriage, so that Eowena 
 became Mrs. Athelstane with a clear conscience. And who shall 
 be surprised, if she was happier with the stupid and boozy thane, 
 than with the gentle and melancholy Wilfrid ? Did women never 
 have a predilection for fools, I should like to know ; or fall in love 
 with donkeys, before the time of the amours of Bottom and 
 Titania ? " Ah ! Mary, had you not preferred an ass to a man, 
 would you have married Jack Bray, when a Michael Angelo 
 offered. Ah ! Fanny, were you not a woman, would you persist 
 in adoring Tom Hiccups, who beats you, and comes home tipsy 
 from the Club?" Yes, Eowena cared a hundred times more 
 about tipsy Athelstane, than ever she had done for gentle Ivanhoe, 
 and so great was her infatuation about the former, that she would 
 sit upon his knee in the presence of all her maidens, and let him 
 smoke his cigars in the very drawing-room. 
 
 This is the epitaph she caused to be written by Bather Drono, 
 (who piqued himself upon his Latinity), on the stone comme- 
 morating the death of her late lord.
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 401 
 
 pic est oVUfribus, belli bum frivit abibus ; 
 (Turn glabio et laacea, ^tomaaraa et quoquc Jtanxia 
 Ucvbcra buva babat : per (Litrcos multum cquitabat : 
 (nuilbcvtum Btcibit: atquc pkrasolgma J&xbxt. 
 
 pm! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa, 
 otvov 3abclstani est toujiu rastiss'uua & bant. 
 
 And this is the translation which the doggrel knave Wamba 
 made of the Latin lines. 
 
 REQUIESCAT. 
 
 Under the stone you beholil, 
 Buried, and coffined, and cold, 
 Lieth Sir Wilfrid the Bold. 
 
 Always he marched in advance, 
 Warring in Flanders and France, 
 Doughty with sword and with lance. 
 
 Famous in Saracen fight, 
 
 Rode in his youth the good knight, 
 
 Scattering Paynims in flight. 
 
 Brian the Templar untrue, 
 Fairly in tourney he slew, 
 Saw Hierusalem too. 
 
 Now he is buried and gone, 
 Lying beneath the grey stone : 
 Where shall you find such a one ? 
 
 Long time his widow deplored, 
 Weeping the fate of her lord, 
 Sadly cut off by the sword. 
 
 When she was eased of her pain, 
 Came the good Lord Athelstane, 
 When her ladyship married again. 
 
 Athelstane hurst into a loud laugh, when he heard it, at the 
 last line, but Eowena would have had the fool whipped, had not 
 the Thane interceded, and to him, she said, she could refuse 
 nothing. 
 
 vol. in. D D
 
 402 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 I YAK HOE REDIYIYUS. 
 
 I tbust nobody •will suppose, from the events described in the 
 last Chapter, that our friend Ivanhoe is really dead. Because 
 we have given him an epitaph or two and a monument, are these 
 any reasons that he should be really gone out of the world ? 
 No : as in the pantomime, when we see Clown and Pantaloon 
 lay out Harlequin and cry over him, we are always sure that 
 Master Harlequin will be up at the next minute alert and 
 shining in his glistening coat ; and, after giving a box on the ears 
 to the pair of them, will be taking a dance with Columbine, or 
 leaping gaily through the clock-face, or into the three-pair-of- 
 stairs window : — so Sir "Wilfrid, the Harlequin of our Christmas 
 piece, may be run through a little, or may make believe to be 
 dead, but will assuredly rise up again when he is wanted, and 
 show himself at the right moment. 
 
 The suspicious-looking characters from whom Wamba ran away 
 were no cut-throats and plunderers as the poor knave imagined, 
 but no other than Ivanhoe's friend, the hermit, and a reverend 
 brother of his, who visited the scene of the late battle in order 
 to see if any Christians still survived there, whom they might 
 shrive and get ready for Heaven, or to whom they might possibly 
 offer the benefit of their skill as leeches. Both were prodigiously 
 learned in the healing art ; and had about them those precious 
 elixirs which so often occur in romances, and with which patients 
 are so miraculously restored. Abruptly dropping his master's 
 head from his lap as he fled, poor "Wamba caused the knight's pate 
 to fall with rather a heavy thump to the ground, and if the knave 
 had but stayed a minute longer, he would have heard Sir Wilfrid 
 utter a deep groan. But though the fool heard him not, the holy 
 hermits did ; and to recognise the "gallant Wilfrid, to withdraw 
 the enormous dagger still sticking out of his back, to wash the 
 wound with a portion of the precious elixir, and to pour a little
 
 BEBECCA AND BOWENA. 403 
 
 of it down his throat, was with the excellent hermits the work of an 
 instant ; which remedies being applied, one of the good men took 
 the knight by the heels and the other by the head, and bore him 
 daintily from the castle to their hermitage in a neighbouring 
 rock. As for the Count of Chalus, and the remainder of the 
 slain, the hermits were too much occupied with Ivanhoe's case 
 to mind them, and did not, it appears, give them any elixir, so 
 that, if thev are really dead, they must stay on the rampart stark 
 and cold ; or if otherwise, when the scene closes upon them as it 
 does now, they may get up, shake themselves, go to the slips and 
 drink a pot of porter, or change their stage-clothes and go home 
 to supper. My dear readers you may settle the matter among 
 yourselves as you like. If you wish to kill the characters really 
 off, let them be dead, and have done with them : but, entre nous, 
 I don't believe they are any more dead than you or I are, and 
 sometimes doubt whether there is a single syllable of truth in this 
 whole story. 
 
 "Well, Ivanhoe was taken to the hermits' cell, and there doctored 
 by the holy fathers for his hurts, which were of such a severe and 
 dangerous order, that he was under medical treatment for a very 
 considerable time. When he woke up from his delirium, and 
 asked how long he had been ill, fancy his astonishment when he 
 heard that he had been in the fever for six years ! He thought 
 the reverend fathers were joking at first, but their profession 
 forbade them from that sort of levity ; and besides, he could not 
 possibly have got well any sooner, because the story would have 
 been sadly put out had he appeared earlier. And it proves how 
 good the fathers were to him, and how very nearly that scoundrel 
 of a Hugh de Backbite's dagger had finished him, that he did not 
 get well under this great length of time, during the -whole of which 
 the fathers tended him without ever thinking of a fee. I know 
 of a kind physician in this town who does as much sometimes, but 
 I won't do him the ill service of mentioning his name here. 
 
 Ivanhoe, being now quickly pronounced well, trimmed his beard, 
 which by this time hung down considerably below his knees, and 
 calling for his suit of chain armour, which before had fitted his 
 elegant person as tight as wax, now put it on, and it bagged and 
 hung so loosely about him, that even the good friars laughed at 
 
 D D 2
 
 404 REBECCA AND EOWENA. 
 
 Lis absurd appearance. It was impossible that lie should go about 
 the country in such a garb as that : the very boys would laugh at 
 him : so the friars gave him one of their old gowns, in which he 
 disguised himself; and, after taking an affectionate farewell of his 
 friends, set forth on his return to his native country. As he went 
 along, he learned that Eichard was dead, that John reigned, that 
 Prince Arthur had been poisoned, and was of course made 
 acquainted with various other facts of public importance recorded 
 in Pinnock's Catechism and the Historic Page. 
 
 But these subjects did not interest him near so much as his own 
 private affairs ; and I can fancy that his legs trembled under him, 
 and his pilgrim's staff shook with emotion, as at length, after many 
 perils, he came in sight of his paternal mansion of Eotherwood, and 
 saw once more the chimneys smoking, the shadows of the oaks over 
 the grass in the sunset, and the rooks winging over the trees. He 
 heard the supper gong sounding : he knew his way to the door well 
 enough ; he entered the familiar hall with a lenedicite, and with- 
 out any more Avords took his place. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Tou might have thought for a moment that the grey friar trem- 
 bled, and his shrunken cheek looked deadly pale ; but he recovered 
 himself presently, nor could you see his pallor for the cowl which 
 covered his face. 
 
 A little boy was playing on Athelstane's knee ; Eowena, smiling 
 and patting the Saxon Thane fondly on his broad bull-head, filled 
 him a huge cup of spiced wine from a golden jug. He drained a 
 quart of the liquor, and, turning round, addressed the friar, — 
 
 " And so, grey frere, thou sawest good King Eichard fall at 
 Chalus by the bolt of that felon bowman ? " 
 
 " We did, an it please you. The brothers of our house attended 
 the good king in his last moments ; in truth, he made a Christian 
 ending ! " 
 
 " And didst thou see the archer flayed alive ? It must have 
 been rare sport," roared Athelstane, laughing hugely at the joke. 
 " How the fellow must have howled ! " 
 
 " My love ! " said Eowena, interposing tenderly, and putting a 
 pretty white finger on his lip. 
 
 " I would have liked to see it too," cried the boy.
 
 REBECCA AND KOAYENA. 405 
 
 " That's my own little Cedrie, and so thou shalt. And, friar, 
 didst see my poor kinsman Sir "Wilfrid of Ivanhoe ? They say he 
 fought well at Chalus ! " 
 
 " My sweet lord," again interposed Eowena, " mention him not." 
 
 " Why ? Because thou and he were so tender in days of yore — 
 when you could not bear my plain face, being all in love with his 
 pale one ? " 
 
 " Those times are past now, dear Athelstane," said his affection- 
 ate wife, looking up to the ceiling. 
 
 " Marry, thou never couldst forgive him the Jewess, Eowena." 
 
 " The odious hussy ! don't mention the name of the unbelieving 
 creature," exclaimed the lady. 
 
 " Well, well, poor Wil was a good lad — a thought melancholy 
 and milksop though. Why, a pint of sack fuddled his poor 
 brains." 
 
 " Sir "Wilfrid of Ivanhoe was a good lance," said the friar. " I 
 liave heard there was none better in Christendom. He lay in our 
 convent after his wounds, and it was there we tended him till he 
 died. He was buried in our north cloister." 
 
 "And there's an end of him," said Athelstane. "But come, 
 this is dismal talk. Where's Wamba the jester? Let us have a 
 song. Stir up, Wamba, and don't lie like a dog iu the fire ! Sing 
 us a song, thou crack-brained jester, and leave off whimpering for 
 bygones. Tush, man ! There be many good fellows left in this 
 world." 
 
 " There be buzzards in eagles' nests," Wamba said, who was 
 lying stretched before the fire sharing the hearth with the Thane's 
 dogs. " There be dead men alive and live men dead. There be 
 merry songs jmd^dismal songs. Marry, and the merriest are the 
 saddest sometimes. I will leave off motley and wear black, gossip 
 Athelstane. I will turn howler at funerals, and then, perhaps, I 
 shall be merry. Motley is fit for mutes, and black for fools. Give 
 me some drink, gossip, for my voice is as cracked as my brain." 
 
 " Drink and sing, thou beast, and cease prating," the Thane 
 said. 
 
 And Wamba, touching his rebeck wildly, sat up in the chimney- 
 side and curled his lean shanks together and began : —
 
 406 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 LOVE AT TWO SCORE. 
 
 Ho ! pretty page, with dimpled chin, 
 
 That never has known the barber's shear, 
 
 All your aim is woman to win. 
 
 This is the way that boys begiu. 
 Wait till you've come to forty year ! 
 
 Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, 
 
 Billing and cooing is all your cheer, 
 Sighing and singing of midnight strains 
 Under Bonnybells' window-panes. 
 
 Wait till you've come to forty year ! 
 
 Forty times over let Michaelmas pass, 
 
 Grizzling hair the brain doth clear ; 
 Then you know a boy is an ass, 
 Then you know the worth of a lass, 
 
 Once you have come to forty year. 
 
 Pledge me round, I bid ye declare, 
 
 All good fellows whose beards are grey : 
 Did not the fairest of the fair 
 Common grow and wearisome, ere 
 
 Ever a month was past away ? 
 
 The reddest lips that ever have kissed, 
 The brightest eyes that ever have shone, 
 
 May pray and whisper and we not list, 
 
 Or look away and never be missed, 
 Ere yet ever a month was gone. 
 
 Gillian 's dead, Heaven rest her bier, 
 
 How I loved her twenty years syne ! 
 Marian's married, but I sit here, 
 Alive and merry at forty year, 
 
 Dipping my nose in the Gascon wine. 
 
 " Who taught thee that merry lay, "Wamba, thou son of Witless?" 
 roared Athelstane, clattering his cup on the table and shouting the 
 chorus. 
 
 " It was a good and holy hermit, sir, the pious clerk of Cop- 
 manhurst, that you wot of, who played many a prank with us in 
 the clays that we knew King Richard. Ah, noble sir, that was a 
 jovial time and a good priest." 
 
 " They say the holy priest is sure of the next bishopric, my 
 love," said Eowena. " His majesty hath taken him into much
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 407 
 
 favour. My lord of Huntingdon looked very well at the last ball, 
 though I never could see any beauty in the countess — a freckled 
 blowsy thing, whom they used to call Maid Marian ; though, for 
 the matter of that, what between her flirtations with Major 
 Littlejohn and Captain Scarlett, really " 
 
 " Jealous again, haw ! haw ! " laughed Athelstane. 
 
 " I am above jealousy, and scorn it," Eowena answered, drawing 
 herself up very majestically. 
 
 " Well, well, Wamba' s was a good song," Athelstane said. 
 
 " Nay, a wicked song," said Eowena, turning up her eyes as 
 usual. " What ! rail at woman's love ? Prefer a filthy wine-cup 
 to a true wife ? Woman's love is eternal, my Athelstane. He 
 who questions it would be a blasphemer were he not a fool. The 
 well-born and well-nurtured gentlewoman loves once and once only." 
 
 " I pray you, madam, pardon me, I — I am not well," said the 
 grey friar, rising abruptly from his settle, and tottering down the 
 steps of the dais. Wamba sprung after him, his bells jingling 
 as he rose, and casting his arms round the apparently fainting 
 man, he led him away into the court. " There be dead men alive 
 and live men dead," whispered he. " There be coffins to laugh at 
 and marriages to cry over. Said I not sooth, holy friar ? ' : And 
 when they had got out into the solitary court, which was deserted 
 by all* the followers of the Thane, who were mingling in the drunken 
 revelry in the hall, Wamba, seeing that none were by, knelt down, 
 and kissing the friar's garment, said, " I knew thee, I knew thee, 
 my lord and my liege ! " 
 
 " Get up," said Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, scarcely able to articulate; 
 "only fools are faithful." 
 
 And he passed on and into the little chapel where his father 
 lay buried. All night long the friar spent there, and Wamba 
 the jester lay outside watching as mute as the saint over the 
 porch. 
 
 When the morning came, AVamba was gone ; and the knave 
 being in the habit of wandering hither and thither, as he chose, 
 little notice was taken of his absence by a master and mistress 
 who had not much sense of humour. As for Sir Wilfrid, a gen- 
 tleman of his delicacy of feelings could not be expected to remain
 
 403 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 in a house where things so naturally disagreeable to him. were 
 occurring, and he quitted Botherwood incontinently, after paying 
 a dutiful visit to the tomb where his old father, Cedric, was buried, 
 and hastened on to York, at which city he made himself known 
 to the family attorney, a most respectable man, in whose hands 
 his ready money was deposited, and took up a sum sufficient to 
 fit himself out with credit, and a handsome retinue, as became a 
 knight of consideration. But he changed his name, wore a wig 
 and spectacles, and disguised himself entirely, so that it was 
 impossible his friends or the public should know him, and thus 
 metamorphosed, went about whithersoever his fancy led him. He 
 was present at a public ball at Tork, which the lord mayor gave, 
 danced Sir Boger de Coverley in the very same set with Eowena 
 — (who was disgusted that Maid Marian took precedence of her) — 
 he saw little Athelstane overeat himself at the supper, and pledged 
 his big father in a cup of sack ; he met the Beverend Mr. Tuck at 
 a missionary meeting, where he seconded a resolution proposed by 
 that eminent divine ; — in fine, he saw a score of his old acquaint- 
 ances, none of whom recognised in him the warrior of Palestine 
 and Templestowe. Having a large fortune and nothing to do, he 
 went about this country performing charities, slaying robbers, 
 rescuing the distressed, and achieving noble feats of arms. 
 Dragons and giants existed in his day no more, or be si^re he 
 would have had a fling at them : for the truth is, Sir Wilfrid of 
 lvanhoe was somewhat sick of the life which the hermits of 
 Chalus had restored to him, and felt himself so friendless and 
 solitary that he would not have been sorry to come to an end of it. 
 Ah, my dear friends and intelligent British public, are there not 
 others who are melancholy under a mask of gaiety, and who, in 
 the midst of crowds, are lonely ? Liston was a most melancholy 
 man ; Grimaldi had feelings ; and there are others I wot of — but 
 psha — let us have the next chapter.
 
 REBECCA AND EOWENA. 409 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IVANHOE TO THE BESCUE. 
 
 TnE rascally manner in which the chicken-livered successor of 
 Eichard of the Lion-heart conducted himself to all parties, to his 
 relatives, his nobles, and his people, is a matter notorious, and set 
 forth clearly in the Historic Page : hence, although nothing, except 
 perhaps success, can, in my opinion, excuse disaffection to the 
 sovereign, or appearance in armed rebellion against him, the loyal 
 reader will make allowance for two of the principal personages 
 of this narrative, who will have to appear in the present Chapter 
 in the odious character of rebels to their lord and king. It must 
 be remembered, in partial exculpation of the fault of Ivanhoe and 
 Eowena (a fault for which they were bitterly punished, as you 
 shall presently hear), that the monarch exasperated his subjects 
 in a variety of ways, — that before he murdered his royal nephew, 
 Prince Arthur, there was a great question whether he was the 
 rightful king of England at all, — that his behaviour as an uncle, 
 and a family man, were likely to wound the feelings of any lady 
 and mother, — finally, that there were palliations for the conduct 
 of Eowena and Ivanhoe, which it now becomes our duty to 
 relate. 
 
 When his majesty destroyed Prince Arthur, the Lady Eowena, 
 who was one of the ladies of honour to the queen, gave up her 
 place at court at once, and retired to her castle of Eothervvood. 
 Expressions made use of by her, and derogatory to the character 
 of the sovereign, were carried to the monarch's ears, by some of 
 those parasites, doubtless, by whom it is the curse of kings to be 
 attended ; and John swore, by St. Peter's teeth, that he would be 
 revenged upon the haughty Saxon lady, — a kind of oath, which, 
 though he did not trouble himself about all other oaths, he was 
 never known to break. It was not for some years after he had 
 registered this vow, that he was enabled to keep it. 
 
 Had Ivanhoe been present at Eouen, when the king meditated
 
 410 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 his horrid designs against his nephew, there is little doubt that 
 Sir Wilfrid would have prevented them, and rescued the boy : for 
 Ivanhoe was, we need scarcely say, a hero of romance ; and it is 
 the custom and duty of all gentlemen of that profession to be 
 present on all occasions of historic interest, to be engaged in all 
 conspiracies, royal interviews, and remarkable occurrences, — and 
 hence Sir Wilfrid would certainly have rescued the young Prince, 
 had he been anywhere in the neighbourhood of Rouen, where the 
 foul tragedy occurred. But he was a couple of hundred leagues 
 off, at Chalus, when the circumstance happened : tied down in his 
 bed as crazy as a Bedlamite, and raving ceaselessly in the Hebrew 
 tongue, which he had caught up during a previous illness in which 
 he was tended by a maiden of that nation, about a certain Rebecca 
 Ben Isaacs, of whom, being a married man, he never would have 
 thought, had he been in his sound senses. During this delirium, 
 what were politics to him, or he to politics ? King John or king 
 Arthur were entirely indifferent to a man who announced to his 
 nurse-tenders, the good hermits of Chalus before mentioned, that 
 he was the Marquis of Jericho, and about to marry Rebecca the 
 Queen of Sheba. In a word, he only heard of what had occurred, 
 when he reached England, and his senses were restored to him. 
 Whether was he happier, sound of brain, and entirely miserable, 
 (as any man would be who found so admirable a wife as Rowena 
 married again,) or perfectly crazy, the husband of the beautiful 
 Rebecca? I don't know which he liked best. 
 
 Howbeit the conduct of King John inspired Sir Wilfrid with so 
 thorough a detestation of that sovereign, that he never could be 
 brought to take service under him ; to get himself presented at 
 St. James's, or in any way to acknowledge, but by stern acquies- 
 cence, the authority of the sanguinary successor of his beloved 
 King Richard. It was Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, I need scarcely 
 say, who got the barons of England to league together and extort 
 from the king that famous instrument and palladium of our 
 liberties at present in the British Museum, Great Russell Street, 
 Bloomsbury — the Magna Charta. His name does not naturally 
 appear in the list of barons, because he was only a knight, and a 
 knight in disguise too : nor does Athelstane's signature figure on 
 that document. Athclstane, in the first place, could not write;
 
 KEBECCA AND ROWENA. 411 
 
 nor did he care a penny-piece about politics, so long as he could 
 drink his wine at home undisturbed, and have his hunting and 
 shooting in quiet. 
 
 It was not until the king wanted to interfere with the sport of 
 every gentleman in England (as we know by reference to the 
 Historic Page that this odious monarch did), that Athelstane broke 
 out into open rehellion, along with several Yorkshire squires and 
 noblemen. It is recorded of the king, that he forbade every man 
 to hunt his own deer ; and, in order to secure an obedience to 
 his orders, this Herod of a monarch wanted to secure the eldest 
 sons of all the nobility and gentry, as hostages for the good 
 behaviour of their parents. 
 
 Athelstane was anxious about his game — Eowena was anxious 
 about her son. The former swore that he woidd hunt his deer in 
 spite of all Norman tyrants — the latter asked, should she give up 
 her boy to the ruffian who had murdered his own nephew ? * 
 The speeches of both were brought to the king at York ; and, 
 furious, he ordered an instant attack upon Botherwood, and that 
 the lord and lady of that castle should be brought before him 
 dead or alive. 
 
 Ah, where was Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, the unconquerable cham- 
 pion, to defend the castle against the royal party ? A few 
 thrusts from his lance would have spitted the leading warriors of 
 the king's host : a few cuts from his sword would have put John's 
 forces to rout. But the lance and sword of Ivanhoe were idle on 
 this occasion. " jSo, be hanged to me ! " said the knight, bit- 
 terly, "this is a quarrel in which I can't interfere. Common 
 politeness forbids. Let yonder ale-swilling Athelstane defend 
 his, ha, ha, wife : and my lady Eowena guard her, ha, ha, ha, son." 
 And he laughed wildly and madly : and the sarcastic way in 
 which he choked and gurgled out the words " wife " and " son " 
 would have made you shudder to hear. 
 
 "When he heard, however, that, on the fourth day of the siege, 
 Athelstane had been slain by a cannon ball (and this time for 
 good, and not to come to life again as he had done before), and 
 that the widow (if so the innocent bigamist may be called) was 
 
 * See Hume, Giraldus Cambrensis, The Monk of Croyland, and Pinnoek's 
 Catechism.
 
 il-2 EBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 conducting the defence of Botherwood herself with the greatest 
 intrepidity, showing herself upon the walls, with her little son 
 (who bellowed like a bull, and did not like the fighting at all), 
 pointing the guns and encouraging the garrison in every way — 
 better feelings returned to the bosom of the knight of Ivanhoe, 
 and summoning his men, he armed himself quickly, aud deter- 
 mined to go forth to the rescue. 
 
 He rode without stopping for two days and two nights in the 
 direction of Botherwood, with such swiftness and disregard for 
 refreshment, indeed, that his men dropped one by one upon the 
 road, and he arrived alone at the lodge gate of the park. The 
 windows were smashed ; the door stove in ; the lodge, a neat 
 little Swiss cottage, with a garden, where the pinafores of Mrs. 
 Gurth's children might have been seen hanging on the gooseberry 
 bushes in more peaceful times, was now a ghastly heap of smoking 
 ruins — cottage, bushes, pinafores, children lay mangled together, 
 destroyed by the licentious soldiery of an infuriate monarch ! Far 
 be it from me to excuse the disobedience of Athelstane and Bowena 
 to their sovereign ; but surely, surely this cruelty might have been 
 spared. 
 
 Gurth who was lodge-keeper, was lying dreadfully wounded 
 and expiring at the flaming and violated threshold of his lately 
 picturesque home. A catapult and a couple of mangonels had 
 done his business. The faithful fellow, recognising his master, 
 who had put up his visor and forgotten his wig and spectacles in 
 the agitation of the moment, exclaimed, " Sir Wilfrid ! my dear 
 master— praised be St. Tfaltheof— there may be yet time— my 
 beloved mistr — master Atheist ..." He sank back, and never 
 spoke again. 
 
 Ivanhoe spurred on his horse Bavieca madly up the chestnut 
 avenue. The castle was before him ; the western tower was in 
 flames ; the besiegers were pressing at the southern gate . 
 A thelstane's banner, the bull rampant, was still on the northern 
 bartizan. "An Ivanhoe, an Ivanhoe!" he bellowed out, with 
 a shout that overcame all the din of battle — JNostre Dame a 
 la rescousse — and to hurl his lance through the midriff of Beginald 
 de Bracy, who was commanding the assault, who fell howling with 
 anguish, to wave his battle-axe over his own head, and cut off
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 413 
 
 those of thirteen men-at-arms, was the work of an instant. " An 
 Ivanhoe, an Ivanhoe ! " he still shouted, and down went a man as 
 sure as he said ' hoe.' 
 
 "Ivanhoe! Ivanhoe! " a shrill voice cried from the top of the 
 northern bartizan. Ivanhoe knew it. 
 
 " Eowena ! my love ! I come ! " he roared on his part, " Villains ! 
 touch but a hair of her head, and I . . . ." 
 
 Here, with a sudden plunge and a squeal of agony, Bavieca 
 sprang forward wildly, and fell as wildly on her back, rolling over 
 and over upon the knight. All was dark before him ; his brain 
 reeled ; it whizzed ; something came crashing down on his fore- 
 head. St. Waltheof, and all the saints of the Saxon calendar 
 protect the knight I * * * 
 
 "When he came to himself, AVamba and the lieutenant of his 
 lances were leaning over him with a bottle of the hermit's elixir. 
 " We arrived here the day after the battle,'' said the fool ; " marry, 
 I have a knack of that." 
 
 " Tour worship rode so deucedly quick, there was no keeping 
 up with your worship," said the lieutenant. 
 
 "The day — after — the bat — " groaned Ivanhoe. — "Where is 
 the Lady Eowena ? " 
 
 " The castle has been taken and sacked," the lieutenant said. 
 — and pointed to what once was Eotherwood, but was now only a 
 heap of smoking ruins. — Not a tower was left, not a roof, not a 
 floor, not a single human being ! Everything was flame and ruin, 
 smash and murther ! 
 
 Of course Ivanhoe fell back fainting again among the ninety- 
 seven men-at-arms whom he had slain ; and it was not until Wamba 
 had applied a second, and uncommonly strong, dose of the elixir 
 that he came to life again. The good knight was, however, from 
 long practice, so accustomed to the severest wounds, that he bore 
 them far more easily than common folk, and thus was enabled to 
 reach York upon a litter, which his men constructed for him, with 
 tolerable ease. 
 
 Eumour had as usual advanced him ; and he heard at the hotel 
 where he stopped, what had been the issue of the affair at Eother- 
 wood. A minute or two after his horse was stabbed, and Ivanhoe 
 knocked down, the western bartizan was taken by the storming
 
 414 EEBECCA AND EOWENA. 
 
 party which invested it, and every soul slain, except Eowena and 
 her boy ; who were tied upon horses and carried away, under a 
 secure guard, to one of the king's castles — nobody knew whither 
 —and Ivanhoe was recommended by the hotel-keeper (whose house 
 he had used in former times) to reassume his wig and spectacles, 
 and not call himself by his own name any more, lest some of the 
 king's people should lay hands on him. However as he had killed 
 everybody round about him, there was but little danger of his 
 discovery ; and the Knight of the Spectacles, as he was called, 
 went about York quite unmolested, and at liberty to attend to his 
 own affairs. 
 
 "We wish to be brief in narrating this part of the gallant hero's 
 existence ; for his life was one of feeling rather than affection, and 
 the description of mere sentiment is considered by many well- 
 informed persons to be tedious. What icere his sentiments, now 
 it may be asked, under the peculiar position in which he found 
 himself? He had done his duty by Eowena, certainly : no man 
 could say otherwise. But as for being in love with her any more, 
 after what had occurred, that was a different question. Well, come 
 what would, he was determined still to continue doing his duty by 
 her ; — but as she was whisked away, the deuce knew whither, how 
 could he do anything ? So he resigned himself to the fact that she 
 was thus whisked away. 
 
 He, of course, sent emissaries about the country to endeavour to 
 find out where Eowena was ; but these came back without any sort 
 of intelligence ; and it was remarked, that he still remained in a 
 perfect state of resignation. He remained in this condition for a 
 year, or more ; and it was said that he was becoming more cheer- 
 ful, and he certainly was growing rather fat. The Knight of the 
 Spectacles was voted an agreeable man in a grave way ; and gave 
 some very elegant, though quiet, parties, and was received in the 
 best society of York. 
 
 It was just at assize-time, the lawyers and barristers had arrived, 
 and the town was unusually gay : when, one morning, the attorney, 
 whom we have mentioned as Sir Wilfred's man of business, and 
 a most respectable man, called upon his gallant client at his lodg- 
 ings, and said he had a communication of importance to make. 
 1 1 living to communicate with a client of rank, who was condemned
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 415 
 
 to be hanged for forgery, Sir Hugo de Backbite, tbe attorney said, 
 he had been to visit that party in the condemned cell ; and on the 
 way through the yard, and through the bars of another cell, had 
 seen and recognised an old acquaintance of Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe 
 — and the lawyer held him out, with a particular look, a note, 
 written on a piece of whity-brown paper. 
 
 What were Ivanhoe's sensations when he recognised the hand- 
 writing of Eowena ! — he tremblingly dashed open the billet, and 
 read as follows : — 
 
 "My deakest Ivais-iioe, 
 
 " For I am thine now as erst, and my first love was 
 ever — ever dear to me. Have I been near thee dying for a whole 
 year, and didst thou make no effort to rescue thy Eowena? 
 Have ye given to others — I mention not their name nor their 
 odious creed — the heart that ought to be mine ? I send thee my 
 forgiveness from my dying pallet of straw. —I forgive thee the 
 insults I have received, the cold and hunger I have endured, the 
 failing health of my boy, the bitterness of my prison, thy infatua- 
 tion about that Jewess, which made our married life miserable, 
 and which caused thee, I am sure, to go abroad to look after her. 
 — I forgive thee all my wrongs, and fain would bid thee farewell. 
 Mr. Smith hath gained over my gaoler — he will tell thee how I 
 may see thee. — Come and console my last hour by promising that 
 thou wilt care for my boy — Ms boy who fell like a hero (when thou 
 wert absent) combating by the side of 
 
 " E()WE> T A." 
 
 The reader may consult his own feelings, and say whether 
 Ivanhoe was likely to be pleased or not by this letter : however, he 
 inquired of Mr. Smith, the solicitor, what was the plan which that 
 gentleman had devised for the introduction to Lady Eowena, and 
 was informed that he was to get a barrister's gown and wig, when 
 the gaoler would introduce him into the interior of the prison. 
 These decorations, knowing several gentlemen of the Northern 
 Circuit, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe easily procured, and with feelings 
 of no small trepidation, reached the cell where, for the space of 
 a year, poor Eowena had been immured.
 
 416 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 If any person have a doubt of the correctness, of the historical 
 exactness of this narrative, I refer him to the " Biographie Univer- 
 selle " (article Jean sans Terre), which says, " La femme d'un 
 baron auquel on vint demander son fils, repondit, ' Le roi pense- 
 t-il que je confierai mon fils a un homme qui a egorge son neveu 
 de sa propre main ? ' Jean fit enlever la mere et l'enfant, et la 
 laissa inourir clef aim dans les cachots." 
 
 I picture to myself, with a painful sympathy, Bowena under- 
 going this disagreeable sentence. All her virtues, her resolution, 
 her chaste energy and perseverance, shine with redoubled lustre, 
 and, for the first time since the commencement of the history, I 
 feel that I am partially reconciled to her. The weary year passes 
 — she grows weaker and more languid, thinner and thinner ! At 
 length Ivanhoe, in the disguise of a barrister of the Northern 
 Circuit, is introduced to her cell, and finds his lady in the last 
 stage of exhaustion, on the straw of her dungeon, with her little 
 boy in her arms. She has preserved his life at the expense of her 
 own, giving him the whole of the pittance which her gaolers 
 allowed her, and perishing herself of inanition. 
 
 There is a scene ! I feel as if I had made it up, as it were, 
 with this lady, and that we part in peace, in consequence of my 
 providing her with so sublime a death-bed. Fancy Ivanhoe'a 
 entrance — their recognition — the faint blush upon her worn 
 features — the pathetic way in which she gives little Cedric in 
 charge to him, and his promises of protection. 
 
 ' Wilfrid, my early loved," slowly gasped she, removing her 
 grey hair from her furrowed temples, and gazing on her boy fondly, 
 as he nestled on Ivanhoe's knee—" Promise me by St. Waltheof 
 of Templestowe ; promise me one boon ! " 
 
 " I do," said Ivanhoe, clasping the boy, and thinking it was to 
 that little innocent the promise was intended to apply. 
 "By St. Waltheof?" 
 "By St. Waltheof!" 
 
 " Promise me, then," gasped Bowena, staring wildly at him, 
 " that you never will marry a Jewess ? " 
 
 " By St. Waltheof," cried Ivanhoe, "this is too much ! Bowena !" 
 But he felt his hand grasped for a moment, the nerves then 
 relaxed, the pale lip ceased to quiver — she was no more !
 
 REBECCA AND ROWEXA. 417 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IVANHOE THE WIDOWEE. 
 
 Hating placed young Cedric at school at the Hall of Dothe- 
 boyes, in Torkshire, and arranged his family affairs, Sir Wilfrid of 
 Ivanhoe quitted a country which had no longer any charms for 
 him, and in which his stay was rendered the less agreeable 
 by the notion that King John would hang him if ever he 
 could lay hands on the faithful follower of King Kichard and 
 Prince Arthur. 
 
 But there was always in those days a home and occupation for 
 a brave and pious knight. A saddle on a gallant war-horse, a 
 pitched field against the Moors, a lance wherewith to spit a 
 turbaned infidel, or a road to Paradise carved out by his scimetar, 
 — these were the height of the ambition of good and religious 
 warriors ; and so renowned a champion as Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe 
 was sure to be well received wherever blows were stricken for the 
 cause of Christendom. Even among the dark Templars, he who 
 had twice overcome the most famous lance of their Order was a 
 respected though not a welcome guest : but among the opposition 
 company of the Knights of St. John, he was admired and courted 
 beyond measure ; and always affectioning that Order, which offered 
 him, indeed, its first rank and commanderies, he did much good 
 service, fighting in their ranks for the glory of Heaven and St. 
 Waltheof, and slaying many thousands of the heathen in Prussia, 
 Poland, and those savage northern countries. The only fault that 
 the great and gallant, though severe and ascetic Polko of Hey- 
 denbraten, the chief of the Order of St. John, found with the 
 melancholy warrior, whose lance did such good service to the 
 cause, was, that he did not persecute the Jews as so religious a 
 knight should. He let off' sundry captives of that persuasion 
 whom he had taken with his sword and his spear, saved others 
 from torture, and actually ransomed the two last grinders of a 
 venerable rabbi (that Eoger de Cartright, an English knight of 
 
 VOL. III. E E
 
 41S REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 the Order, was about to extort from the elderly Israelite), with a 
 hundred crowns and a girninal ring, which were all the property 
 he possessed. Whenever he so ransomed or benefited one of this 
 religion, he would moreover give them a little token or a message 
 (were the good knight out of money) saying, " Take this token, 
 and remember this deed was done by Wilfrid the Disinherited, for 
 the services whilome rendered to him by Bebecca, the daughter of 
 Isaac of York ! " So among themselves, and in their meetings 
 and synagogues, and in their restless travels from land to land, 
 when they of Jewry cursed and reviled all Christians, as such 
 abominable heathens will, they nevertheless excepted the name of 
 the Desdichado, or the doubly-disinherited as he now was, the 
 Desdichado-Doblado. 
 
 The account of all the battles, storms, and scaladoes in which 
 Sir Wilfrid took part, would only weary the reader, for the chopping 
 off one heathen's head with an axe must be very like the decapi- 
 tation of any other unbeliever. Suffice it to say, that wherever 
 this kind of work was to be done, and Sir Wilfrid was in the way, 
 he was the man to perform it. It would astonish you were you to 
 see the account that Wamba kept of his master's achievements, 
 and of the Bulgarians, Bohemians, Croatians, slain or maimed by 
 his hand : and as, in those days, a reputation for valour had an 
 immense effect upon the soft hearts of women ; and even the ugliest 
 man, were he a stout warrior, was looked upon with favour by 
 Beauty ; so Ivanhoe, who was by no means ill-favoured, though 
 now becoming rather elderly, made conquests over female breasts, 
 as well as over Saracens, and had more than one direct offer of 
 marriage made to him by princesses, countesses, and noble ladies 
 possessing both charms and money, which they were anxious to 
 place at the disposal of a champion so renowned. It is related 
 that the Duchess Begent of Kartoffelberg offered him her hand, 
 and the Ducal Crown of Kartoffelberg, w 7 hich he had rescued from 
 the unbelieving Prussians ; but Ivanhoe evaded the duchess's offer, 
 by riding away from her capital secretly at midnight, and hiding 
 himself in a convent of Knights Hospitallers, on the borders of 
 Poland ; and it is a fact that the Princess Kosalia Seraphina of 
 Pumpernickel, the most lovely woman of her time, became so 
 frantically attached to him, that she followed him on a campaign,
 
 REBECCA AND ROWEXA. 419 
 
 and was discovered with his baggage disguised as a horse-boy. 
 But no princess, no beauty, no female blandishments had any 
 charms for Ivanhoe : no hermit practised a more austere celibacy. 
 The severity of his morals contrasted so remarkably with the lax 
 and dissolute manner of the young lords and nobles in the courts 
 which he frequented, that these young springalds would sometimes 
 sneer and call him ATouk and Milksop ; but his courage in the dav 
 of battle was so terrible and admirable, that I promise you the 
 youthful libertines did not sneer then ; and the most reckless of 
 them often turned pale when they couched their lances to follow 
 Ivanhoe. Holy Waltheof ! it was an awful sight to see him with 
 his pale, calm face, his shield upon his breast, his heavy lance before 
 him, charging a squadron of Heathen Bohemians, or a regiment 
 of Cossacks ! Wherever he saw the enemy, Ivanhoe assaulted 
 him : and when people remonstrated with him, and said if he 
 attacked such and such a post, breach, castle, or army, he 
 would be slain, " And suppose I be ? " he answered, giving 
 them to understand that he would as lief the Battle of Life were 
 over altogether. 
 
 "While he was thus making war against the northern infidels, 
 news was carried all over Christendom of a catastrophe which had 
 befallen the good cause in the south of Europe, where the Spanish 
 Christians had met with such a defeat and massacre at the hands 
 of the Moors, as had never been known in the proudest days of 
 Saladin. 
 
 Thursday, the 9th of Shaban, in the 605th year of the Hejira,. 
 is known all over the "West as the amun-al-arle, the year of the 
 battle of Alarcos, gained over the Christians by the Moslems of 
 Andalus, on which fatal day Christendom suffered a defeat so 
 signal, that it was feared the Spanish Peninsula would be entirely 
 wrested away from the dominion of the Cross. On that day the 
 Franks lost 150,000 men and 30,000 prisoners. A man-slave sold 
 among the unbelievers for a dirhem ; a donkey, for the same ; a 
 sword, half a dirhem ; a horse, five dirhems. Hundreds of thou- 
 sands'of these various sorts of booty were in the possession of the 
 triumphant followers of Takoob-al-Mansoor. Curses on his head ! 
 But he was a brave warrior, and the Christians before him seemed 
 
 EIi2
 
 4-20 EEBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 to forget that they were the descendants of the brave Cid, the 
 Kanbitoor, as the Moorish hounds (in their jargon) denominated 
 the famous Campeador. 
 
 A general move for the rescue of the faithful in Spain — a 
 crusade against the infidels triumphing there, was preached 
 throughout Europe by all the most eloquent clergy : and thousands 
 and thousands of valorous knights and nobles, accompanied by 
 well-meaning varlets and vassals of the lower sort, trooped from 
 all sides to the rescue. The straits of Gribel-al-tariff, at which spot 
 the Moor, passing from Barbary, first planted his accursed foot on 
 the Christian soil, were crowded with the galleys of the Templars 
 aud the Knichts of St. John, who flung succours into the menaced 
 kingdoms of the peninsula ; the inland sea swarmed with their 
 ships hasting from their forts and islands, from Rhodes and Byzan- 
 tium, from Jaffa and Askalon. The Pyrenean peaks beheld the 
 pennons and glittered with the armour of the knights marching 
 out of France into Spain ; and, finally, in a ship that set sail direct 
 from Bohemia, where Sir "Wilfrid happened to be quartered at the 
 time when the news of the defeat of Alarcos came and alarmed all 
 good Christians, Ivanhoe landed at Barcelona, and proceeded to 
 slaughter the Moors forthwith. 
 
 He brought letters of introduction from his friend Folko of 
 Heydcnbraten, the Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John, 
 to the venerable Baldomero de Gai'banzos, Grand Master of the 
 renowned order of Saint Jago. The chief of Saint Jago's knights 
 paid the greatest respect to a warrior, whose fame was already so 
 widely known in Christendom ; and Ivanhoe had the pleasure of 
 being appointed to all the posts of danger and forlorn hopes that 
 could be devised in his honour. He would be called up twice or 
 thrice in a night to fight the Moors : he led ambushes, scaled 
 breaches, was blown up by mines; was wounded many hundred 
 times (recovering, thanks to the elixir, of which Wamba always 
 carried a supply) ; he was the terror of the Saracens, and the 
 admiration and wonder of the Christians. 
 
 To describe his deeds would, I say, be tedious; one day's battle 
 was like that of another. I am not writing in ten volumes like 
 Monsieur Alexandre Dumas, or even in three like other great 
 authors. We have no room for the recounting of Sir Wilfrid's
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 421 
 
 deeds of valour. Whenever he took a Moorish town, it was 
 remarked, that he went anxiously into the Jewish quarter, and 
 inquired amongst the Hebrews, who were in great numbers in 
 Spain, for Eebecca, the daughter of Isaac. Many Jews, accord- 
 ing to his wont, he ransomed, and created so much scandal by 
 this proceeding, and by the manifest favour which he showed 
 to the people of the nation — that the Master of Saint Jago 
 remonstrated with him, and it is probable he would have been 
 cast into the Inquisition and roasted ; but that his prodigious 
 valour and success against the Moors counterbalanced his here- 
 tical partiality for the children of Jacob. 
 
 It chanced that the good knight was present at the siege of 
 Xixona in Andalusia, entering the breach at first, according to 
 his wont, and slaying, with his own hand, the Moorish lieutenant 
 of the town, and several hundred more of its unbelieving 
 defenders. He had very nearly done for the Alfaqui, or governor, 
 a veteran warrior with a crooked scimetar and a beard as white as 
 snow, but a couple of hundred of the Alfaqui's body-guard flung 
 themselves between Ivanhoe and their chief, and the old fellow 
 escaped with his life, leaving a handful of his beard in the grasp 
 of the English knight. The strictly military business being done, 
 and such of the garrison as did not escape put, as by right, to the 
 sword, the good knight, Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, took no further 
 part in the proceedings of the conquerors of that ill-fated place. A 
 scene of horrible massacre and frightful reprisals ensued, and the 
 Christian warriors, hot with victory and flushed with slaughter, 
 were, it is to be feared, as savage in their hour of triumph as ever 
 their heathen enemies had been. 
 
 Among the most violent and least scrupulous was the ferocious 
 knight of Saint Jago, Don Beltran de Cuchilla y Trabuco y Espada 
 y Espelon ; raging through the vanquished city like a demon, he 
 slaughtered indiscriminately all those infidels of both sexes whose 
 wealth did not tempt him to a ransom, or whose beauty did not 
 reserve them for more frightful calamities than death. The 
 slaughter over, Don Beltran took up his quarters in the Albaycen, 
 where the Alfaqui had lived who had so narrowly escaped the 
 sword of Ivanhoe ; but the wealth, the treasure, the slaves, and 
 the family of the fugitive chieftain, were left in possession of
 
 422 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 the conqueror of Xixona. Among the treasures, Don Beltran 
 recognised with a savage joy the coat-armours and ornaments of 
 many brave and unfortunate companions-in-arms who had fallen in 
 the fatal battle of Alarcos. The sight of those bloody relics added 
 fury to his cruel disposition, and served to steel a heart already 
 but little disposed to sentiments of mercy. 
 
 Three days after the sack and plunder of the place, Don Beltran 
 was seated in the hall-court lately occupied by the proud Alfaqui, 
 lying in his divan, dressed in his rich robes, the fountains playing 
 in the centre, the slaves of the Moor ministering to his scarred 
 and rugged Christian conqueror. Some fanned him with pea- 
 cocks' pinions, some danced before him, some sang Moors' melo- 
 dies to the plaintive notes of a guzla, one — it was the only 
 daughter of the Moor's old age, the young Zutulbe, a rosebud 
 of beauty — sat weeping in a corner of the gilded hall, weep- 
 ing for her slain brethren, the pride of Moslem chivalry, whose 
 heads were blackening in the blazing sunshine on the portals 
 without, and for her father, whose home had been thus made 
 desolate. 
 
 He and his guest, the English knight Sir Wilfrid, were playing 
 at chess, a favourite amusement with the chivalry of the period, 
 when a messenger was announced from Valencia, to treat, if pos- 
 sible, for the ransom of the remaining part of the Alfaqui's family. 
 A grim smile lighted up Don Beltran's features as he bade the 
 black slave admit the messenger. He entered. By his costume 
 it was at once seen that the bearer of the flag of truce was a Jew 
 — the people were employed continually then as ambassadors 
 between the two races at war in Spain. 
 
 " I come," said the old Jew (in a voice which made Sir Wil- 
 frid start), " from my lord the Alfaqui to my noble sefior, the 
 invincible Don Beltran de Cuchilla, to treat for the ransom of the 
 Moor's only daughter, the child of his old age and the pearl of his 
 affection." 
 
 " A pearl is a valuable jewel, Hebrew. What does the Moorish 
 dog bid for her?" asked Don Beltran, still smiling grimly. 
 
 " The Alfaqui offers 100,000 dinars, twenty-four horses with 
 their caparisons, twenty-four suits of plate-armour, and diamonds 
 and rubies to the amount of 1,000,000 dinars."
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 423 
 
 " Ho, slaves !" roared Don Beltran, " show the Jew my treasury 
 of gold. How many hundred thousand pieces are there ? " And 
 ten enormous chests were produced in which the accountant 
 counted 1,000 bags of 1,000 dirhems each, and displayed several 
 caskets of jewels containing such a treasure of rubies, smaragds, 
 diamonds, and jacinths, as made the eyes of the aged ambassador 
 twinkle with avarice. 
 
 " How many horses are there in my stable ? " continued Don 
 Beltran ; and Muley, the master of the horse, numbered three 
 hundred fully caparisoned ; and there was, likewise, armour of the 
 richest sort for as many cavaliers, who followed the banner of this 
 doughty captain. 
 
 " I want neither money nor armour," said the ferocious knight ; 
 " tell this to the Alfaqui, Jew. And I will keep the child, his 
 daughter, to serve the messes for my dogs, and clean the platters 
 for my scullions." 
 
 " Deprive not the old man of his child," here interposed the 
 knight of Ivanhoe ; " bethink thee, brave Don Beltran, she is but 
 an infant in years." 
 
 " She is my captive, Sir Knight," replied the surly Don Beltran; 
 " I will do with my own as becomes me." 
 
 " Take 200,000 dirhems ! " cried the Jew ; " more '.—anything ! 
 The Alfaqui will give his life for his child!" 
 
 " Come hither, Zutulbe ! — come hither, thou Moorish pearl ! " 
 yelled the ferocious warrior ; " come closer, my pretty black-eyed 
 houri of heathenesse ! Hast heard the name of Beltran de Espada 
 y Trabucor" 
 
 " Tbere were three brothers of that name at Alarcos, and my 
 brothers slew the Christian dogs!" said the proud young girl, 
 looking boldly at Don Beltran, who foamed with rage. 
 
 " The Moors butchered my mother and her little ones at mid- 
 night, in our castle of Murcia," Beltran said. 
 
 " Thy father fled like a craven, as thou didst, Don Beltran ! " 
 cried the high-spirited girl. 
 
 " By Saint Jago, this is too mnch ! " screamed the infuriated 
 nobleman ; and the next moment there was a shriek, and the 
 maiden fell to the ground with Don Beltran's dagger in her 
 side.
 
 424 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 " Death is better than dishonour! " cried the child, rolling on 
 the blood-stained marble pavement. " I — I spit upon thee, dog 
 of a Christian ! " and with this, and with a savage laugh, she fell 
 back and died. 
 
 " Bear back this news, Jew, to the Alfaqui," howled the Don, 
 spurning the beauteous corpse with his foot. " I would not 
 have ransomed her for all the gold in Barbary ! " And shudder- 
 irig, the old Jew left the apartment, which Ivanboe quitted 
 likewise. 
 
 "When they were in the outer court, the knight said to the 
 Jew, " Isaac of York, dost thou not know me ? " and threw back 
 his hood, and looked at the old man. 
 
 The old Jew stared wildly, rushed forward, as if to seize his 
 band, then started back, trembling convulsively, and clutching 
 his withered hands over his face, said, with a burst of grief, " Sir 
 "Wilfrid of Ivanboe ! — no, no ! — I do not know thee ! " 
 
 "Holy mother! what has chanced?" said Ivanboe, in his 
 turn becoming ghastly pale; "where is thy daughter — where is 
 Bebecca ?" 
 
 " Away from me ! " said the old Jew, tottering, " away ! Bebecca 
 is— dead!" 
 
 ******** 
 
 When the disinherited knight heard that fatal announcement, 
 he fell to the ground senseless, and was for some days as one 
 perfectly distraught with grief. He took no nourishment and 
 uttered no word. Por weeks he did not relapse out of his moody 
 silence, and when he came partially to himself again, it was to 
 bid his people to horse, in a hollow voice, and to make a foray 
 against the Moors. Day after day he issued out against these 
 infidels, and did nought but slay and slay. He took no plunder 
 as other knights did, but left that to his followers ; he uttered no 
 war-cry, as was the manner of chivalry, and he gave no quarter, 
 insomuch that the "silent knight" became the dread of all the 
 Paynims of Granada and Andalusia, and more fell by his lance 
 than by that of any the most clamorous captain of the troops 
 in arms against them. Thus the tide of battle turned, and the 
 Arab historian, El Makary, recounts how, at the great battle of 
 Al Akab, called by the Spaniards Bas Navas, the Christians
 
 REBECCA AND ROWEXA. 425 
 
 retrieved their defeat at Alarcos, and absolutely killed half a 
 million of Mahometans. Fifty thousand of these, of course, Dou 
 Wilfrid took to his own lance; and it was remarked that tho 
 melancholy warrior seemed somewhat more easy in spirits after 
 that famous feat of arms. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE END OE THE PERFORMANCE. 
 
 In a short time the terrible Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, had 
 killed off so many of the Moors, that though those unbelieving 
 miscreants poured continual reinforcements into Spain from 
 Barhary, they could make no head against the Christian forces, 
 and in fact came into battle quite discouraged at the notion of 
 meeting the dreadful silent knight. It was commonly believed 
 amongst them, that the famous Malek Eic, Eichard of England, 
 the conqueror of Saladin, had come to life again, and was battling 
 in the Spanish hosts — that this his second life was a charmed one, 
 and his body inaccessible to blow of scimetar or thrust of spear — 
 that after battle he ate the hearts and drank the blood of many 
 young Moors for his supper ; a thousand wild legends were told 
 of Ivanhoe, indeed, so that the Morisco warriors came half van- 
 quished into the field, and fell an easy prey to the Spaniards, who 
 cut away among them without mercy. And although none of the 
 Spanish historians whom I have consulted make mention of Sir 
 "Wilfrid as the real author of the numerous triumphs which now 
 graced the arms of the good cause ; this is not in the least to be 
 wondered at in a nation that has always been notorious for 
 bragging, and for the non-payment of their debts of gratitude as 
 of their other obligations, and that writes histories of the Penin- 
 sular war with the Emperor Napoleon, without making the 
 slightest mention of His Grace the Duke of Wellington, or of the 
 part taken by British valour in that transaction. Well, it 
 must be confessed on the other hand that we brag enough of our
 
 426 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 fathers' feats in those campaigns, but this is not the subject at 
 present under consideration. 
 
 To be brief, Ivanhoe made such short work with the unbelievers, 
 that the monarch of Aragon, King Don Jayme, saw himself 
 speedily enabled to besiege the city of Valencia, the last strong- 
 hold which the Moors had in his dominions, and garrisoned by 
 many thousands of those infidels under the command of their 
 King Aboo Abdallah Mahommed, son of Yakoob Almansoor. The 
 Arabian historian El Makary, gives a full account of the military 
 precautions taken by Aboo Abdallah to defend bis city, but as I 
 do not wish to make a parade of my learning, or to write a costume 
 novel, I shall pretermit any description of the city under its 
 Moorish governors. 
 
 Besides the Turks who inhabited it, there dwelt within its walls, 
 great store of those of the Hebrew nation, who were always pro- 
 tected by the Moors, during their unbelieving reign in Spain ; 
 and who were, as we very well know, the chief physicians, the 
 chief bankers, the chief statesmen, the chief artists and musicians ; 
 the chief everything under the Moorish kings. Thus it is not 
 surprising, that the Hebrews, having their money, their liberty, 
 their teeth, their lives, secure under the Mahometan domination, 
 should infinitely prefer it to the Christian sway, beneath 
 which they were liable to be deprived of every one of these 
 benefits. 
 
 Among these Hebrews of Valencia, lived a very ancient Israelite 
 — no other than Isaac of York, before mentioned, who came into 
 Spain with his daughter, soon after Ivanhoe's marriage, in the 
 third volume of the first part of this history. Isaac was respected 
 by his people, for the money which he possessed, and his daughter 
 for her admirable good qualities, her beauty, her charities, and her 
 remarkable medical skill. 
 
 The young Emir Aboo Abdallah, was so struck by her charms, 
 that though she was considerably older than his highness, he 
 offered to marry her, and instal her as number 1 of his wives, — 
 and Isaac of York would not have objected to the union, (for 
 such mixed marriages were not uncommon between the Hebrews 
 and Moors those days,) — but Rebecca firmly, but respectfully, 
 declined the proposals of the Prince, saying, that it was impos-
 
 REBECCA AXD ROWENA. 427 
 
 sible she should unite herself with a man of a creed different to 
 her own. 
 
 Although Isaac was, probably, not over well pleased at losing 
 this chance of being father-in-law to a royal highness, yet as he 
 passed among his people for a very strict character, and there 
 were in his family several Rabbis of great reputation and severity 
 of conduct, the old gentleman was silenced by this objection of 
 Bebecea's, and the young lady herself applauded by her relatives 
 for her resolute behaviour. She took their congratulations in a 
 very frigid manner, and said, that it was her wish not to marry at 
 all, but to devote herself to the practice of medicine altogether, 
 and to helping the sick and needy of her people. Indeed, although 
 she did not go to any public meetings, she was as benevolent a 
 creature as the world ever saw : the poor blessed her, wherever 
 they knew her, and many benefited by her who guessed not 
 whence her gentle bounty came. 
 
 But there are men in Jewry who admire beauty, and as I 
 have even heard, appreciate money too, and Eebecca had such a 
 quantity of both, that all the most desirable bachelors of the 
 people were ready to bid for her. Ambassadors came from all 
 quarters to propose for her. Her own uncle, the venerable Ben 
 Solomons, with a beard as long as a Cashmere goat, and a repu- 
 tation for learning and piety which still lives in his nation, 
 quarrelled with his son Moses, the red-haired diamond merchant 
 of Trebizond, and his son Simeon, the bald bill-broker of Bagdad, 
 each putting in a claim for their cousin. Ben Minories came 
 from London, and knelt at her feet : Ben Jochanan arrived from 
 Paris, and thought to dazzle her with the latest waistcoats from 
 the Palais Eoyal: and Ben Jonah brought her a present of Dutch 
 herrings, and besought her to come back, and be Mrs. Ben Jonah 
 at the Hague. 
 
 Eebecca temporised as best she might. She thought her uncle 
 was too old. She besought dear Moses and dear Simeon not to 
 quarrel with each other, and offend their father by pressing their 
 suit. Ben Minories, from London, she said was too young, and 
 Jochanan from Paris, she pointed out to Isaac of York, must be a 
 spendthrift, or he would not wear those absurd waistcoats. As 
 for Ben Jonah, she said she could not bear the notion of tobacco
 
 428 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 and Dutch herrings — she wished to stay with her papa, her dear 
 papa. Iu fine, she invented a thousand excuses for delay, and it 
 was plain that marriage was odious to her. The only man whom 
 she received with anything like favour, was young Bevis Marks, 
 of London, with whom she was very familiar. But Bevis had 
 come to her with a certain token that had been given to him by 
 an English knight who saved him from a faggot to which the 
 ferocious Hospitaller Polko of Heydenbraten was about to con- 
 demn him. It was but a ring, with an emerald in it, that Bevis 
 knew to be sham, and not worth a groat. Rebecca knew about 
 the value of jewels too ; but, ah ! she valued this one more than 
 all the diamonds in Prester John's turban. She kissed it; she 
 cried over it ; she wore it in her bosom always ; and when she 
 knelt down at night and morning, she held it between her 
 folded hands on her neck. . . . Toung Bevis Marks went away 
 finally no better off than the others ; the rascal sold to the 
 king of France a handsome ruby, the very size of the bit of 
 glass in Eebecca's ring; but he always said, he would rather 
 have had her, than ten thousand pounds, and very likely he 
 would, for it was known she would at once have a plumb to her 
 fortune. 
 
 These delays, however, could not continue for ever ; and at a 
 great family meeting held at Passover time, Eebecca was 
 solemnly ordered to choose a husband out of the gentlemen 
 there present ; her aunts pointing out the great kindness which 
 had been shown to her by her father, in permitting her to 
 choose 1'or herself. One aunt was of the Solomon faction, 
 another aunt took Simeon's side, a third most venerable old 
 lady, the head of the family, and a hundred and forty-four 
 years of age, was ready to pronounce a curse upon her, and 
 cast her out, unless she married before the month was over. 
 All the jewelled heads of all the old ladies in council ; all the 
 beards of all the family wagged against her — it must have been 
 an awful sight to witness. 
 
 At last, then, Eebecca was forced to speak. " Kinsmen ! " 
 she said, turning pale, " When the Prince Abou Abdil asked me 
 in marriage, I told you I would not wed but with one of my own 
 faith."
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 429 
 
 " She lias turned Turk," screamed out the ladies. " She wants 
 to be a princess, and has turned Turk," roared the Babbis. 
 
 "Well, well," said Isaac, in rather an appeased tone, "let us 
 hear what the poor girl has got to say. Do you Avant to marry 
 his royal highness, Eebecca, say the word, yes or no ? " 
 
 Another groan burst from the Babbis — they cried, shrieked, 
 chattered, gesticulated, furious to lose such a prize, as were the 
 women, that she should reign over them, a second Esther. 
 
 "Silence," cried out Isaac, " let the girl speak — speak boldly, 
 Eebecca, dear, there's a good girl." 
 
 Eebecca was as pale as a stone. She folded her arms on her 
 breast, and felt the ring there. She looked round all the assembly, 
 and then at Isaac. " Father," she said, in a thrilling low steady 
 voice, " I am not of your religion — I am not of the Prince 
 Boabdil's religion — I — I am of Ms religion." 
 
 " His, whose ? in the name of Moses, girl," cried Isaac. 
 
 Eebecca clasped her hands on her beating chest, and looked 
 round with dauntless eyes, — " Of his," she said, " who saved my 
 life and your honour, of my dear, dear champion's, — I never can 
 be his, but I will be no other's. Give my money to my kinsmen ; 
 it is that they long for. Take the dross, Simeon and Solomon, 
 Jonah and Jochanan, and divide it among you, and leave me. I 
 will never be yours, I tell you, never. Do you think, after 
 knowing him and hearing him speak, — after watching him 
 wounded on his pillow, and glorious in battle (her eyes melted 
 and kindled again as she spoke these words), I can mate with 
 such as yoio ? Go. Leave me to myself. I am none of yours. 
 I love him, I love him. Fate divides us — long, long miles sepa- 
 rate us ; and I know we may never meet again. But I love and 
 bless him always. Yes, always. My prayers are his ; my faith 
 is his. Tes, my faith is your faith, "Wilfrid, Wilfrid ! I have no 
 kindred more, — I am a Christian." 
 
 At this last word there was such a row in the assembly, as my 
 feeble pen would in vain endeavour to depict. Old Isaac staggered 
 back in a fit, and nobody took the least notice of him. Groans, 
 curses, yells of men, shrieks of women, filled the room with such a 
 furious jabbering, as might have appalled any heart less stout than 
 Eebecca's ; but that brave woman was prepared for all, expecting,
 
 430 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 and perhaps hoping, that death would be her instant lot. There 
 was but one creature who pitied her, and that was her cousin and 
 father's clerk, little Ben Davids, who was but thirteen, and had 
 only just begun to carry a bag, and whose crying and boo-hooing, 
 as she finished speaking, was drowned in the screams and male- 
 dictions of the elder Israelites. Ben Davids was madly in love 
 with his cousin (as boys often are with ladies of twice their 
 age), and he had presence of mind suddenly to knock over the 
 large brazen lamp on the table, which illuminated the angry 
 conclave, and whispering to Bebecca to go up to her own room 
 and lock herself in, or they would kill her else, he took her hand 
 and led her out. 
 
 Brom that day she disappeared from among her people. The 
 poor and the wretched missed her, and asked for her in vain. Had 
 any violence been done to her, the poorer Jews would have risen 
 and put all Isaac's family to death ; and besides, her old flame, 
 Brince Boabdil, would have also been exceedingly wrathful. She 
 was not killed then, but, so to speak, buried alive, and locked 
 up in Isaac's back kitchen ; an apartment into which scarcely any 
 light entered, and where she was fed upon scanty portions of the 
 most mouldy bread and water. Little Ben Davids was the only 
 person who visited her, and her sole consolation was to talk to 
 him about Ivanhoe, and how good and how gentle he was, how 
 brave and how true ; and how he slew the tremendous knight of 
 the Templars, and how he married a lady whom Bebecca scarcely 
 thought worthy of him, but with whom she prayed he might be 
 happy ; and of what colour his eyes were, and what were 
 the arms on his shield, viz., a tree with the word " Desdichado " 
 written underneath, &c, &c, &c. ; all which talk would not 
 have interested little Davids, had it come from any body else's 
 mouth, but to which he never tired of listening as it fell from her 
 sweet lips. 
 
 So, in fact, when old Isaac of York came to negotiate with Don 
 Beltran de Cuchilla for the ransom of the Alfaqui's daughter of 
 Xixona, our dearest Bebecca was no more dead than you and I ; 
 and it was in his rage and fury against Ivanhoe that Isaac told 
 that cavalier the falsehood which caused the knight so much pain 
 and such a prodigious deal of bloodshed to the Moors ; and who
 
 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 431 
 
 knows, trivial as it may seem, whether it was not that very circum- 
 stance which caused the destruction in Spain of the Moorish 
 power ? 
 
 Although Isaac, we may be sure, never told his daughter that 
 Ivanhoe had cast up again, yet Master Ben Davids did, who heard 
 it from his employer ; and he saved Rebecca's life by communi- 
 cating the intelligence, for the poor thing would have infallibly 
 perished but for this good news. She had now been in prison 
 four years three months and twenty-four days, during which time 
 she had partaken of nothing but bread and water (except such 
 occasional tit-bits as Davids could bring her, and these were few 
 indeed, for old Isaac was always a curmudgeon, and seldom had 
 more than a pair of eggs for his own and David's dinner) ; and she 
 was languishing away when the news came suddenly to revive her. 
 Then, though in the darkness you could not see her cheeks, they 
 began to bloom again : then her heart began to beat and her blood 
 to flow, and she kissed the ring on her neck a thousand times a 
 day at least ; and her constant question was, " Ben Davids ! Ben 
 Davids ! when is he coming to besiege Valencia ? " She knew he 
 would come, and, indeed, the Christians were encamped before the 
 town ere a month was over. 
 
 ******* 
 
 And now my dear boys and girls I think I perceive behind that- 
 dark scene of the back-kitchen (which is just a simple flat, painted 
 stone-colour, that shifts in a minute,) bright streaks of light flash- 
 ing out, as though they were preparing a most brilliant, gorgeous, 
 and altogether dazzling illumination, with effects never before 
 attempted on any stage. Tes, the fairy in the pretty pink tights 
 and spangled muslin, is getting into the brilliant revolving chariot 
 of the realms of bliss. — Tes, most of the fiddlers and trumpeters 
 have gone round from the orchestra to join in the grand triumphal 
 procession, where the whole strength of the company is already 
 assembled, arrayed in costumes of Moorish and Christian chivalry, 
 to celebrate the " Terrible Escalade," the " Rescue of Virtuous 
 Innocence "—the "Grand Entry of the Christians into Valencia" — 
 "Appearance of the Eairy Day-Star, " and "unexampled displays 
 of pyrotechnic festivity." Do you not, I say, perceive that we are 
 come to the end of our history ; and, after a quantity of rapid and
 
 432 REBECCA AND ROWENA. 
 
 terrific fighting, brilliant change of scenery, and songs, appropriate 
 or otherwise, are bringing our hero and heroine together ? Who 
 Avants a long scene at the last ? Mammas are putting the girls' 
 cloaks and boas on — Papas have gone out to look for the carriage, 
 and left the box-door swinging open, and letting in the cold air — 
 if there were any stage-conversation, you could not hear it, for the 
 scuffling of the people who are leaving the pit. See, the orange- 
 women are preparing to retire. To-morrow their play-bills will be 
 as so much waste-paper — so will some of our masterpieces, woe 
 is me — but lo ! here we come to Scene the last, and Valencia is 
 besieged and captured by the Christians. 
 
 "Who is the first on the wall, and who hurls down the green 
 standard of the Prophet ? "Who chops off the head of the Emir 
 Abou Whatdyecallem just as the latter has cut over the cruel 
 Don Beltran de Cuchilla y &c. ? Who, attracted to the Jewish 
 quarter by the shrieks of the inhabitants who are being slain by 
 the Moorish soldiery, and by a little boy by the name of Ben 
 Davids, who recognises the knight by his shield, finds Isaac of 
 York egorge on a threshold, and clasping a large back-kitchen 
 key ? Who but Ivanhoe — who but Wilfrid ? " An Ivanhoe to 
 the rescue," he bellows out : he has heard that news from little 
 Ben Davids which makes him sing. And who is it that comes out 
 of the house — trembling — panting — with her arms out — in a white 
 dress — with her hair down — who is it but dear Rebecca ! Look, 
 they rush together, and Master Wamba is waving an immense 
 banner over them, and knocks down a circumambient Jew with a 
 h.am, which he happens to have in his pocket. . . . As for Bebecca, 
 now her head is laid upon Ivanhoe's heart : I shall not ask to hear 
 what she is whispering; or describe further that scene of meeting, 
 though I declare I am quite affected when I think of it. Indeed 
 I have thought of it any time these five-and-twenty years — ever 
 since, as a boy at school, I commenced the noble study of novels — 
 over since the day when, lying on sunny slopes of half-holidays, 
 the fair chivalrous figures and beautiful shapes of knights and 
 ladies were visible to me — ever since I grew to love Bebecca, 
 that sweetest creature of the poet's fancy, and longed to see her 
 righted.
 
 REBECCA AND ROW ENA. 433 
 
 That she and Ivanboe were married follows of course ; for 
 Bowena's promise extorted from liim was, that he would never 
 wed a Jewess, and a better Christian than Rebecca now was never 
 said her Catechism. Married I am sure they were, and adopted 
 little Cedric ; but I don't think tbey had any other children, or 
 were subsequently very boisterously happy. Of some sort of 
 happiness melancholy is a characteristic, aud I think these were 
 a solemn pair, and died rather early. 
 
 VOL III. F F
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 FPi
 
 A LITTLE DINNEE AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 Me. and Mrs. Fitzroy Tiinmins live in Lilliput Street, that neat 
 little street which runs at right angles with the Park and Brob- 
 dingnag Gardens. It is a very genteel neighbourhood, and I need 
 not say they are of a good family. 
 
 Especially Mrs. Timmins, as her mamma is always telling Mr. T. 
 They are Suffolk people, and distantly related to the Eight 
 Honourable the Earl of Bungay. 
 
 Besides his house in Lilliput Street, Mr. Timmins has Chambers 
 in Eigtree Court, Temple, and goes the Northern Circuit. 
 
 The other day, when there was a slight difference about the 
 payment of fees between the great Parliamentary Counsel and the 
 Solicitors, Stoke and Pogers, of Great George Street, sent the 
 papers of the Lough Eoyle and Lough Corrib Junction Railway 
 to Mr. Eitzroy Timmins, who was so elated that he instantly 
 purchased a couple of looking-glasses for his drawing-rooms (the 
 front room is 16 by 12, and the back, a tight but elegant apart- 
 ment, 10 ft. 6 by 8 ft. 4), a coral for the baby, two new dresses for 
 Mrs. Timmins, and a little rosewood desk, at the Pantechnicon, 
 for which Rosa had long been sighing, with crumpled legs, emerald- 
 green and gold morocco top, and drawers all over. 
 
 Mrs. Timmins is a very pretty poetess (her " Lines to a Eaded 
 Tulip," and her " Plaint of Plinlimmon," appeared in one of last 
 year's Keepsakes), and Fitzroy, as he impressed a kiss on the 
 snowy forehead of his bride, pointed out to her, in one of the 
 innumerable pockets of the desk, an elegant ruby-tipped pen, and 
 six charming little gilt blank books, marked " My Books," which
 
 438 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 Mrs. Fitzroy might fill, lie said, (he is an Oxford man, and very 
 polite) "with the delightful productions of her Muse." Besides 
 these books, there was pink paper, paper with crimson edges, lace 
 paper, all stamped with E. F. T. (Eosa Fitzroy Tirnmins), and the 
 hand and battle-axe, the crest of the Timminses (and borne at 
 Ascalon by Eoaldus de Timmins, a crusader, who is now buried in 
 the Temple Church, next to Serjeant Snooks), and yellow, pink, 
 light-blue, and other scented sealing-waxes, at the service of Eosa 
 when she chose to correspond with her friends. 
 
 Eosa, you may be sure, jumped with joy at the sight of this 
 sweet present ; called her Charles (his first name is Samuel, but 
 they have sunk that) the best of men ! embraced him a great 
 number of times, to the edification of her buttony little page, who 
 stood at the landing ; and as soon as he was gone to Chambers, 
 took the new pen and a sweet sheet of paper, and began to 
 compose a poem. 
 
 "What shall it be about?" was naturally her first thought. 
 "What should be a young mother's first inspiration?" Her 
 child lay on the sofa asleep, before her ; and she began in her 
 neatest hand — 
 
 LINES 
 
 ON MY SON, BUNGAY DE BEACY GASIILEIGH TYMMYNS, AGED TEN MONTHS. 
 
 Tuesday. 
 " How beautiful ! how beautiful thou seemest, 
 My boy, my precious one, my rosy babe ! 
 Kind angels hover round thee, as thou dreamest : 
 Soft lasbes hide thy beauteous azure eye wbich gleamest." 
 
 "Glcamcst? thine eye which gleamest? Is that grammar?" 
 thought Eosa, who had puzzled her little brains for some time 
 with this absurd question, when the baby woke ; then the cook 
 came up to ask about dinner ; then Mrs. Fundy slipped over from 
 No. 27, (they are opposite neighbours, and made an acquaintance 
 through Mrs. Fundy's macaw) : and a thousand things happened. 
 Finally there was no rhyme to babe except Tippoo Saib (against 
 whom Major Graskleigh, Eosa's grandfather, had distinguished 
 himself), and so she gave up the little poem about her De Bracy. 
 
 Nevertheless, when Fitzroy returned from Chambers to take a
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 439 
 
 walk with his wife in the Park, as he peeped through the rich 
 tapestry hanging which divided the two drawing-rooms, he found 
 his dear girl still seated at the desk, and writing, writing away 
 with her ruby pen as fast as it could scribble. 
 
 " "What a genius that child has ! " he said ; " why, she is a 
 second Mrs. Xorton ! " and advanced smiling to peep over her 
 shoulder and see what pretty thing Eosa was composing. 
 
 It was not poetry, though, that she was writing, and Fitz read 
 as follows : — 
 
 " LiLLipuT Street, Tuesday, 22nd May. 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Fitzroy Tymmyns request the pleasure of 
 Sir Thomas and Lady Kicklebury's company at dinner on 
 "Wednesday, at 7^ o'clock." 
 
 u My dear ! ' ' exclaimed the barrister, pulling a long face. 
 
 " Law, Fitzroy ! " cried the beloved of his bosom, " how you do 
 startle one ! " 
 
 " Give a dinner party with our means ! " said he. 
 
 " Ain't you making a fortune, you miser ? " Hosa said. 
 " Fifteen guineas a day is four thousand five hundred a year ; 
 I've calculated it." And, so saying, she rose and taking hold of 
 his whiskers, (which are as fine as those of any man of his circuit,) 
 she put her mouth close up against his and did something to his 
 long face, which quite changed the expression of it : and which 
 the little page heard outside the door. 
 
 " Our dining-room won't hold ten," he said. 
 
 " "We'll only ask twenty," my love ; " ten are sure to refuse in 
 this season, when everybody is giving parties. Look, here is 
 the list." 
 
 " Earl and Countess of Bungay, and Lady Barbara Saint 
 Mary's." 
 
 " Tou are dying to get a Lord into the house," Timmins said {he 
 has not altered his name in Fig-tree Court yet, and therefore I am 
 not so affected as to call him Tymmyns). "Law, my dear, they 
 are our cousins, and must be asked," Bosa said. 
 
 " Let us put down my sister and Tom Crowder, then." 
 
 " Blanche Crowder is really so very fat, Fitzroy," his wife said, 
 *' and our rooms are so very small."
 
 440 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 Bitz laughed. "Ton little rogue," he said, "Lady Bungay 
 weighs two of Blanche, even when she's not in the f " 
 
 " Fiddlesticks ! " Bose cried out. " Doctor Crowder really can- 
 not be admitted ; he makes such a noise eating his soup, that it 
 is really quite disagreeable;" and she imitated the gurgling 
 noise performed by the doctor while inhausting his soup, in 
 such a funny way, that Bitz saw inviting him was out of the 
 question. 
 
 " Besides, we musn't have too many relations," Bosa went on. 
 " Mamma, of course, is coming. She doesn't like to be asked in the 
 evening; and she'll bring her silver bread-basket, and her candle- 
 sticks, which are very rich and handsome." 
 
 " And you complain of Blanche for being too stout ! " groaned 
 out Timmins. 
 
 " AVell, well, don't be in a pet," said little Bosa. " The girls 
 won't come to dinner ; but will bring their music afterwards." 
 And she went on with the list. 
 
 " Sir Thomas and Lady Kicklebury, 2. No saying no : we must 
 ask them, Charles. They are rich people, and any room in their 
 house in Brobdingnag G-ardens would swallow up our humble cot. 
 But to people in our position in society, they will be glad enough 
 to come. The city people are glad to mix with the old families." 
 
 " A^ery good," said Bitz, with a sad face of assent — and Mrs. 
 Timmins went on reading her list. 
 
 " Mr. and Mrs. Topham Sawyer, Belgravine Blace." 
 
 " Mrs. Sawyer hasn't asked you all the season. She gives her- 
 self the airs of an empress ; and when " 
 
 " One's member, you know, my dear, one must have," Bosa 
 replied, with much dignity ; as if the presence of the represen- 
 tative of her native place would be a protection to her dinner ; and 
 a note was written and transported by the page early next morning 
 to the mansion of the Sawyers, in Belgravine Blace. 
 
 The Topham Sawyers had just came down to breakfast, Mrs. 
 T. in her large dust-coloured morning dress and Madonna front 
 (she looks rather scraggy of a morning, but I promise you her 
 ringlets and figure Avill stun you of an evening) ; and having read 
 the note, the following dialogue passed : — 
 
 Mrs Topham Sawyer. " Well, upon my word, I don't know
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 441 
 
 ■where things will end. Mr. Sawyer, the Timminses have asked 
 us to dinner." 
 
 Mr. Toplwm Sau-yer. " Ask us to dinner ! What d — im- 
 pudence!" 
 
 Mrs. Topliam Sawyer. " The most dangerous and insolent revo- 
 lutionary principles are abroad, Mr. Sawyer ; and I shall write and 
 hint as much to these persons." 
 
 Mr. Topliam Sawyer. " No, d — it, Joanna, they are my con- 
 stituents, and we must go. Write a civil note, and say we will 
 come to their party." (He resumes the perusal of the " Times" 
 and Mrs. Topham Sawyer writes) — 
 
 " My deab. Eosa, 
 
 " We shall have great pleasure in joining your little party. 
 I do not reply in the third person, as ice are old friends, you know, 
 and country neighbours. I hope your mamma is well : present my 
 kindest remembrances to her, and I hope we shall see much moee 
 of each other in the summer, when we go down to the Sawpits (for 
 going abroad is out of the question in these dreadful times). 
 With a hundred kisses to your dear little pet, 
 
 " Believe me your attached 
 
 "J. T. S." 
 
 She said Pet, because she did not know whether Rosa's child 
 was a girl or boy : and Mrs. Timmins was very much pleased with 
 the kind and gracious nature of the reply to her invitation. 
 
 II. 
 
 The next persons whom little Mrs. Timmins was bent upon 
 asking, were Mr. and Mrs. John Rowdy, of the firm of Stumpy, 
 Rowdy, and Co., of Brobdingnag Gardens, of the Prairie, Putney, 
 and of Lombard Street, City. 
 
 Mrs. Timmins and Mrs. Rowdy had been brought up at the 
 same school together, and there was always a little rivalry between 
 them, from the day when they contended for the French prize at 
 school, to last week, when each had a stall at the Fancy Pair for 
 the benefit of the Daughters of Decayed Muffin-men ; and when
 
 442 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 Mrs. Tinimins danced against Mrs. Rowdy in the Scythe Mazurka 
 at the Polish Ball, headed by Mrs. Hugh Slasher. Rowdy took 
 twenty-three pounds more than Timmins in the Muffin transaction 
 (for she had possession of a kettle-holder worked by the hands of 
 R — y — lty, which brought crowds to her stall) ; but in the 
 Mazourk Rosa conquered ; she has the prettiest little foot possi- 
 ble (which in a red boot and silver heel looked so lovely that even, 
 the Chinese ambassador remarked it), whereas Mrs. Rowdy's foot 
 is no trifle, as Lord Cornbury acknowledged when it came down 
 on his lordship's boot tip as they danced together amongst the 
 Scythes. 
 
 "These people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John Rowdy 
 to her husband, on receiving the pink note. It was carried round 
 by that rogue of a buttony page in the evening, and he walked to 
 Brobdingnag Gardens and in the Park afterwards, with a young 
 lady who is kitchen-maid at 27, and who is not more than fourteen 
 years older than little Buttons. 
 
 " Those people are ruining themselves," said Mrs. John to her 
 husband. " Rosa says she has asked the Bungay s." 
 
 "Bungays, indeed! Timmins was always a tuft-hunter," said 
 Rowdy, who had been at college with the barrister, and who, for 
 his own part, has no more objection to a lord than you or I have ; 
 and adding, " Hang him, what business has he to be giving 
 parties ? " allowed Mrs. Rowdy, nevertheless, to accept Rosa's 
 invitation. 
 
 " "When I go to business to-morrow, I will just have a look at 
 Mr. Pitz's account," Mr. Rowdy thought, " and if it is overdrawn, 
 as it usually is, why " . . . . The announcement of Mrs. Rowdy's 
 brougham here put an end to this agreeable train of thought, and 
 the banker and his lady stepped into it to join a snug little family 
 party of two-and-twenty, given by Mr. and Mrs. Secondchop, at 
 their great house on the other side of the Park. 
 
 " Rowdys 2, Bungays 3, ourselves and mamma 3, 2 Sawyers," 
 calculated little Rosa. 
 
 " General Gulpin," Rosa continued, " eats a great deal, and is 
 very stupid, but he looks well at table, with his star and ribbon ; 
 let us put him down ! " and she noted down " Sir Thomas and 
 Lady Gulpin, 2. Lord Castlenoodle, 1."
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 443 
 
 " You will make your party abominably genteel and stupid," 
 groaned Timmins. " "Why don't you ask some of our old friends ? 
 Old Mrs. Port man has asked us twenty times, I am sure, within 
 the last two years." 
 
 "And the last time we went there, there was pea-soup for 
 dinner ! " Mrs. Timmins said, with a look of ineffable scorn. 
 
 " Nobody can have been kinder than the Hodges have always 
 been to us ; and some sort of return we might make, I think." 
 
 " Return, indeed ! A pretty sound it is on the staircase to hear 
 Mr. and Mrs. Odge and Miss Odges, pronounced by Billiter, who 
 always leaves his h's out. No, no ; see attornies at your 
 chambers, my dear — but what could the poor creatures do in our 
 society ? " And so, one by one, Timmins' s old friends were tried 
 and eliminated by Mrs. Timmins, just as if she had been an Irish 
 attorney-general, and they so many Catholics on Mr.Mitchel's jury. 
 
 Mrs. Pitzroy insisted that the party should be of her very best 
 company. Funnyman, the great wit, was asked, because of his 
 jokes ; and Mrs. Butt, on whom he practises ; and Potter, who is 
 asked because everybody else asks him ; and Mr. Banville Ban- 
 ville of the Foreign Office, who might give some news of the 
 Spanish squabble ; and Botherby, who has suddenly sprung up 
 into note because he is intimate with the French Bevolution, and 
 visits Ledru-Eollin and Lamartine. And these, with a couple 
 more who are amis tie la maison, made up the twenty, whom Mrs. 
 Timmins thought she might safely invite to her little dinner. 
 
 But the deuce of it was, that when the answers to the invita- 
 tions came back, everybody accepted ! Here was a pretty quan- 
 dary. How they were to get twenty into their dining-room, was 
 a calculation which poor Timmins could not solve at all ; and he 
 paced up and down the little room in dismay. 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Eosa with a laugh ; "your sister Blanche looked 
 very well in one of my dresses, last year ; and you know how stout 
 she is. We will find some means to accommodate them all, 
 depend upon it." 
 
 Mrs. John Rowdy's note to dear Eosa, accepting the latter's 
 invitation, was a very gracious and kind one : and Mrs. Fitz
 
 444 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 showed it to her husband when he came back from chambers, 
 But there was another note which had arrived for him by this 
 time from Mr. Rowdy — or rather from the firm : and to the effect 
 that Mr. P. Timmins had overdrawn his account £28 18s. 6d., 
 and was requested to pay that sum to his obedient servants, 
 Stumpy, Eowdy, and Co. 
 
 And Timmins did not like to tell his wife that the contending 
 parties in the Lough Neagh and Lough Corrib Railroad had come 
 to a settlement, and that the fifteen guineas a day had conse- 
 quently determined. " I have had seven days of it, though," he 
 thought ; " and that will be enough to pay for the desk, the 
 dinner, and the glasses, and make all right with Stumpy and 
 Rowdy. 
 
 III. 
 
 The cards for dinner having been issued, it became the duty of 
 Mrs. Timmins to make further arrangements respecting the 
 invitations to the tea-party which was to follow the more 
 substantial meal. 
 
 These arrangements are difficult, as any lady knows who is in 
 the habit of entertaining her friends. There are — 
 
 People who are offended if you ask them to tea whilst others 
 have been asked to dinner — 
 
 People who are offended if you ask them to tea at all ; and cry 
 out furiously, " Good Heavens ! Jane, my love, why do these 
 Timininses suppose that I am to leave my dinner-table to attend 
 
 their soiree f " (the dear reader my fill up the to any 
 
 strength, according to his liking) — or, " Upon my word, William, 
 my dear, it is too much to ask us to pay twelve shillings for a 
 brougham, and to spend I don't know how much in gloves, just to 
 make our curtsies in Mrs. Timmins's little drawing-room." Mrs. 
 Moser made the latter remark about the Timmins affair, while the 
 former was uttered by Mr. Grumpley, barrister-at-law, to his 
 lady, in Gloucester Place. 
 
 That there are people who are offended if you don't ask them at
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. U5 
 
 all, is a point which I suppose nohody will question. Timmins's 
 earliest friend in life was Simrains, whose wife and family have 
 taken a cottage at Mortlake for the season. 
 
 " We can't ask them to come out of the country," Rosa said to 
 her Fitzroy — (between ourselves, she was delighted that Mrs. 
 Simmins was out of the way, and was as jealous of her as every 
 well-regulated woman should be of her husband's female friends) 
 — we can't ask them to come so far for the evening." 
 
 " Why no, certainly," said Fitzroy, who has himself no very 
 great opinion of a tea-party ; and so the Simminses were cut out 
 of the list. 
 
 And what was the consequence ? The consequence was, that 
 Simmins and Timmins cut when they meet at Westminster ; that 
 Mrs. Simmins sent back all the books which she had borrowed 
 from Eosa, with a withering note of thanks ; that Eosa goes 
 about saying that Mrs. Simmins squints : that Mrs. S., on her 
 side, declares that Eosa is crooked, and behaved shamefully to 
 Captain Hicks, in marrying Fitzroy over him, though she was 
 forced to do it by her mother, and prefers the captain to her 
 husband to this day. If, in a word, these two men could be made 
 to fight, I believe their wives would not be displeased ; and the 
 reason of all this misery, rage, and dissension, lies in a poor little 
 twopenny dinner-party in Lilliput Street. 
 
 Well, the guests, both for before and after meat, having been 
 asked — old Mrs. Gashleigh,Eosa's mother — (and, by consequence, 
 Fitzroy's dear mother-in-law, though I promise you that "dear" 
 is particularly sarcastic) — Mrs. Grashleigh of course was sent for, 
 and came with Miss Eliza Grashleigh who plays on the guitar, and 
 Emily, who limps a little, but plays sweetly on the concertina. 
 They live close by — trust them for that. Tour mother-in-law is 
 always within hearing, thank our stars for the attention of the 
 clear women. The GJ-ashleighs, I say, live close by, and came 
 early on the morning after Eosa's notes had been issued for the 
 dinner. 
 
 When Eitzroy, who was in his little study, which opens into 
 his little dining-room — one of those absurd little rooms which 
 ought to be called a gentleman's pantry, and is scarcely bigger 
 than a shower-bath, or a state cabin in a ship — when Fitzroy
 
 44G A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 heard his mother-in-law's knock, and her well-known scuffling 
 and chattering in the passage, in which she squeezed up young 
 Buttons, the page, while she put questions to him regarding baby, 
 and the cook's health, and whether she had taken what Mrs. 
 Gashleigh had sent over night, and the housemaid's health, and 
 whether Mr. Timmins had gone to chambers or not ? and when, 
 after this preliminary chatter, Buttons flung open the door, 
 announcing — " Mrs. Gashleigh and the young ladies," Eitzroy laid 
 down his " Times " newspaper with an expression that had best 
 not be printed in a journal which young people read, and took 
 his hat and walked away. 
 
 Mrs. Gashleigh has never liked him since he left off calling 
 her mamma, and kissing her. But he said he could not stand it 
 any longer — he was hanged if he would. So he went away to 
 Chambers, leaviug the field clear to E,osa, mamma, and the two 
 dear girls. 
 
 — Or to one of them, rather ; for before leaving the house, he 
 thought he would have a look at Little Eitzroy up-stairs in the 
 nursery, and he found the child in the hands of his maternal aunt 
 Eliza, who was holding him and pinching him as if he had been 
 her guitar, I suppose ; so that the little fellow bawled pitifully — 
 and his father finally quitted the premises. 
 
 No sooner was he gone, and although the party was still a 
 fortnight off, yet the women pounced upon his little Study, and 
 began to put it in order. Some of his papers they pushed up 
 over the bookcase, some they put behind the Encyclopedia, some 
 they crammed into the drawers, where Mrs. Gashleigh found three 
 cigars, which she pocketed, and some letters, over which she cast 
 her eye; and by Eitz's return they had the room as neat as 
 possible, and the best glass and dessert-service mustered on the 
 study-table. 
 
 It was a very neat and handsome service, as you may be sure 
 Mrs. Gashleigh thought, whose rich uncle had purchased it for 
 the young couple, at Spode and Copeland's : but it was only for 
 twelve persons. 
 
 It was agreed that it would be, in all respects, cheaper and 
 better to purchase a dozen more dessert plates ; and with " my 
 silver basket in the centre," Mrs. G. said (she is always bragging
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 447 
 
 about that confounded bread-basket), " we need not Lave any 
 extra china dishes, and the table will look very pretty." 
 
 On making a roll-call of the glass, it was calculated that at 
 least a dozen or so tumblers, four or five dozen wines, eight 
 water-bottles, and a proper quantity of ice-plates, were requisite ; 
 and that, as they would always be useful, it would be best to 
 purchase the articles immediately. Pitz tumbled over tbe basket 
 containing them, which stood in the hall, as he came in from 
 Chambers, and over the boy who had brought them — and the 
 little bill. 
 
 The women had had a long debate, and something like a quarrel, 
 it must be owned, over the bill of fare. Mrs. Gashleigh, who had 
 lived a great part of her life in Devonshire, and kept hduse in 
 great state there, was famous for making some dishes, without 
 which, she thought, no dinner could be perfect. "When she pro- 
 posed her mock-turtle, and stewed pigeons, and gooseberry-cream, 
 Rosa turned up her nose — a pretty little nose it was, by the way, 
 and with a natural turn in that direction. 
 
 "Mock-turtle in June, mamma ! " said she. 
 
 " It was good enough for your grandfather, Rosa," the mamma 
 replied : " it was good enough for the Lord High Admiral, when 
 he was at Plymouth ; it was good enough for the first men in the 
 county, and relished by Lord Portyskewer and Lord Rolls ; Sir 
 Lawrence Porker ate twice of it after Exeter Races ; and I think 
 it might be good enough for" 
 
 " I will not have it, mamma ! " said Rosa, with a stamp of her 
 foot — and Mrs. Gashleigh knew what resolution there was in that; 
 once, when she had tried to physic the baby, there had been a 
 similar fight between them. 
 
 So Mrs. Gashleigh made out a carte, in which the soup was left 
 with a dash — a melancholy vacuum ; and in which the pigeons 
 were certainly thrust in amongst the entrees; but Rosa deter- 
 mined they never should make an entree at all into her dinner- 
 party, but that she would have the dinner her own way. 
 
 When Pitz returned, then, and after he had paid the little bill 
 of £6 14s. 6d. for the glass, Rosa flew to him with her sweetest 
 smiles, and the baby in her arms. And after she had made him 
 remark how the child grew every day more and more like him,
 
 448 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 and after she had treated him to a number of compliments and 
 caresses, which it were positively fulsome to exhibit in public, and 
 after she had soothed him into good humour by her artless tender- 
 ness, she began to speak to him about some little points which she 
 had at heart. 
 
 She pointed out with a sigh how shabby the old curtains looked 
 since the dear new glasses which her darling Fitz had given her 
 had been put up in the drawing-room. Muslin curtains cost 
 nothing, and she must and would have them. 
 
 The muslin curtains were accorded. She and Fitz went and 
 bought them at Shoolbred's, when you may be sure she treated 
 herself likewise to a neat, sweet, pretty half-mourning (for the 
 Court, you know, is in mourning) — a neat sweet harege, or cali- 
 manco, or bombazine, or tiffany, or some such thing ; but Madame 
 Camille of Regent Street, made it up, and Rosa looked like an 
 angel in it on the night of her little dinner. 
 
 " And my sweet," she continued, after the curtains had been 
 given in, " mamma and I have been talking about the dinner. 
 She wants to make it very expensive, which I cannot allow. I 
 have been thinking of a delightful and economical plan, and you, 
 my sweetest Fitz, must put it into execution." 
 
 " I have cooked a mutton-chop when I was in chambers," Fitz 
 said with a laugh. " Am I to put on a cap and an apron ? " 
 
 " ]S"o ; but you are to go to the Megatherium Club (where, 
 you wretch, you are always going without my leave), and you are 
 to beg Monsieur Mirobolant, your famous cook, to send you one 
 of his best aides-de-camp, as I know he will, and with his aid we 
 can dress the dinner and the confectionery at home for almost 
 nothing, and we can show those purse-proud Topham Sawyers and 
 Rowdys that the humlle cottage can furnish forth an elegant enter- 
 tainment as well as the gilded halls of wealth. 
 
 Fitz agreed to speak to Monsieur Mirobolant. If Rosa had 
 had a fancy for the cook of the prime minister, I believe the 
 deluded creature of a husband would have asked Lord John for 
 the loan of him.
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 449 
 
 IV. 
 
 Fitzboy Timmins, whose taste for wine is remarkable for so 
 young a man, is a member of tbe committee of the Megatherium 
 Club, and the great Mirobolant, good-natured as all great men 
 are, was only too happy to oblige him. A young friend and protege 
 of his, of considerable merit, M. Cavalcadour, happened to be 
 disengaged through the lamented death of Lord Hauncher, with 
 whom young Cavalcadour had made his debut as an artist. He 
 had nothing to refuse to his master, Mirobolant, and would 
 impress himself to be useful to a gourme so distinguished as 
 Monsieur Timmins. Fitz went away as pleased as Punch with 
 this encomium of the great Mirobolant, and was one of those who 
 voted against the decreasing of Mirobolant's salary, when the 
 measure was proposed by Mr. Parings, Colonel Close, and the 
 Screw party in the committee of the club. 
 
 Faithful to the promise of his great master, the youthful 
 Cavalcadour called in Lilliput Street the next day. A rich 
 crimson velvet waistcoat, with buttons of blue glass and gold, a 
 variegated blue satin stock, over which a graceful mosaic chain 
 hunjr in glittering folds, a white hat worn on one side of his Ion? 
 curling ringlets, redolent with the most delightful hair oil — one of 
 those white hats which looks as if it had been just skinned — and a 
 pair of gloves not exactly of the colour of beurre frais, but of 
 benrre that has been up the chimney, with a natty cane with a 
 gilt knob, completed the upper part, at any rate, of the costume 
 of the young fellow whom the page introduced to Mrs. Timmins. 
 
 Her mamma and she had been just having a dispute about 
 the gooseberry-cream when Cavalcadour arrived. His presence 
 silenced Mrs. Gashleigh ; and Rosa, in carrying on a conversation 
 with him in the French language, which she had acquired 
 perfectly in an elegant finishing establishment in Kensington 
 Square, had a great advantage over her mother, who could only 
 pursue the dialogue with very much difficulty, eyeing one or other 
 interlocutor with an alarmed and suspicious look, and gasping out 
 " We" whenever she thought a proper opportunity arose for the 
 use of that affirmative. 
 
 VOL. III. G G
 
 450 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 " I have two leetl menus weez me," said Cavalcadour to Mrs. 
 Gaslileigh. 
 
 " Minews — yes, O indeed," answered the lady. 
 
 " Two little cartes." 
 
 " O two carts ! O we," she said — " coming, I suppose ; " and 
 she looked out of the window to see if they were there. 
 
 Cavalcadour smiled ; he produced from a pocket-book a pink 
 paper and a blue paper, on which he had written two bills of fare, 
 the last two which he had composed for the lamented Hauncher, 
 and he handed these over to Mrs. Fitzroy. 
 
 The poor little woman was dreadfully puzzled with these 
 documents, (she has them in her possession still,) and began to 
 read from the pink one as follows :— 
 
 " DINER POUR 16 PERSONNES. 
 
 Potage(clair) a la Rigodon. 
 Do. a la Prince de Torabuctou. 
 
 Deux Poissons. 
 Saumon de Severne, Rougets Gratines 
 
 a la Boadicee. a la Cleopa-tre. 
 
 Deux Releves. 
 
 Le Chapeau-a-trois-cornes farci a la Robespierre. 
 Le Tire-botte ii 1' Odalisque. 
 
 Six Entrees. 
 Saute de Hannetons ii l'Epingliere. 
 
 Cotelettes a la Megatherium. 
 
 Bourrasque de Veau a la Palsambleu. 
 
 Laitances de Carpe en goguette a la Reine Pomare. 
 
 Turban de Volaille a 1'ArcheVeque de Cantorbery." 
 
 And so on with the entremets, and hors d'ceuvre, and the rotis, and 
 the releves. 
 
 " Madame will see that the dinners are quite simple," said 
 M. Cavalcadour. 
 
 " quite ! " said Rosa, dreadfully puzzled. 
 
 " AVhich would madame like ? " 
 
 " Which would we like, mamma ? " Eosa asked; adding, as if 
 after a little thought, " I think, sir, we should prefer the blue 
 one." At which Mrs. Gaslileigh nodded as knowingly as she
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 451 
 
 could ; though pink -or blue, I defy anybody to know what these 
 cooks mean by their jargon. 
 
 " If you please, madam, we will go down below and examine the 
 scene of operations," Monsieur Cavalcadour said ; and so he was 
 marshalled down the stairs to the kitchen, which he didn't like to 
 name, and appeared before the cook in all his splendour. 
 
 He cast a rapid glance round the 'premises, and a smile of 
 something like contempt lighted up his features. "Will you 
 bring pen and ink, if you please, and I will write down a few of 
 the articles which will be necessary for us ? "We shall require, if 
 you please, eight more stew-pans, a couple of braising pans, eight 
 saute pans, six bain-marie pans, a freezing-pot with accessories, 
 and a few more articles of which I will inscribe the names ; " and 
 Mr. Cavalcadour did so, dashing down, with the rapidity of genius, 
 a tremendous list of ironmongery goods, which he handed over to 
 Mrs. Timmins. She and her mamma were quite frightened by the 
 awful catalogue. 
 
 " I will call three days hence and superintend the progress of 
 matters; and we will make the stock for the soup the day 
 before the dinner." 
 
 " Don't you think, sir - ," here interposed Mrs. Gashleigh, " that 
 one soup — a fine rich mock-turtle, such as I have seen in the best 
 houses in the "West of England, and such as the late Lord 
 Forty skewer — " 
 
 "You will get what is wanted for the soups, if you please," 
 Mr. Cavalcadour continued, not heeding this interruption, and as 
 bold as a captain on his own quarter-deck ; " for the stock of 
 clear soup, you will get a leg of beef, a leg of veal, and 
 a ham." 
 
 " "We munseer," said the cook, dropping a terrified curtsey. 
 ' A leg of beef, a leg of veal, and a ham." 
 
 " Tou can't serve a leg of veal at a party," said Mrs. Gash- 
 leigh ; " and a leg of beef is not a company dish." 
 
 "Madam, they are to make the stock of the clear soup," 
 Mr. Cavalcadour said. 
 
 " Wliat?" cried Mrs. Gashleigh; and the cook repeated his 
 former expression. 
 
 " jSTever, whilst J am in this house," cried out Mrs. Gashleigh, 
 
 « g 2
 
 452 A LITTLE DINNER AT TDIMINS'S. 
 
 indignantly ; " never in a Christian English household ; never 
 shall such sinful waste be permitted by me. If you -wish me to 
 dine, Rosa, you must get a dinner less expensive. The Eight 
 Honourable Lord Eortyskewer could dine, sir, without these 
 wicked luxuries, and I presume my daughter's guests can." 
 
 "Madame is perfectly at liberty to decide," said M. Caval- 
 cadour. " I came to oblige madame and my good friend 
 JMirobolant, not myself." 
 
 " Thank you, sir, I think it will be too expensive," Eosa 
 stammered in a great flutter ; " but I am very much obliged 
 to you." 
 
 " II n'y a point cV obligation,' madame," said Monsieur Alcide 
 Candle Cavalcadour in his most superb manner ; and, making a 
 splendid bow to the lady of the house, was respectfully conducted 
 to the upper regions by little Buttons, leaving Eosa frightened, 
 the cook amazed and silent, and Mrs. Gashleigh boiling with 
 indignation against the dresser. 
 
 Up to that moment, Mrs. Blowser, the cook, who had come out 
 of Devonshire with Mrs. Gashleigh (of course that lady garrisoned 
 her daughter's house with servants, and expected them to give her 
 information of everything which took place there) ; up to that 
 moment, I say, the cook had been quite contented with that 
 subterraneous station which she occupied in life, and had a pride 
 in keeping her kitchen neat, bright, and clean. It was, in her 
 opinion, the comfortablest room in the house (we all thought so 
 when we came down of a night to smoke there) ; and the 
 handsomest kitchen in Lilliput Street. 
 
 But after the visit of Cavalcadour, the cook became quite 
 discontented and uneasy in her mind. She talked in a melancholy 
 manner over the area railings to the cooks at twenty-three and 
 twenty-five. She stepped over the way, and conferred with the 
 cook there. She made inquiries at the baker's and at other 
 places about the kitchens in the great houses in Brobdingnag 
 Gardens, and how many spits, bangmarry pans, and stoo pans 
 they had. She thought she could not do with an occasional help, 
 but must have a kitchen-maid. And she was often discovered by 
 a gentleman of the police force, who was, I believe, her cousin, 
 and occasionallv visited her when Mrs. Gashleiirh was not
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 453 
 
 in the bouse or spying it : — she was discovered, seated with 
 Mrs. Iiundell in her lap, its leaves bespattered with her tears. 
 "My pease be gone, Pelisse," she said, "zins I zaw that ther 
 Franchman:" and it was all the faithful fellow could do to 
 console her. 
 
 " the dinner," said Tinnnins, in a rage at last : " having it 
 
 cooked in the house is out of the question : the bother of it : and 
 the row your mother makes are enough to drive one mad. It 
 won't happen again, I can promise you, Rosa — order it at 
 Fubsby's at one. You can have everything from Fubsby's — from 
 footmen to saltspoons. Let's go and order it at Fubsby's." 
 " Darling, if you don't mind the expense, and it will be any relief 
 to vou, let us do as you wish," llosa said ; and she put on her 
 bonnet, and they went off to the grand cook and confectioner of 
 the Brobdingnag quarter. 
 
 V. 
 
 On the arm of her Fitzroy, Eosa went off to Fubsby's, that 
 magnificent shop at the corner of Parliament Place and Alycom- 
 payne Square, — a shop into which the rogue had often cast a 
 glance of approbation as he passed ; for there are not only the 
 most wonderful and delicious cakes and confections in the window, 
 but at the counter there are almost sure to be three or four of the 
 prettiest women in the whole of this world, with little darling caps 
 of the last French make, with beautiful wavy hair, and the neatest 
 possible waists and aprons. 
 
 Yes, there they sit ; and, others, perhaps, besides Fitz have cast 
 
 a sheep's eye through those enormous plate-glass window panes. 
 
 I suppose it is the fact of perpetually living amongst such a 
 
 quantity of good things that makes those young ladies so 
 
 beautiful. They come into the place, let us say, like ordinary 
 
 people, and gradually grow handsomer and handsomer, until they 
 
 grow out into the perfect angels you see. It can't be otherwise : 
 
 if you and I, my dear fellow, were to have a course of that place, 
 
 we should become beautiful too. They live in an atmosphere of 
 
 the most delicious pine-apples, blancmanges, creams, (some whipt, 
 
 and some so good that of course they don't want whipping,)
 
 454 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 jellies, tipsy-cakes, cherry-brandy — one hundred thousand sweet 
 and lovely things. Look at the preserved fruits, look at the 
 golden ginger, the outspreading ananas, the darling little rogues 
 of China oranges, ranged in the gleaming crystal cylinders. Mon 
 Dieu ! Look at the strawberries in the leaves. Each of them is 
 as large nearly as a lady's reticule, and looks as if it had been 
 brought up in a nursery to itself. One of those strawberries is a 
 meal for those young ladies behind the counter ; they nibble off a 
 little from the side, and if they are very hungry, which can 
 scarcely ever happen, they are allowed to go to the crystal 
 canisters and take out a rout-cake or macaroon. In the evening 
 they sit and tell each other little riddles out of the bon-bons ; and 
 when they wish to amuse themselves, they read the most delightful 
 remarks, in the French language, about Love, and Cupid, and 
 Beauty, before they place them inside the crackers. They always 
 are writing down good things into Mr. Eubsby's ledgers. It must 
 be a perfect feast to read them. Talk of the Garden of Eden ! I 
 believe it was nothing to Mr. Eubsby's house ; and I have no 
 doubt that after those young ladies have been there a certain 
 time, they get to such a pitch of loveliness at last, that they 
 become complete angels, with wings sprouting out of their lovely 
 shoulders, when (after giving just a preparatory balance or two) 
 they fly up to the counter and perch there for a minute, hop 
 down again, and affectionately kiss the other young ladies, and 
 say " Good bye, dears, we shall meet again la haut," and then 
 with a whirr of their deliciously scented wings, away they fly for 
 good, whisking over the trees of Brobdingnag Scpaare, and up 
 into the sky, as the policeman touches his hat. 
 
 It is up there that they invent the legends for the crackers, and 
 the wonderful riddles and remarks on the bonbons. No mortal, 
 I am sure, could write them. 
 
 I never saw a man in such a state as Eitzroy Timmins in the 
 presence of those ravishing houris. Mrs. Eitz having explained 
 that they required a dinner for twenty persons, the chief young lady 
 asked what Mr. and Mrs. Eitz would like, and named a thousand 
 things, each better than the other, to all of which Eitz instantly 
 said yes. The wretch was in such a state of infatuation that I 
 believe if that lady had proposed to him a fricaseed elephant, or a
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 455 
 
 boa-constrictor in jelly, be would bave said, " Ob yes, certainly'; 
 put it down." 
 
 That Peri wrote down in ber album a list of things which it 
 would make your mouth water to listen to. But she took it all 
 quite calmly. Heaven bless you ! They don't care about 'things 
 that are no delicacies to them ! But whatever she chose to 
 write down, Fitzroy let her. 
 
 After the dinner and dessert were ordered (at Fubsby's they 
 furnish everything ; dinner and dessert, plate and china, 
 servants in your own livery, and if you please, guests of title too), 
 the married couple retreated from that shop of wonders ; Bosa 
 delighted that the trouble of the dinner was all off their bands, 
 but she was afraid it would be rather expensive. 
 
 " Nothing can be too expensive which pleases you, dear," Fitz 
 said. 
 
 " By the way, one of those young women was rather good- 
 looking," Bosa remarked; "the one in the cap with the blue 
 ribbons." (And she cast about the shape of the cap in her mind, 
 and determined to have exactly such another.) 
 
 " Think so ? I didn't observe," said the miserable hypocrite 
 by her side ; and when he had seen Bosa home, he went back, like 
 an infamous fiend, to order something else which he had foi'gotten, 
 he said, at Fubsby's. Get out of that Baradise, you cowardly, 
 creeping, vile serpent, you ! 
 
 Until the day of the dinner, the infatuated fop was always going 
 to Fubsby's. He was remarked there. He used to go before he 
 went to chambers in the morning, and sometimes on his return 
 from the Temple : but the morning was the time which he pre- 
 ferred ; and one day, when he went on one of his eternal pretexts, 
 and was chattering and flirting at the counter, a lady who had 
 been reading yesterday's paper and eating a half-penny bun for 
 an hour in the back shop (if that paradise may be called a shop) 
 — a lady stepped forward, laid down the "Morning Herald," and 
 confronted him. 
 
 That lady was Mrs. Gashleigh. From that day the miserable 
 Fitzroy was in her power; and she resumed a sway over his 
 house, to shake off which had been the object of his life, and the 
 result of many battles. And for a mere freak — (for, on going
 
 456 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 into Fubsby's a week afterwards he found the Peris drinking tea 
 out of blue cups, and eating stale bread and butter, when his 
 absurd passion instantly vanished) — I say, for a mere freak, the 
 most intolerable burden of his life was put on his shoulders again 
 — his mother-in-law. 
 
 On the day before the little dinner took place — and I promise 
 you we shall come to it in the very next chapter — a tall and 
 elegant middle-aged gentleman, who might have passed for an 
 earl, but that there was a slight incompleteness about his hands 
 and feet, the former being uncommonly red, and the latter large 
 and irregular, was introduced to Mrs. Timmins by the page, who 
 announced him as Mr. Truncheon. 
 
 "I'm Truncheon, ma'am," he said, with a low bow. 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Eosa. 
 
 " About the dinner, m'm, from Fubsby's, m'm. As you have 
 no butler, m'm, I presume you will wish me to act as sich. I 
 shall bring two persons as haids to-morrow ; botli answers to the 
 name of John. I'd best, if you please, inspect the premisis, and 
 will think you to allow your young man to show me the pantry 
 and hitching." 
 
 Truncheon spoke in a low voice, and with the deepest, and most 
 respectful melancholy. There is not much expression in his eyes, 
 but from what there is, you would fancy that he was oppressed by 
 a secret sorrow. Eosa trembled as she surveyed this gentleman's 
 size, his splendid appearance, and gravity. " I am sure," she 
 said, " I never shall dare to ask him to hand a glass of water." 
 Even Mrs. Gashleigh, when she came on the morning of the actual 
 dinner-party, to superintend matters, was cowed, and retreated 
 from the kitchen before the calm majesty of Truncheon. 
 
 And yet that great man was, like all the truly great — affable. 
 
 He put aside his coat and waistcoat (both of evening cut, and 
 looking prematurely splendid as he walked the streets in noon- 
 day), and did not disdain to "rub the glasses and polish the de- 
 canters, and to show young Buttons the proper mode of preparing 
 these articles for a dinner. And while he operated, the maids 
 and Buttons, and cook, when she could — and what had she but 
 the vegetables to boil ? — crowded round him, and listened with 
 wonder as he talked of the great families as he had lived with.
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 457 
 
 That man, as they saw him there before them, had been cab-boy 
 to Lord Tantallan, valet to the Earl of Bareacres, and groom of 
 the chambers to the Duchess Dowager of Fitzbattleaxe. O, it 
 was delightful to hear Mr. Truncheon ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 Ox the great, momentous, stupendous day of the dinner, my 
 beloved female reader may imagine that Eitzroy Timmins was sent 
 about his business at an early hour in the morning, while the 
 women began to make preparations to receive their guests. 
 " There will be no need of your going to Fubsby's," Mrs. Gash- 
 leigh said to him, with a look that drove him out of doors. 
 " Every thing that we require has been ordered there ! You will 
 please to be back here at G o'clock, and not sooner : and I 
 presume you will acquiesce in my arrangements about the tvine." 
 
 " O yes, mamma," said the prostrate son-in-law. 
 
 " In so large a party — a party beyond some folks' means — 
 expensive icines are absurd. The light sherry at 26*., the 
 champagne at 42*. ; and you are not to go beyond 36*. for the 
 claret and port after dinner. Mind, coffee will be served ; and you 
 come upstairs after two rounds of the claret." 
 
 " Of course, of course," acquiesced the wretch: and hurried 
 out of the house to his chambers, and to discharge the commis- 
 sions with which the womankind had intrusted him. 
 
 As for Mrs. Gashleigh, you might have heard her bawling over 
 the house the whole day long. That admirable woman was every- 
 where ; in the kitchen until the arrival of Truncheon, before 
 whom she would not retreat without a battle ; on the stairs ; in 
 Eitzroy's dressing-room ; and in Eitzroy minor's nursery, to 
 whom she gave a dose of her own composition, while the nurse 
 was sent out on a pretext to make purchases of garnish for the 
 dishes to be served for the little dinner. Garnish for the dishes ! 
 As if the folks at Eubsby's could not garnish dishes better than 
 Gashleigh, with her stupid old-world devices of laurel leaves, 
 parsley, and cut turnips ! "Why, there was not a dish served 
 that day that was not covered over with skewers, on which 
 troufles, crayfish mushrooms, and forced-meat were impaled.
 
 458 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 When old G-ashleigh went down with her barbarian bunches of 
 holly and greens to stick about the meats, even the cook saw their 
 incongruity, and, at Truncheon's orders, flung the whole shrub- 
 bery into the dust-house, where, while poking about the premises, 
 you may be sure Mrs. Gr. saw it. 
 
 Every candle which was to be burned that night (including the 
 tallow candle, which she said was a good enough bed-light for 
 Eitzroy) she stuck into the candlesticks with her own hands, 
 giving her own high-shouldered plated candlesticks of the year 
 1798 the place of honour. She upset all poor Rosa's floral ar- 
 rangements, turning the nosegays from one vase into the other 
 without any pity, and was never tired of beating, and pushing, 
 and patting, and trapping the curtain and sofa draperies into 
 shape in the little drawing-room, 
 
 In Eitz's own apartments she revelled with peculiar pleasure. 
 It has been described how she had sacked his Study and pushed 
 away his papers, some of which, including three cigars, and the 
 commencement of an article for the " Law Magazine," " Lives of 
 the Sheriff's Officers," he has never been able to find to this day. 
 Mamma now went into the little room in the back regions, which 
 is Eitz's dressing-room, (and was destined to be a cloak-room,) 
 and here she rummaged to her heart's delight. 
 
 In an incredibly short space of time she examined all his out- 
 lying pockets, drawers, and letters ; she inspected his socks and 
 handkerchiefs in the top drawers ; and on the dressing-table, his 
 razors, shaving-strop, and hair-oil. She carried off his silver- 
 topped scent-bottle out of his dressing-case, and a half-dozen of 
 his favourite pills (which Eitz possesses in common with every 
 well-regulated man), and probably administered them to her own 
 family. His boots, glossy pumps, and slippers, she pushed into 
 the shower-bath, where the poor fellow stepped into them the next 
 morning, in the midst of a pool in which they were lying. The 
 baby was found sucking his boot-hooks the next day in the 
 nursery ; and as for the bottle of varnish for his shoes, (which 
 he generally paints upon the trees himself, having a pretty 
 taste in that way,) it could never be found to the present 
 hour; but it was remarked that the young Master Gashleighs, 
 when they came home for the holidays, always wore lacquered
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 highlows ; and the reader may draw his conclusions from 
 that fact. 
 
 In the course of the day all the servants gave Mrs. Timmins 
 
 ■warning. 
 
 The cook said she coodn't abear it no longer, aving Mrs. G. 
 always about her kitching, with her fingers in all the saucepans. 
 Mrs. G. had got her the place, but she preferred one as Mrs. G. 
 didn't get for her. 
 
 The nurse said she was come to nuss Master Fitzroy, and knew 
 her duty; his grandmamma wasn't his nuss, and was always 
 aggrawating her, — Missus must shoot herself elsewhere. 
 
 The housemaid gave utterance to the same sentiments in 
 language more violent. 
 
 Little Buttons bounced up to his mistress, said he was butler 
 of the family, Mrs. G. was always poking about his pantry, and 
 dam if he'd stand it. 
 
 At every moment Eosa grew more and more bewildered. The 
 baby howled a great deal during the day. His large china 
 Christening-bowl was cracked by Mrs. Gashleigh altering the 
 flow r ers in it, and pretending to be very cool, whdst her hands 
 shook with rage. 
 
 "Pray go on, mamma," Eosa said with tears in her eyes. 
 " Should you like to break the chandelier ? " 
 
 " Ungrateful, unnatural child ! " bellowed the other ; " only 
 that I know you couldn't do without me, I'd leave the house 
 this minute." 
 
 " As you wish," said Eosa ; but Mrs. G. didn't wish : and in 
 this juncture Truncheon arrived. 
 
 That officer surveyed the dining-room, laid the cloth there with 
 admirable precision and neatness ; ranged the plate on the side- 
 board with graceful accuracy, but objected to that old thing in 
 the centre, as he called Mrs. Gashleigh's silver basket, as 
 cumbrous and useless for the table, where they would want all the 
 room they could get. 
 
 Order was not restored to the house, nor, indeed, any decent 
 progress made, until this great man came : but where there was a 
 revolt before, and a general disposition to strike work and to yell 
 out defiance against Mrs. Gashleigh, who was sitting bewildered
 
 400 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 and furious in the drawing-room — where there was before com- 
 motion, at the appearance of the master-spirit, all was peace and 
 unanimity : the cook went back to her pans, the housemaid busied 
 herself with the china and glass, cleaning some articles and break- 
 ing others, Buttons sprang up and down the stairs, obedient to the 
 orders of his chief, and all things went well and in their season. 
 
 At six, the man with the wine came from Binney and Latham's. 
 At a quarter-past sis, Timmins himself arrived. 
 
 At half-past six, he might have been heard shouting out for his 
 varnished boots — but we know where those had been hidden — 
 and for his dressing things ; but Mrs. Gashleigh had put them 
 away. 
 
 As in his vain inquiries for these articles he stood shouting, 
 "Nurse! Buttons! Eosa, my dear!" and the most fearful exe- 
 crations up and down the stairs, Mr. Truncheon came out 
 on him. 
 
 " Igscuse me, sir," says he, " but it's impawsable. We can't 
 dine twenty at that table — not if you set 'em out awinder, we 
 can't." 
 
 "What's to be done?" asked Fitzroy, in an agony; "they've 
 all said they'd come." 
 
 " Can't do it," said the other; "with two top and bottom — and 
 your table is as narrow as a bench — we can't hold more than 
 heighteen, and then each person's helbows will be into his neigh- 
 bour's cheer." 
 
 "Eosa! Mrs. Gashleigh!" cried out Timmins, "come down 
 and speak to this gentl — this — " 
 " Truncheon, sir," said the man. 
 
 The women descended from the drawing-room. " Look and 
 see, ladies," he said, inducting them into the dining-room; 
 " there's the room, there's the table laid for heighteen, and I defy 
 you to squeege in more." 
 
 " One person in a party always fails," said Mrs. Gashleigh, 
 getting alarmed. 
 
 ■' That's nineteen," Mr. Truncheon remarked ; " we must knock 
 another lion", mam ;" and he looked her hard in the face. 
 
 Mrs. Gashleigh was very red and nervous, and paced, or rather 
 squeezed round the table (it was as much as she could do) — the
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 461 
 
 chairs could not be put any closer than they were. It was impos- 
 sible, unless the convive sat as a centre-piece in the middle, to put 
 another guest at that table. 
 
 " Look at that lady movin round, sir. You see now the dif- 
 ficklty ; if my men wasn't thinner, they couldn't hoperate at all," 
 Mr. Truncheon observed, who seemed to have a spite to Mrs. 
 Gashleigh. 
 
 "What is to be done?" she said, with purple accents. 
 
 "My dearest mamma," Rosa cried out, "you must stop at 
 home — how sorry I am !" And she shot one glance at Fitzroy, 
 who shot another at the great Truncheon, who held down his eyes. 
 " "We could manage with heighteen," he said, mildly. 
 
 Mrs. Gashleigh gave a hideous laugh. 
 
 ******* 
 
 She went away. At eight o'clock she was pacing at the corner 
 of the street, and actually saw the company arrive. First came 
 the Topham Sawyers in their light blue carriage, with the white 
 hammer-cloth, and blue and white ribbons — their footmen drove 
 the house down with the knocking. 
 
 Then followed the ponderous and snuff-coloured vehicle, with 
 faded gilded wheels and brass earl's coronets all over it, the con- 
 veyance of the House of Bungay. The Countess of Bungay and 
 daughter stepped out of the carriage. The fourteenth Earl of 
 Bungay couldn't come. 
 
 Sir Thomas and Lady Gulpin's fly made its appearance, from 
 which issued the general with his star, and Lady Gulpin in yellow 
 satin. The Rowdy's brougham followed next; after which Mrs. 
 Butt's handsome equipage drove up. 
 
 The two friends of the house, young gentlemen from the 
 Temple, now arrived in cab No. 9996. We tossed up, in fact, 
 which should pay the fare. 
 
 Mr. Banville Banville walked, and was dusting his boots as the 
 Templars drove up. Lord Castlenoddy came out of a twopenny 
 omnibus. Funnyman, the wag, came last, whirling up rapidly in 
 a Hansom, just as Mrs. Gashleigh, with rage in her heart, was 
 counting that two people had failed, and that there were only 
 seventeen after all. 
 
 Mr. Truncheon passed our names to Mr. Billiter, who bawled
 
 462 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 them out on the stairs. Rosa was smiling in a pink dress, and 
 looking as fresh as an angel, and received her company with that 
 grace which has always characterised her. 
 
 The moment of the dinner arrived, old Lady Bungay scuffled 
 off on the arm of Bitzroy, while the rear was brought up by Eosa 
 and Lord Castlemouldy, of Ballyshanvanvoght Castle, Co. Tip- 
 perary. Some fellows who had the luck, took down ladies to 
 dinner. I was not sorry to be out of the way of Mrs. Bowdy 
 with her dandyfied airs, or of that high and mighty county prin- 
 cess, Mrs. Topham Sawyer. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Of course it does not become the present writer, who has 
 partaken of the best entertainment which his friends could supply, 
 to make fun of their (somewhat ostentatious, as it must be con- 
 fessed) hospitality. If they gave a dinner beyond their means, 
 it is no business of mine. I hate a man who goes and eats a 
 friend's meat, and then blabs the secrets of the mahogany. Such 
 a man deserves never to be asked to dinner again ; and, though at 
 the close of a London season that seems no great loss, and you 
 sicken of a Avhite-bait as you would of a whale — yet we must 
 always remember that there's another season coming, and hold 
 our tongues for the present. 
 
 As for describing, then, the mere victuals on Timmins's table, 
 that would be absurd. Everybody — (I mean of the genteel world, 
 of course, of which I make no doubt the reader is a polite orna- 
 ment) — everybody has the same everything in London. You see 
 the same coats, the same dinners, the same boiled fowls and 
 mutton, the same cutlets, fish, and cucumbers, the same lumps of 
 "Wenham-lake ice, &c. The waiters, with white neck-cloths, are 
 as like each other everywhere as the peas which they hand round 
 with the ducks of the second course. Can't any one invent any- 
 thing new ? 
 
 The only difference between Timmins's dinner and his neigh- 
 bour's was, that he had hired, as we have said, the greater part of 
 the plate, and that his cowardly conscience magnified faults and 
 disasters of which no one else probably took heed.
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TLADUX.S'S. 463 
 
 But Eosa thought, from the supercilious air with which Mrs. 
 Tophani Sawyer was eyeing the plate and other arrangements, 
 that she was remarking the difference of the ciphers on the forks 
 and spoons — (which had, in fact, been borrowed from every one 
 of Fitzroy's friends — I know, for instance, that he had my six, 
 among others, and only returned five, along with a battered, old, 
 black-pronged, plated abomination, which I have no doubt belongs 
 to Mrs. Grashleigh, whom I hereby request to send back mine in 
 exchange) — their guilty consciences, I say, made them fancy that 
 every one was spying out their domestic deficiencies ; whereas, it 
 is probable that nobody present thought of their failings at all. 
 People never do; they never see holes in their neighbours' coats — 
 they are too indolent, simple, and charitable. 
 
 Some things, however, one could not help remarking; for instance, 
 though Fitz is my closest friend, yet could I avoid seeing and 
 being amused by his perplexity and his dismal efforts to be facetious ? 
 His eye wandered [all round the little room with quick uneasy 
 glances, very different from those frank and jovial looks with 
 which he is accustomed to welcome you to a leg of mutton ; and 
 Eosa, from the other end of the table, and over the flowers, entree 
 dishes, and wine-coolers, telegraphed him with signals of corre- 
 sponding alarm. Poor devils ! why did they ever go beyond that 
 leg of mutton ? 
 
 Funnyman was not brilliant in conversation, scarcely open- 
 ing his mouth, except for the purposes of feasting. The fact 
 is our friend Tom Dawson was at table, who knew all his 
 stories, and in his presence the greatest wag is always silent 
 and uneasy. 
 
 Fitz has a very pretty wit of his own, and a good reputation on 
 Circuit ; but he is timid before great people. And indeed the 
 presence of that awful Lady Bungay on his right hand, was enough 
 to damp hiin. She was in Court-mourning (for the late Prince of 
 Schlippen-schloppen). She had on a large black funereal turban 
 and appurtenances, and avast breast-plate of twinkling, twiddling 
 black bugles. ~No wonder a man could not be gay in talking 
 to her. 
 
 Mrs. Bowdy and Mrs. Topham Sawyer love each other as women 
 do who have the same receiving nights, and ask the same society ;
 
 464 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 they were only separated by llanville Ranville, who trie3 to be 
 well with both : and they talked at each other across him. 
 
 Topham and Rowdy growled out a conversation about Rum, 
 Ireland, and the Navigation Laws, quit unfit for print. Sawyer 
 never speaks three words without mentioning the House and the 
 Speaker. 
 
 The Irish Peer said nothing (which was a comfort) ; but he ate 
 and drank of everything which came in his way ; and cut his usual 
 absurd figure in dyed whiskers and a yellow under-waistcoat. 
 
 General Gulpin sported his star, and looked fat and florid, but 
 melancholy. His wife ordered away his dinner, just like honest 
 Sancho's physician at Barataria. 
 
 Botkerby's stories about Lamartine are as old as the hills, since 
 the barricades of last month ; and he could not get in a word or 
 cut the slightest figure. And as for Tom Dawson, he was carry- 
 ing on an undertoned small talk with Lady Barbara St. Mary's, 
 so that there was not muck conversation worth record going on 
 within the dining-room. 
 
 Outside, it was different. Those houses in Lilliput Street are 
 so uncommonly compact, that you can hear every thing which takes 
 place all over the tenement ; and so, 
 
 In the awful pauses of the banquet, and the hall-door being 
 furthermore open, we had the benefit of hearing 
 
 The cook, and the occasional cook, below stairs, exchanging 
 rapid phrases regarding the dinner ; 
 
 The smash of the soup-tureen, and swift descent of the kitchen- 
 maid and soup-ladle down the stairs to the lower regions. This 
 accident created a laugh, and rather amused Pitzroy and the com- 
 pany, and caused Bunnyman to say, bowing to llosa, that she was 
 mistress of herself, though China fall. But she did not heed him, 
 for at that moment another noise commenced, namely, that of 
 
 The baby in the upper rooms, who commenced a series of piercing 
 yells, which, though stopped by the sudden clapping to of the 
 nursery-door, were only more dreadful to the mother when sup- 
 pressed. She would have given a guinea to go upstairs and have 
 done with the whole entertainment. 
 
 A thundering knock came at the door very early after the 
 dessert, and the poor soul took a speedy opportunity of summoning
 
 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMIXS'S. 465 
 
 the ladie3 to depart, though you may be sure it was only old 
 Mrs. Gashleigh, who had come with her daughters — of course the 
 first person to come. I saw her red gown whisking up the stairs, 
 which were covered with plates and dishes, over which she trampled. 
 
 Instead of having any quiet after the retreat of the ladies, the 
 house was kept in a rattle, and the glasses jingled on the table 
 as the flymen and coachmen plied the knocker, and the soiree 
 came in. From my place I could see everything ; the guests as 
 they arrived (I remarked very few carriages, mostly cabs and flies), 
 and a little crowd of blackguard boys and children, who were 
 formed round the door, and gave ironical cheers to the folks as 
 they stepped out of their vehicles. 
 
 As for the evening party, if a crowd in the dog-days is pleasant, 
 poor Mrs. Timmins certainly had a successful soiree. Tou could 
 hardly move on the stair. Mrs. Sternhold broke in the banisters, and 
 nearly fell through. There was such a noise and chatter you could 
 not hear the singing of the Miss Gashleighs, which was no great 
 loss. Lady Bungay could hardly get to her carriage,being entangled 
 with Colonel Wedgewood in the passage. An absurd attempt was 
 made to get up a dance of some kind, but before Mrs. Crowder 
 had got round the room, the hanging-lamp in the dining-room 
 below was stove in, and fell with a crash on the table, now pre- 
 pared for refreshment. 
 
 Why, in fact, did the Timminses give that party at all ? It 
 was quite beyond their means. They have offended a score of 
 their old friends, and pleased none of their acquaintances. So 
 angry were many who were not asked, that poor Rosa says she 
 must now give a couple more parties and take in those not pre- 
 viously invited. And I know for a fact that Fubsby's bill is not 
 yet paid ; nor Binney and Latham's, the wine-merchants ; that the 
 breakage and hire of glass and china cost ever so much money ; 
 that every true friend of Timmins has cried out against his absurd 
 extravagance, and that now, when every one is going out of town 
 Fitz has hardly money to pay his Circuit, much more to take Eosa 
 to a watering-place, as he wished and promised. 
 
 As for Mrs. Gashleigh, the only feasible plan of economy which 
 she can suggest, is that she should come and five with her daughter 
 and son-in-law, and that they should keep house together. If he 
 
 VOL. III. H H
 
 466 A LITTLE DINNER AT TIMMINS'S. 
 
 agrees to this, she has a little sum at the banker's, with which she 
 would not mind easing his present difficulties ; and the poor wretch 
 is so utterly bewildered and crest-fallen that it is very likely he 
 will become her victim. 
 
 The Topham Sawyers, when they go down into the country, 
 will represent Fitz as a ruined man and reckless prodigal ; his uncle, 
 the attorney, from whom he has expectations, will most likely with- 
 draw his business, and adopt some other member of his family — 
 Blanch Crowder for instance, whose husband, the doctor, has had 
 high words with poor Fitzroy already, of course at the women's 
 instigation — and all these accumulated miseries fall upon the 
 unfortunate wretch because he was good-natured, and his wife 
 would have a Little Dinner.
 
 THE BEDFOBD-BOW CONSPIBACY.* 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 OF THE LOTES OF MB. PERKINS AND MISS GORGON, AND OE THE 
 TWO GREAT FACTIONS IN THE TOWN OF OLDBOROUGH. 
 
 " My dear John," cried Lucy, with a very wise look indeed, 
 " it must and shall be so. As for Doughty-street, with our means, 
 a house is out of the question. We must keep three servants, and 
 aunt Biggs says the taxes are one-and-twenty pouuds a year." 
 
 "I have seen a sweet place at Chelsea," remarked John; 
 " Paradise-row, No. 17, — garden — greenhouse — fifty pounds a year 
 — omnibus to town within a mile." 
 
 " What, that I may be left alone all day, and you spend a for- 
 tune in driving backward and forward iu those horrid breakneck 
 cabs? My darling, I should die there — die of fright, I know I 
 should. Did you not say yourself that the road was not as yet 
 lighted, and that the place swarmed with public-houses and dread- 
 ful tipsy Irish bricklayers ? Would you kill me, John ? " 
 
 " My da — arling," said John, with tremendous fondness, clutch- 
 ing Miss Lucy suddenly round the waist, and rapping the hand of 
 that young person violently against his waistcoat, — " my — da — 
 arling, don't say such things, even in a joke. If I objected to the 
 chambers, it is only because you, my love, with your birth and 
 connections, ought to have a house of your own. The chambers 
 are quite large enough, and certainly quite good enough for me." 
 And so after some more sweet parley on the part of these young 
 
 * A story of Charles de Bernard furnished the plot of "The Bedford-Row 
 Conspiracy." 
 
 h H 2
 
 468 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 people, it was agreed that they should take up their abode, when 
 married, in a part of the house, number one hundred and some- 
 thing, Bedford-row. 
 
 It will be necessary to explain to the reader, that John was no 
 other than John Perkins, Esq., of the Middle Temple, barrister- 
 at-law, and that Miss Lucy was the daughter of the late Captain 
 Gorgon, and Marianne Biggs, his wife. The captain being of 
 noble connections, younger son of a baronet, cousin to Lord X. 
 and related to the T. family, had angered all his relatives, by 
 marrying a very silly, pretty young woman, who kept a ladies' 
 school at Canterbury. She had six hundred pounds to her for- 
 tune, which the captain laid out in the purchase of a sweet 
 travelling-carriage and dressing-case for himself; and going abroad 
 with his lady, spent several years in the principal prisons of Europe, 
 in one of which he died. His wife and daughter were meantime 
 supported by the contributions of Mrs. Jemima Biggs, who still 
 kept the ladies' school. 
 
 At last a dear old relative — such a one as one reads of in 
 romances — died and left seven thousand pounds apiece to the 
 two sisters, whereupon the elder gave up schooling and retired to 
 London ; and the younger managed to live with some comfort and 
 decency at Brussels, upon two hundred and ten pounds per annum. 
 Mrs. Gorgon never touched a shilling of her capital, for the very 
 good reason that it was placed entirely out of her reach ; so that 
 when she died, her daughter found herself in possession of a sum 
 of money that is not always to be met with in this world. 
 
 Her aunt, the baronet's lady, and her aunt, the ex-schoolmiss 
 tress, both wrote very pressing invitations to her, and she resided 
 with each for six months after her arrival in England. Now, for 
 a second time, she had come to Mrs. Biggs, Caroline-place, Meck- 
 lenburgh-square. It was under the roof of that respectable old 
 lady, that John Perkins, Esq., being invited to take tea, wooed 
 and won Miss Gorgon. 
 
 Having thus described the circumstances of Miss Gorgon's life, 
 let us pass for a moment from that young lady, and lift up the 
 veil of mystery which envelopes the deeds and character of Perkins. 
 
 Perkins, too, was an orphan ; and he and his Lucy, of summer 
 evenings, when Sol descending lingered fondly yet about the
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 469 
 
 minarets of the Foundling, and gilded the grassplots of Mecklen- 
 burgh-square — Perkins, I say, and Lucy would often sit together 
 in the summer-house of that pleasure-ground, and muse upon the 
 strange coincidences of their life. Lucy was motherless and 
 fatherless ; so, too, was Perkins. If Perkins was brotherless and 
 sisterless, was not Lucy likewise an only child ? Perkins was 
 twenty-three — his age and Lucy's united, amounted to forty-six 5 
 and it was to be remarked, as a fact still more extraordinary, that 
 while Lucy's relatives were aunts, John's were uncles ; mysterious 
 spirit of love ! — let us treat thee with respect and whisper not too 
 many of thy secrets. The fact is, John and Lucy were a pair of 
 fools (as every young couple ought to be who have hearts that are 
 worth a farthing), and were ready to find coincidences, sympathies, 
 hidden gushes of feeling, mystic unions of the soul, and what not, 
 in every single circumstance that occurred from the rising of the 
 sun to the going down thereof, and in the intervals. Bedford- 
 row, where Perkins lived, is not very far from Mecklenburgh- 
 square ; and John used to say, that he felt a comfort that his house 
 and Lucy's were served by the same muffin-man. 
 
 Further comment is needless. A more honest, simple, clever, 
 warm-hearted, soft, whimsical, romantical, high-spirited young fel- 
 low than John Perkins did not exist. When his father, Dr- 
 Perkins, died, this, his only son, was placed under the care of 
 John Perkins, Esq., of the house of Perkins, Scully, and Perkins, 
 those celebrated attorneys in the trading town of Oldborough, 
 which the second partner, William Pitt Scully, Esq., represented 
 in parliament and in London. 
 
 All John's fortune was the house in Bedford-row, which, at his 
 father's death, was let out into chambers, and brought in a clear 
 hundred a-year. Under his uncle's roof at Oldborough, where he 
 lived with thirteen red-haired male and female cousins, he was 
 only charged fifty pounds for board, clothes, and pocket-money, and 
 the remainder of his rents was carefully put by for him until his 
 majority. When he approached that period — when he came to 
 belong to two spouting clubs at Oldborough, among the young 
 merchants and lawyers'-clerks — to blow the flute nicely, and play 
 a good game at billiards — to have written one or two smart things 
 in the Oldborough Sentinel — to be fond of smoking (in which act
 
 470 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 he was discovered by his fainting aunt at three o'clock one morn- 
 ing) — in one word, when John Perkins arrived at manhood, he 
 discovered that he was quite unfit to be an attorney, that he 
 detested all the ways of his uncle's stern, dull, vulgar, regular, 
 red-headed family, and he vowed that he would go to London and 
 make his fortune. Thither he went, his aunt and cousins, who 
 were all " serious," vowing that he was a lost boy, and when his 
 history opens, John had been two years in the metropolis, inhabit- 
 ing his own garrets ; and a very nice compact set of apartments, 
 looking into the back-garden, at this moment falling vacant, the 
 prudent Lucy Gorgon had visited them, and vowed that she and 
 her John should there commence housekeeping. 
 
 All these explanations are tedious, but necessary ; and further- 
 more, it must be said, that as John's uncle's partner was the 
 liberal member for Oldborough, so Lucy's uncle was its ministerial 
 representative. 
 
 This gentleman, the brother of the deceased Captain Gorgon, 
 lived at the paternal mansion of Gorgon Castle, and rejoiced in the 
 name and title of Sir John Grimsby Gorgon. He, too, like his 
 younger brother, had married a lady beneath his own rank in life : 
 having espoused the daughter and heiress of Mr. Hicks, the great 
 brewer at Oldborough, who held numerous mortgages on the 
 Gorgon property, all of which he yielded up, together with his 
 daughter Eliza, to the care of the baronet. 
 
 What Lady Gorgon was in character, this history will show. 
 In person, if she may be compared to any vulgar animal, one of 
 her father's heavy, healthy, broad-flanked, Roman-nosed, white 
 dray-horses, might, to the poetic mind, appear to resemble her. 
 At twenty she was a splendid creature, aud though not at her full 
 growth, yet remarkable for strength and sinew : at forty-five she 
 was as fine a woman as any in his majesty's dominions. Five feet 
 seven in height, thirteen stone, her own teeth and hair, she looked 
 as if she were the mother of a regiment of grenadier guards. She 
 had three daughters of her own size, and at length ten years after 
 the birth of the last of the young ladies, a son — one son — George 
 Augustus Frederic Grimsby Gorgon, the godson of a royal duke, 
 whose steady officer in waiting Sir George had been for many years. 
 
 It is needless to say, after entering so largely into a description
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 471 
 
 of Lady Gorgon, that her husband was a little, shrivelled, weazen- 
 faced creature, eight inches shorter than her ladyship. This is 
 the way of the world, as every single reader of this book must 
 have remarked ; for frolic love delights to join giants and pigmies 
 of different sexes in the bonds of matrimony. When you saw her 
 ladyship, in flame-coloured satin, and gorgeous toque and feathers, 
 entering the drawing-room, as footmen along the stairs shouted 
 melodiously, "Sir George and Lady Gorgon," you beheld in her 
 company a small withered old gentleman, with powder and large 
 royal household buttons, who tripped at her elbow as a little weak- 
 legged colt does at the side of a stout mare. 
 
 The little General had been present at about a hundred and 
 twenty pitch-battles on Hounslow Heath and Wormwood Scrubs, 
 but had never drawn his sword against an enemy. As might be 
 expected, therefore, his talk and tenue were outrageously military. 
 He had the whole army-list by heart— that is, as far as the field- 
 officers — all below them he scorned. A bugle at Gorgon Castle 
 always sounded at breakfast and dinner : a gun announced sunset. 
 He clung to his pigtail for many years after the army had for- 
 saken that ornament, and could never be brought to think much 
 of the Peninsular men for giving it up. When he spoke of the 
 duke, he used to call him " My Lord Wellington — I recollect km 
 as Captain Wesley." He swore fearfully in conversation — was 
 most regular at church, and regularly read to his family and do- 
 mestics the morning and evening prayer; he bullied his daughters, 
 seemed to bully his wife, who led him whither she chose ; gave grand 
 entertainments, and never asked a friend by chance ; had splendid 
 liveries, and starved his people ; and was as dull, stingy, pompous, 
 insolent, cringing, ill-tempered a little creature a3 ever was known. 
 
 With such qualities you may fancy that he was generally 
 admired in society and by his country. So he was : and I never 
 knew a man so endowed whose way through life was not safe — 
 who had fewer pangs of conscience — more positive enjoyments — 
 more respect shown to him — more favours granted to him, than 
 such a one as my friend the general. 
 
 Her ladyship was just suited to him, and they did in reality 
 admire each other hugely. Previously to her marriage with the 
 baronet, many love-passages had passed between her and William
 
 472 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 Pitt Scully, Esq., the attorney, and there was especially one story, 
 apropos of certain syllabubs and Sally-Lunn cakes, which seemed 
 to show that matters had gone very far. Be this as it may, no 
 sooner did the general (Major Gorgon he was then) cast an eye 
 on her, than Scully's five years fabric of love was instantly dashed 
 to the ground. She cut him pitilessly, cut Sally Scully, his sister, 
 her dearest friend and confidante, and bestowed her big person 
 upon the little aide-de-camp at the end of a fortnight's wooing. 
 In the course of time, their mutual fathers died ; the Gorgon 
 estates were unincumbered : patron of both the seats in the 
 borough of Oldborough, and occupant of one, Sir George Grimsby 
 Gorgon, baronet, was a personage of no small importance. 
 
 He was, it scarcely need be said, a Tory ; and this was the 
 reason why William Pitt Scully, Esq., of the firm of Perkins and 
 Scully, deserted those principles in which he had been bred and 
 christened ; deserted that church which he had frequented, for he 
 could not bear to see Sir John and my lady flaunting in their 
 grand pew ; — deserted, I say, the church, adopted the conventicle, 
 and became one of the most zealous and eloquent supporters that 
 Ereedom has known in our time. Scully, of the house of Scully 
 and Perkins, was a dangerous enemy. In five years from that 
 marriage, which snatched from the jilted solicitor his heart's 
 young affections, Sir George Gorgon found that he must actually 
 spend seven hundred pounds to keep his two seats. At the next 
 election, a liberal was set up against his man, and actually run him 
 hard; and finally, at the end of eighteen years, the rejected Scully— 
 the mean attorney — 'was actually the first member for Oldborough, 
 Sir George Grimsby Gorgon, baronet, being only the second ! 
 
 The agony of that day cannot be imagined — the dreadful curses 
 of Sir George, who saw fifteen hundred a year robbed from under 
 his very nose — the religious resignation of my lady — the hideous 
 window-smashing that took place at the Gorgon Arms, and the 
 discomfiture of the pelted mayor and corporation. The very next 
 Sunday, Scully was reconciled to the church (or attended it in 
 the moruing, and the meeting twice in the afternoon), and as 
 Doctor Snorter uttered the prayer for the high court of par- 
 liament, his eye — the eye of his whole party — turned towards 
 Lady Gorgon and Sir George in a most unholy triumph. Sir
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 473 
 
 George (who always stood during prayers, like a military man) 
 fairly sunk down among the hassocks, and Lady Gorgon was 
 heard to sob as audibly as ever did little beadle-belaboured 
 urchin. 
 
 Scully, when at Oldborough, came from that day forth to 
 church. " What," said he, " was it to him ? were we not all 
 brethren?" Old Perkins, however, kept religiously to the 
 Squaretoes' congregation. In fact, to tell the truth, this subject 
 had been debated between the partners, who saw the advantage 
 of courting both the establishment and the dissenters — a manoeuvre 
 which, I need not say, is repeated in almost every country town 
 in England, where a solicitor's house has this kind of power and 
 connection. 
 
 Three months after this election came the races at Oldborough, 
 and the race-ball. Gorgon was so infuriated by this defeat, that 
 he gave " the Gorgon cup and cover," a matter of fifteen pounds. 
 Scully, "although anxious," as he wrote from town, "anxious 
 beyond measure to preserve the breed of horses for which our 
 beloved country has ever been famous, could attend no such sports 
 as these, which but too often degenerated into vice." It was 
 voted a shabby excuse. Lady Gorgon was radiant in her barouche 
 and four, and gladly became the patroness of the ball that was 
 to ensue ; and which all the gentry and townspeople, Tory and 
 Whig, were in the custom of attending. The ball took place on 
 the last day of the races — on that day, the walls of the market- 
 house, the principal public buildings, and the Gorgon Arms hotel 
 itself, were plastered with the following — 
 
 LETTER FROM OUR DISTINGUISHED REPRESENTATIVE WILLIAM 
 P. SCULLY, ESQ., ETC. ETC. 
 
 "House of Commons, Wednesday, Jtine 9, 18 — . 
 
 " My dear Heeltap, — You know my opinion about horse-racing, 
 and though I blame neither you nor any brother Englishman who 
 enjoys that manly sport, you will, I am sure, appreciate the con- 
 scientious motives which induce me not to appear among my 
 friends and constituents on the festival of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th
 
 474 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 instant. If I, however, cannot allow my name to appear among 
 your list of stewards, one at least of the representatives of Old- 
 borough has no such scruples. Sir George Gorgon is among 
 vou : and though I differ from that honourable baronet on more 
 than one vital point, I am glad to think that he is with you — a 
 gentleman, a soldier, a man of property in the county, how can he 
 be better employed than in forwarding the county's amusements, 
 and in forwarding the happiness of all ? 
 
 " Had I no such scruples as those to which I have just alluded, 
 I must still have refrained from coming among you. Tour great 
 Oldborough common-drainage and inclosure bill comes on to night, 
 and I shall be at my post. I am sure, if Sir George Gorgon were 
 here, he and I should on this occasion vote side by side, and that 
 party strife would be forgotten in the object of our common 
 interest — our dear native town. 
 
 " There is, however, another occasion at hand, in which I shall 
 be proud to meet him. Tour ball is on the night of the 6th. 
 Party forgotten — brotherly union — innocent mirth — beauty, our 
 dear town's beauty, our daughters in the joy of their expanding 
 loveliness, our matrons in the exquisite contemplation of their 
 children's bliss, — can you, can I, can Whig or Tory, can any 
 Briton be indifferent to a scene like this, or refuse to join in this 
 heart-stirring festival ? If there be such let them pardon me, — I, 
 for one, my dear Heeltap, will be among you on Friday night, — 
 ay, and hereby invite all pretty Tory Misses, who are in want of 
 a partner. 
 
 " I am here in the very midst of good things, you know, and 
 we old folks like a supper after a dance. Please to accept a brace 
 of bucks and a turtle, which come herewith. My worthy col- 
 league, who was so liberal last year of his soup to the poor, will 
 not, I trust, refuse to taste a little of Alderman Birch's — 'tis 
 offered on my part with hearty good will. Hey for the 6th, and 
 vive lajoie. 
 
 " Ever, my dear Heeltap, your faithful, 
 
 "A\ r . Pitt Scully." 
 
 " P.S. Of course this letter is strictly private. Say that the 
 venison, &c, came from a icell-ivisher to Oldborough.''''
 
 THE BEDFORD-HOW CONSPIRACY. 475 
 
 This amazing letter was published in defiance of Mr. Scully's 
 injunctions by the enthusiastic Heeltap, who said bluntly iu a 
 preface, " That he saw no reason why Mr. Scully should be 
 ashamed of his action, and he, for his part, was glad to let all 
 friends at Oldborough know of it." 
 
 The allusion about the Gorgon soup was killing ; thirteen, 
 paupers in Oldborough had, it was confidently asserted, died of 
 it. Lady Gorgon, on the reading of this letter, was struck com- 
 pletely dumb — Sir George Gorgon was wild — ten dozen of cham- 
 pagne was he obliged to send down to the Gorgon Arms, to be 
 added to the festival. He would have stayed away if he could, 
 but he dared not. 
 
 At nine o'clock, he in general's uniform, his wife in blue satin 
 and diamonds, his daughters in blue crape and white roses, his 
 niece, Lucy Gorgon, in white muslin, his son, George Augustus 
 Frederic Grimsby Gorgon, in a blue velvet jacket, sugar-loaf 
 buttons, and nankeens, entered the north door of the ball-room to 
 much cheering, and the sound of " God save the King ! " 
 
 At that very same moment, and from the south door, issued 
 William Pitt Scully, Esq., M.P., and his staff. Mr. Scully had a 
 bran new blue coat and brass buttons, buff waistcoat, white kersey- 
 mere tights, pumps with large rosettes, and pink silk stockings. 
 
 "This wool," said he to a friend, "was grown on Oldborough 
 sheep, this cloth was spun in Oldborough looms, these buttons 
 were cast in an Oldborough manufactury, these shoes were made 
 by an Oldborough tradesman, this heart first beat in Oldborough 
 town, and pray Heaven may be buried there ! " 
 
 Could anything resist a man like this ? John Perkins, who had 
 come down as one of Scully's aides-de-camp, in a fit of generous 
 enthusiasm, leaped on a whist-table, flung up a pocket-handkerchief, 
 and shrieked — "Scully foe ever!" 
 
 Heeltap, who was generally drunk, fairly burst into tears, and 
 the grave tradesmen and Whig gentry, who had dined with the 
 member at his inn, and accompanied him thence to the Gorgon 
 Arms, lifted their deep voices and shouted, " Hear ! Good ! 
 Bravo ! Noble ! Scully for ever ! God bless him ! and 
 Hurra ! " 
 
 The scene was tumultuously affecting, and when young Perkins
 
 476 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 sprang down from the table, and came blushing up to the member, 
 that gentleman said, 
 
 "Thank you, Jack ! thank you, my boy ! thank you," in a way 
 which made Perkins think that his supreme cup of bliss was 
 quaffed, that he had but to die ; for that life had no other such 
 joy in store for him. Scully was Perkins's Napoleon — he yielded 
 himself up to the attorney, body and soul. 
 
 "Whilst this scene was going on under one chandelier of the 
 ball-room; beneath the other, scarlet little General Gorgon, 
 sumptuous Lady Gorgon, the daughter and niece Gorgons were 
 standing, surrounded by their Tory court, who affected to sneer 
 and titter at the Whig demonstrations which were taking place. 
 
 " What a howwid thmell of whithkey ! " lisped Cornet Pitch of 
 the dragoons to Miss Lucy, confidentially : " and thethe are what 
 they call Whigth, are they ? he ! he ! " 
 
 " They are drunk — me — drunk by ! " said the General to 
 
 the mayor. 
 
 "Which is Scully?" said Lady Gorgon, lifting her glass 
 gravely (she was at that very moment thinking of the syllabubs). 
 " Is it that tipsy man in the green coat, or that vulgar creature in 
 the blue one ?" 
 
 "Law, my lady!" said the mayoi-ess ; "have you forgotten 
 him ? Why that's him in blue and buff." 
 
 "And a monthous fine man, too," said Cornet Pitch; "I wish 
 we had him in our twoop — he'th thix feet thwee, if he'th an inch ; 
 ain't he, genewal ? " 
 No reply. 
 
 " And Heavens ! mamma," shrieked the three Gorgons in a 
 breath, " see, one creature is on the whist table. Oh, the 
 wretch ! " 
 
 "I'm sure he's very good looking," said Lucy, simply. 
 Lady Gorgon darted at her an angry look, and was about to 
 say something very contemptuous, when, at that instant, John 
 Perkins's shout taking, effect, Master George Augustus Prederic 
 Grimsby Gorgon, not knowing better, incontinently raised a small 
 shout on his side. 
 
 " Hear ! good ! bravo ! " exclaimed he ; " Scully for ever ! 
 Ilurra-a-a-ay ! " and fell skipping about like the Whigs opposite.
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW COXSPIEACY. 477 
 
 " Silence, you brute, you ! " groaned Lady Gorgon ; and seizing 
 him by the shirt-frill and coat-collar, carried him away to his 
 nurse, •who, with many other maids of the Whig and Tory parties, 
 stood giggling and peeping at the landing-place. 
 
 Fancy how all these small incidents augmented the heap of 
 Lady Gorgon's anger and injuries ! She was a dull phlegmatic 
 woman, for the most part, and contented herself generally with 
 merely despising her neighbours ; but oh ! what a fine active 
 hatred raged in her bosom for victorious Scully ! At this moment 
 Mr. Perkins had finished shaking hands with his Napoleon — ■ 
 Napoleon seemed bent upon some tremendous enterprise. He 
 was looking at Lady Gorgon very hard. 
 
 "She's a fine woman," said Scully, thoughtfully ; he was still 
 holding the hand of Perkins. And then, after a pause, " Gad ! I 
 think I'll try." 
 
 " Try what, sir ? " 
 
 " She's a deuced fine woman ! " burst out again the tender 
 solicitor. " I will go. Springer, tell the fiddlers to strike up." 
 
 Springer scuttled across the room, and gave the leader of the 
 band a knowing nod. Suddenly, " God save the King " ceased, 
 and " Sir Roger de Coverley " began. The rival forces eyed each 
 other ; Mr. Scully, accompanied by his friend, came forward, 
 looking very red, and fumbling two large kid gloves. 
 
 "He 's going to ask me to dance" hissed out Lady Gorgon, with 
 a dreadful intuition, and she drew back behind her lord. 
 
 "D — it, madam, then dance with him!" said the general. 
 " Don't you see that the scoundrel is carrying it all his own way ! 
 
 — him, and him, and him." (All of which dashes 
 
 the reader may fill up with oaths of such strength as may be 
 requisite.) 
 
 " General ! " cried Lady Gorgon, but could say no more. 
 Scully was before her. 
 
 " Madam! " exclaimed the liberal member for Oldborough, " in 
 a moment like this — I say — that is — that on the present occasion 
 — your ladyship — unaccustomed as I am — pooh, psha — will your 
 ladyship give me the distinguished honour and pleasure of going 
 down the country-dance with your ladyship ? " 
 
 An immense heave of her ladyship's ample chest was
 
 47S THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 perceptible. Yards of blond lace, which might be compared to a 
 foam of the sea, were agitated at the same moment, and by the 
 same mighty emotion. The river of diamonds which flowed round 
 her ladyship's neck, seemed to swell and to shine more than ever. 
 The tall plumes on her ambrosial head bowed down beneath the 
 storm. In other words, Lady Gorgon, in a furious rage, which 
 she was compelled to restrain, trembled, drew up, and bowing 
 majestically said, 
 
 " Sir, I shall have much pleasure." With this, she extended 
 her hand. Scully, trembling, thrust forward one of his huge kid 
 gloves, and led her to the head of the country-dance. John 
 Perkins, who I presume had been drinking pretty freely so as to 
 have forgotten his ordinary bashfulness, looked at the three 
 Gorgons in blue, then at the pretty smiling one in white, and 
 stepping up to her, without the smallest hesitation, asked her if 
 she would dance with him. The young lady smilingly agreed. 
 The great example of Scully and Lady Gorgon was followed by 
 all dancing men and women. Political enmities were forgotten. 
 "Whig voters invited Tory voters' wives to the dance. The 
 daughters of Reform accepted the hands of the sons of Conser- 
 vatism. The reconciliation of the Romans and Sabines was not 
 more touching than this sweet fusion. Whack ! whack ! Mr. 
 Springer clapped his hands ; and the fiddlers adroitly obeying the 
 cheerful signal, began playing " Sir Eoger de Coverley " louder 
 than ever. 
 
 I do not know by what extraordinary charm (nescio qua prcster 
 solitum, Sfcl) ; but young Perkins, who all his life had hated 
 country-dances, was delighted with this one, and skipped, and 
 laughed, poussetting, crossing, down-the-middliug, with his merry 
 little partner, till every one of the bettermost sort of the thirty- 
 nine couples had dropped pantiug away, and till the youngest 
 Miss Gorgon, coming up to his partner, said, in a loud hissing, 
 scornful, whisper, " Lucy, mamma thinks you have danced quite 
 enough with this — this person." And Lucy, blushing, starting 
 back, and looking at Perkins in a very melancholy way, made him 
 a little curtesy, and went off to the Gorgonian party with her 
 cousin. Perkins was too frightened to lead her back to her place 
 — too frightened at first, and then too angry. " Person ! " said he :
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 479 
 
 his soul swelled "with a desperate republicanism : lie went back to 
 bis patron more of a radical tban ever. 
 
 He found that gentleman in the solitary tea-room, pacing up 
 and down before the observant landlady and handmaidens of the 
 Gorgon Arms, wiping his brows, gnawing his fingers — his ears 
 looming over his stiff white shirt-collar, as red as fire. Once more 
 the great man seized John Perkins's hand as the latter came up. 
 " D — the aristocrats ! " roared the ex-follower of Squaretoes. 
 " And so say I ; but what's the matter, sir ? " 
 " What's the matter ? — Why, that woman — that infernal 
 haughty, straight-laced, cold-blooded, brewer's daughter ! I 
 loved that woman, sir — I kissed that woman, sir, twenty years 
 ago — we were all but engaged, sir — we've walked for hours and 
 hours, sir ; us and the governess — I've got a lock of her hair, sir, 
 among my papers now — and to-night, would you believe it ? — as 
 soon as she got to the bottom of the set, away she went— not one 
 word would she speak to me all the way down : and when I 
 wanted to lead her to her place, and asked ber if she would have 
 a glass of negus, ' Sir,' says she, ' I liave done my duty ; I bear 
 no malice : but I consider you a traitor to Sir George Gorgon's 
 family — a traitor and an upstart ! I consider your speaking to 
 me as a piece of insolent vulgarity, and beg you will leave me to 
 myself ! ' There's her speech, sir. Twenty people heard it, and 
 all of her Tory set, too. I'll tell you what, Jack, at the next 
 election I'll put you up. Oh ! that woman ! that woman ! — aud 
 to think that I love her still!" Here Mr. Scully paused, and 
 fiercely consoled himself by swallowing three cups of Mrs. Rincer's 
 green tea. 
 
 The fact is, that Lady Gorgon's passion had completely got the 
 better of her reason. Her ladyship was naturally cold and arti- 
 ficially extremely squeamish, and when this great red-faced enemy 
 of hers looked tenderly at her through his red little eyes, and 
 squeezed her hand, and attempted to renew old acquaintance, she 
 felt such an intolerable disgust at his triumph, at his familiarity, 
 and at the remembrance of her own former liking for him, that she 
 gave utterance to the speech above correctly reported. The 
 Tories were delighted with her spirit, and Cornet Fitch, with 
 much glee, told the story to the general ; but that officer, who was
 
 480 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. . 
 
 at whist with some of his friends, flung down his cards, and 
 coming up to his lady, said briefly, 
 
 " Madam, you are a fool ! " . 
 
 " I will not stay here to be bearded by that disgusting man ! — 
 Mr. Fitch, call my people. — Henrietta, bring Miss Lucy from that 
 linendraper with whom she is dancing. I will not stay, general, 
 once for all." 
 
 Henrietta ran — she hated her cousin ; Cornet Fitch was depart- 
 ing. " Stop, Fitch," said Sir George, seizing him by the arm. — 
 "Tou are a fool, Lady Gorgon," said he, " and I repeat it — a 
 
 fool ! This fellow, Scully, is carrying all before him : he 
 
 has talked with everybody, laughed with everybody — and you, 
 
 with your infernal airs — a brewer's daughter, by , must sit 
 
 like a queen, and not speak to a soul ! You've lost me one seat 
 of my borough, with your infernal pride — fifteen hundred a year, 
 by Jove ! — and you think you will bully me out of another. No, 
 madam, you shall stay, and stay supper too — and the girls shall 
 dance with every cursed chimney-sweep and butcher in the room : 
 they shall — confound me ! " 
 
 Her ladyship saw that it was necessary to submit ; and Mr. 
 Springer, the master of the ceremonies, was called, and requested 
 to point out some eligible partners for the young ladies. One 
 went off with a whig auctioneer ; another figured in a quadrille 
 with a very liberal apothecary, and the third, Miss Henrietta, 
 remained. 
 
 " Hallo ! you sir," roared the little general to John Perkins 
 who was passing by. John turned round and faced him. 
 
 " Tou were dancing with my niece just now — show us your 
 skill now, and dance with one of my daughters. Stand up, Miss 
 Henrietta Gorgon — Mr. What's-your-name ? " 
 
 "My name," said John, with marked and majestic emphasis, 
 "is Pebkins," and he looked towards Lucy, who dared not look 
 again. 
 
 " Miss Gorgon — Mr. Perkins. There, now go and dance." 
 
 " Mr. Perkins regrets, madam," said John, making a bow to 
 Miss Henrietta, " that he is not able to dance this evening. I 
 am this moment obliged to look to the supper, but you will find, 
 no doubt, some other peeson who will have much pleasure."
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 4S1 
 
 "Go to — , sir!" screamed the general, starting up, and 
 shaking his cane. 
 
 " Calm yourself, dearest George," said Lady Gorgon clinging 
 foudly to him. Fitch twiddled his mustaches. Miss Henrietta 
 Gorgon stared with open mouth. The silks of the surrounding 
 dowagers rustled — the countenances of all looked grave. 
 
 " I will follow you, sir, wherever you please ; and you may hear 
 of me whenever you like," said Mr. Perkins, bowing and retiring. 
 He heard little Lucy sobbing in a corner. He was lost at once — 
 lost in love ; he felt as if he could combat fifty generals ! he never 
 was so happy in his life ! 
 
 The supper came ; but as that meal cost five shillings a head, 
 General Gorgon dismissed the four spinsters of his family home- 
 wards in the carriage, and so saved himself a pound. This added 
 to Jack Perkins's wrath ; he had hoped to have seen Miss Lucy 
 once more. He was a steward, and in the General's teeth, would 
 have done his duty. He was thinking how he would have helped 
 her to the most delicate chicken-wings and hlanc-raanges, how he 
 icoidd have made her take champagne. Under the noses of 
 indignant aunt and uncle, what glorious fun it would have 
 been! 
 
 Out of place as Mr. Scully's present was, and though Lady 
 Gorgon and her party sneered at the vulgar notion of venison and 
 turtle for supper, all the world at Oldborough ate very greedily 
 of those two substantial dishes ; and the mayor's wife became 
 from that day forth a mortal enemy of the Gorgons : for, sitting 
 near her ladyship, who refused the proffered soup and meat, the 
 mayoress thought herself obliged to follow this disagreeable 
 example. She sent away the plate of turtle with a sigh, saying, 
 however, to the baronet's lady, " I thought, mem, that the Lord 
 Mayor of London always had turtle to his supper." 
 
 "And what if he didn't, Biddy?" said his honour the mayor; 
 "a good thing's a good thing, and here goes!" wherewith he 
 plunged his spoon into the savoury mess. The mayoress, as we 
 have said, dared not ; but she hated Lady Gorgon, and re- 
 membered it at the next election. 
 
 The pride, in fact, and insolence of the Gorgon party, rendered 
 
 every person in the room hostile to them ; so soon as, gorged with 
 vol. m. 1 1
 
 482 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 meat, they began to find that courage which Britons invariably 
 derive from their victuals. The show of the Gorgon plate seemed 
 to offend the people. The Grorgon champagne was a long time, 
 too, in making its appearance. Arrive, however, it did; the 
 people were waiting for it. The young ladies not accustomed to 
 that drink, declined pledging their admirers until it was produced ; 
 the men, too, despised the bucellas and sherry — and were looking 
 continually towards the door. At last, Mr. llincer, the landlord, 
 Mr. Hock, Sir Gfeorge's butler, and sundry others, entered the 
 room. Bang went the corks — fizz the foamy liquor sparkled into 
 all sorts of glasses that were held out for its reception. Mr. 
 Hock helped Sir George and his party, who drank with great 
 gusto : the wine which was administered to the persons imme- 
 diately around Mr. Scully was likewise pronounced to be good. 
 But Mr. Perkins, who had taken his seat among the humbler 
 individuals, and in the very middle of the table, observed that all 
 these persons after drinking, made to each other very wry and 
 ominous faces, and whispered much. He tasted his wine — it was 
 a villanous compound of sugar, vitriol, soda, water, and green 
 gooseberries. At this moment a great clatter of forks was made 
 by the president's and vice-president's party. Silence for a toast 
 — 'twas silence all. 
 
 " Landlord," said Mr. Perkins, starting up (the rogue, where 
 did his impudence come from ?) " have you any champagne of 
 your own .?" 
 
 " Silence ! down ! " roared the Tories, the ladies looking aghast. 
 " Silence, sit down, you ! " shrieked the well-known voice of 
 the general. 
 
 " I beg your pardon, general," said young John Perkins ; " but 
 where could you have bought this champagne ? My worthy friend 
 I know is going to propose the ladies ; let us at any rate drink 
 such a toast in good wine." (Hear, hear !) "Brink her lady- 
 ship's health in this stuff? I declare to goodness I would sooner 
 drink it in beer! " 
 
 No pen can describe the uproar which arose ; the anguish of 
 the Gorgonites — the shrieks, jeers, cheers, ironic cries of " Swipes, 
 &c. ! " which proceeded from the less genteel, but more enthu- 
 siastic Scullyites.
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 43S 
 
 "This vulgarity is too much," said Lady Gorgon, rising; and 
 Mrs. Mayoress, and the ladies of the party did so too. 
 
 The general, two squires, the clergyman, the G-orgon apothecary 
 and attorney, with their respective ladies, followed her — they 
 were plainly beaten from the field. Such of the Tories as dared 
 remained, and in inglorious compromise shared the jovial Whig 
 feast. 
 
 " Gentlemen and ladies," hiccupped Mr. Heeltap, " I'll give 
 you a toast, ' Champagne to our real — hie — friends,' no, ' real 
 champagne to our friends,' and — hie — pooh ! ' Champagne to 
 our friends, and real pain to our enemies,' — huzzay ! " 
 
 The Scully faction on this day bore the victory away, and if the 
 polite reader has been shocked by certain vulgarities on the part 
 of Mr. Scully and his friends, he must remember imprimis that 
 Oldhorough was an inconsiderable place — that the inhabitants 
 thereof were chiefly tradespeople, not of refined habits — that 
 Mr. Scully himself had only for three months mingled among the 
 aristocracy — that his young friend, Perkins, was violently angry — 
 and finally, and to conclude, that the proud vulgarity of the great 
 Sir George Gorgon and his family, were infinitely more odious 
 and contemptible than the mean vulgarity of the Scullyitea and 
 their leader. 
 
 Immediately after this event, Mr. Scully and his young friend, 
 Perkins, returned to town ; the latter to his garrets in Bedford- 
 row — the former to his apartments on the first floor of the same 
 house. He lived here to superintend his legal business ; his 
 London" agents, Messrs. Higgs, Biggs, & Blatherwick, occupying 
 the ground-floor — the junior partner, Mr. Grustavus Blatherwick, 
 the second-flat of the house. Scully made no secret of his profes- 
 sion or residence— he was an attorney, and proud of it — he was 
 the grandson of a labourer, and thanked God for it — he had made 
 his fortune by his own honest labour, and why should he be 
 ashamed of it ? 
 
 And now, having explained at full length who the several 
 heroes and heroines of this history were, and how they conducted 
 themselves in the country, let us describe their behaviour in 
 London, and the great events which occurred there. 
 
 You must know that Mr. Perkins bore away the tenderest 
 
 ii 2
 
 484 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 recollections of the young lady with whom he had danced at the 
 Oldborough ball, and, having taken particular care to find out 
 where she dwelt when in the metropolis, managed soon to become 
 acquainted with aunt Biggs, and made himself so amiable to that 
 lady, that she begged he would pass all his disengaged evenings 
 at her lodgings in Caroline-place. Mrs. Biggs was perfectly 
 aware that the young gentleman did not come for her bohea and 
 muffins, so much as for the sweeter conversation of her niece, 
 Miss Gorgon ; but seeing that these two young people were of 
 an age when ideas of love and marriage will spring up, do what 
 you will ; seeing that her niece had a fortune, and Mr. Perkins 
 had the prospect of a place, and was moreover a very amiable and 
 well-disposed young fellow, she thought her niece could not do 
 better than marry him ; and Miss Gorgon thought so too. Now 
 the public will be able to understand the meaning of that 
 important conversation which is recorded at the very commence- 
 ment of this history. 
 
 Lady Gorgon and her family were likewise in town ; but when 
 in the metropolis, they never took notice of their relative, Miss 
 Lucy ; the idea of acknowledging an ex-schoolmistress, living in 
 Mecklenburgh-square, being much too preposterous for a person 
 of my Lady Gorgon's breeding and fashion. She did not, there- 
 fore, know of the progress which sly Perkins was making all this 
 while ; for Lucy Gorgon did not think it was at all necessary to 
 inform her ladyship how deeply she was smitten by the wicked 
 young gentleman, who had made all the disturbance at the 
 Oldborough ball. 
 
 The intimacy of these young persons had, in fact, become so 
 close, that on a certain sunshiny Sunday in December, after 
 having accompanied aunt Biggs to church, they had pursued their 
 walk as far as that rendezvous of lovers — the Regent's Park, and 
 were talking of their coming marriage with much confidential 
 tenderness, before the bears in the Zoological Gardens. 
 
 Miss Lucy was ever and anon feeding those interesting animals 
 with buns, to perform which act of charity, she had clambered up 
 on the parapet which surrounds their den. Mr. Perkins was 
 below; and Miss Lucy, having distributed her buns, was on 
 the point of following, — but whether from timidity, or whether
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 485 
 
 from a desire to do rouna; Perkins an essential service, I know 
 not ; however, she found herself quite unwilling to jump down 
 unaided. 
 
 " My dearest John," said she, " I never can jump that." 
 
 "Whereupon, John stepped up, put one hand round Lucy's 
 waist ; and as one of hers gently fell upon his shoulder, Mr. 
 Perkins took the other, and said, — 
 
 " Now jump." 
 
 Hoop ! jump she did, and so excessively active and clever was 
 Mr. John Perkins, that he jumped Miss Lucy plump into the 
 middle of a group formed of 
 
 Lady Gorgon, 
 
 The Misses Gorgon, 
 
 Master George Augustus Frederic Grimsby Gorgon, 
 
 And a footman, poodle, and French governess, who had all been 
 for two or three minutes listening to the billiDgs and cooings of 
 these imprudent young lovers. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SHOWS HOW THE PLOT BEGAN TO THICKEN IN OE ABOUT 
 
 BEDEORD-ROW. 
 
 " Miss Lucy ! " 
 
 " Upon my word ! " 
 
 " I'm hanged if it arn't Lucy ! How do, Lucy ? " uttered 
 Lady, the Misses, and Master Gorgon in a breath. 
 
 Lucy came forward, bending down her ambrosial curls, and 
 blushing, as a modest young woman should; for, in truth, the 
 scrape was very awkward, and as for John Perkins, he made a 
 start, and then a step forwards, and then two backwards, and 
 then began laying hands upon his black satin stock — in sort, the 
 sun did not shine at that moment upon a man who looked so 
 exquisitely foolish. 
 
 "Miss Lucy Gorgon, is your aunt — is Mrs. Briggs here?" 
 said Gorgon, drawing herself up with much state.
 
 486 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 "Mrs. Biggs, aunt," said Lucy demurely. 
 
 " Biggs or Briggs, madam, it is not of the slightest consequence. 
 I presume that persons in my rank of life are not expected to 
 know every body's name in Magdeburg-square ? " (Lady Gorgon 
 had a house in Baker-street, and a dismal house it was.) " Not 
 here," continued she, rightly interpreting Lucy's silence, " not 
 here ? — and may I ask how long is it that young ladies have been 
 allowed to walk abroad without chaperons, and to — to take a 
 part in such scenes as that which we have just seen acted ? " 
 
 To this question — and indeed it was rather difficult to answer 
 — Miss Gorgon had no reply. There were the six grey eyes of 
 her cousins gloweriug at her — there was George Augustus 
 Frederic examining her with an air of extreme wonder, Made- 
 moiselle the governess turning her looks demurely away, and 
 awful Lady Gorgon glancing fiercely at her in front. Not 
 mentioning the footman and poodle, what could a poor, modest, 
 timid girl plead before such an inquisition, especially when she 
 was clearly guilty ? Add to this, that as Lady Gorgon, that 
 majestic woman, always remarkable for her size and insolence of 
 demeanour, had planted herself in the middle of the path, and 
 spoke at the extreme pitch of her voice, many persons walking 
 in the neighbourhood had heard her ladyship's speech and stopped, 
 and seemed disposed to await the rejoinder. 
 
 "For Heaven's sake, aunt, don't draw a crowd around us," 
 said Lucy, who, indeed, was glad of the only escape that lay in 
 her power. " I will tell you of the — of the circumstances of — of 
 my engagement with this gentleman— with Mr. Perkins," added 
 she, in a softer tone — so soft that the ''erMns was quite inaudible. 
 
 " A Mr. What ? An engagement without consulting your 
 guardians!" screamed her ladyship, "this must be looked to! 
 Jerningham, call round my carriage. Mademoiselle, you will 
 have the goodness to walk home with Master Gorgon, and carry 
 him if you please, where there is wet ; and, girls, as the day is 
 fine, you will do likewise. Jerningham, you will attend the young 
 ladies. Miss Gorgon, I will thank you to follow me imme- 
 diately ; " and so saying, and looking at the crowd with ineffable 
 scorn, and at Mr. Perkins not at all, the lady bustled away for- 
 wards, the files of Gorgon daughters and governess closing round
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 4S7 
 
 and enveloping poor Lucy, who found herself carried forward 
 against her will, and in a minute seated in her aunt's coach, along 
 with that tremendous person. 
 
 Her case was bad enough, but what was it to Perkins's? 
 Fancy his blank surprise and rage at having his love thus sud- 
 denly ravished from him, and his delicious tete-a-tete interrupted. 
 He managed, in an inconceivably short space of time, to conjure 
 up half a million obstacles to his union. "What should he do ? he 
 would rush on to Baker-street, and wait there until his Lucy left 
 Lady Gorgon's house. 
 
 He could find no vehicle for him in the Eegent's Park, and was 
 in consequence obliged to make his journey on foot. Of course, 
 he nearly killed himself with running, and ran so quick, that he 
 was just in time to see the two ladies step out of Lady Gorgon's 
 carriage at her own house, and to hear Jerningham's fellow- 
 footman roar to the Gorgonian coachman, "Half-past seven! " at 
 which hour we are, to this day, convinced that Lady Gorgon was 
 going out to dine. Mr. Jerningham's associate having banged to 
 the door, with an insolent look towards Perkins, who was prying 
 in with the most suspicious and indecent curiosity, retired, 
 exclaiming, " That chap has a hi to our great coats, I reckon!" 
 and left John Perkins to pace the street and be miserable. 
 
 John Perkins then walked resolutely up and down dismal 
 Baker-street, determined on an eclair cissement. He was for some 
 time occupied in thinking how it was that the Gorgons were not 
 at church, they who made such a parade of piety; and John 
 Perkins smiled as he passed the chapel, and saw that two charity 
 sermons were to be preached that day — and therefore it was that 
 General Gorgon read prayers to his family at home in the 
 morning. 
 
 Perkins, at last, saw that little general, in blue frock-coat and 
 spotless buff gloves, saunter scowling home ; and half an hour 
 before his arrival, had witnessed the entrance of Jerningham, and 
 the three gaunt Miss Gorgons, poodle, son-and-heir, and Prench 
 governess, protected by him, into Sir George's mansion. 
 
 " Can she be going to stay all night ? " mused poor John, after 
 being on the watch for three hours, " that footman is the only per- 
 son who has left the house," when presently, to his inexpressible
 
 483 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 delight, he saw a very dirty hackney-coach clatter up to the 
 Gorgon door, out of which first issued the ruby plush breeches 
 and stalwart calves of Mr. Jerningham ; these were followed 
 by his body, and then the gentleman, ringing modestly, was 
 admitted. 
 
 Again the door opened — a lady came out, nor was she followed 
 by the footman, who crossed his legs at the door-post, and allowed 
 her to mount the jingling vehicle as best she might. Mr. Jer- 
 ningham had witnessed the scene in the Park-gardens, had 
 listened to the altercation through the library keyhole, and had 
 been mighty sulky at being ordered to call a coach for this young 
 woman. He did not therefore deign to assist her to mount. 
 
 But there was one who did ! Perkins was by the side of his 
 Lucy: he had seen her start back, and cry, "La, John!" — had 
 felt her squeeze his arm — had mounted with her into the coach, 
 and then shouted with a voice of thunder to the coachman, 
 " Caroline-place, Mecklenburgh-square." 
 
 But Mr. Jerningham would have been much more surprised 
 and puzzled if he had waited one minute longer, and seen this 
 Mr. Perkins, who had so gallantly escaladed the hackney-coach, 
 step out of it with the most mortified, miserable, chapfallen coun- 
 tenance possible. 
 
 The fact is, he had found poor Lucy sobbing fit to break her 
 heart, and instead of consoling her as he expected, he only seemed 
 to irritate her further : for she said, " Mr. Perkins — I beg — I 
 insist, that you leave the carriage;" and when Perkins made 
 some movement (which, not being in the vehicle at the time, we 
 have never been able to comprehend), she suddenly sprung from 
 the back-seat, and began pulling at a large piece of cord, which 
 communicated with the wrist of the gentleman driving ; and, 
 screaming to him at the top of her voice, bade him immediately 
 stop. 
 
 This Mr. Coachman did, with a curious, puzzled, grinning air. 
 
 Perkins descended, and on being asked, " Yere ham I to drive 
 the young 'oman, sir?" I am sorry to say muttered something 
 like an oath, and uttered the above-mentioned words, " Caroline- 
 place, Mccklenburgh-square," in a tone which I should be inclined 
 to describe as both dogged and sheepish, — very different from
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 489 
 
 that cheery voice -which he had used when he first gave the 
 order. 
 
 Poor Lucy, in the course of those fatal three hours which had 
 passed while Mr. Perkins was pacing up and down Baker-street, 
 had received a lecture which lasted exactly one hundred and 
 eighty minutes — from her aunt first, then from her uncle, whom 
 we have seen marching homewards, and often from both together. 
 
 Sir George Gorgon and his lady poured out such a flood of 
 advice and abuse against the poor girl, that she came away from 
 the interview quite timid and cowering ; and when she saw John 
 Perkins (the sly rogue ! how well he thought he had managed the 
 trick !) she shrunk from him as if he had been a demon of wicked- 
 ness, ordered him out of the carriage, and went home by herself, 
 convinced that she had committed some tremendous sin. 
 
 "While, then, her coach jingled away to Caroline-place, Perkins, 
 once more alone, bent his steps in the same direction — a desperate 
 heart-stricken man — he passed by the beloved's door — saw lights 
 in the front drawing-room — felt probably that she was there — but 
 he could not go in. Moodily he paced down Doughty-street, and 
 turning abruptly into Bedford-row, rushed into his own chambers, 
 where Mrs. Snooks, the laundress, had prepared his humble 
 sabbath meal. 
 
 A cheerful fire blazed in his garret, and Mrs. Snooks had pre- 
 pared for him the favourite blade-bone he loved (blest four days' 
 dinner for a bachelor, roast, cold, hashed, grilled blade-bone, the 
 fourth being better than the first) ; but although he usually did 
 rejoice in this meal, ordinarily, indeed, grumbling that there was 
 not enough to satisfy him — he, on this occasion, after two mouth- 
 fuls, flung down his knife and fork, and buried his tw x o claws in 
 his hair. 
 
 "Snooks," said he at last, very moodily, "remove this d — 
 mutton, give me my writing things, and some hot brandy-and- 
 water." 
 
 This was done without much alarm, for you must know that 
 Perkins used to dabble in poetry, and ordinarily prepared himself 
 for composition by this kind of stimulus. 
 
 He wrote hastily a few lines. 
 
 " Snooks, put on your bonnet," said he, "and carry this — you
 
 490 THS BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIEAOY. 
 
 "know where ? " lie added, in such a hollow, heart-breaking tone of 
 voice, that affected poor Snooks almost to tears. She went, how- 
 ever, with the note, which was to this purpose : — 
 
 " Lucy ! Lucy ! my soul's love — what, what has happened ? I 
 am writing this (a gulp of brandy-and-icater) in a state bordering 
 on distraction — madness — insanity (another). "Why did you send 
 me out of the coach in that cruel, cruel way ? "Write to me a 
 word, a line — tell me, tell me, I may come to you — and leave me 
 not in this agonising condition ; your faithful (glog — glog — glog 
 — the whole glass) . "J- P." 
 
 He never signed John Perkins in full — he couldn't, it was so 
 unromantic. 
 
 "Well, this missive was despatched by Mrs. Snooks, and Perkins, 
 in a fearful state of excitement, haggard, wild, and with more 
 brandy-and-water, awaited the return of his messenger. 
 
 When at lengh, after about an absence of forty years, as it 
 seemed to him, the old lady returned with a large packet, Perkins 
 seized it with a trembling hand, and was yet more frightened to 
 see the handwriting of Mrs. or Miss Biggs. 
 
 "My dear Mr. Perkins," she began, "although I am not your 
 soul's adored, I performed her part for once, since I have read 
 your letter, as I told her ; — you need not be very much alarmed, 
 although Lucy is at this moment in bed and unwell, for the poor 
 girl has had a sad scene at her grand uncle's house in Baker- 
 street, and came home very much affected. Best, however, will 
 restore her, for she is not one of your nervous sort, and I hope 
 when you come in the morning, you will see her as blooming as 
 she was when you went out to-day on that unlucky walk. 
 
 " See what Sir George Gorgon says of us all ! You won't 
 challenge him I know, as he is to be your uncle, and so I may 
 show you his letter. 
 
 " Good night, my dear John ; do not go quite distracted before 
 morning ; and believe me your loving aunt, 
 
 " Barbara Biaos."
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 491 
 
 " Baker-street, l\tk December. 
 
 " Major-General Sir George Gorgon has heard with the utmost 
 disgust and surprise of the engagement which Miss Lucy Gorgon 
 lias thought fit to form. 
 
 " The major-general canuot conceal his indignation at the share 
 which Miss Biggs has taken in this disgraceful transaction. 
 
 " Sir George Gorgon puts an absolute veto upon all further 
 communication between his niece and the low-born adventurer 
 who has been admitted into her society, and begs to say that 
 Lieutenant Pitch, of the Life Guards, is the gentleman who he 
 intends shall marry Miss Gorgon. 
 
 " It is the major-general's wish, that on the 28th Miss Gorgon 
 should be ready to come to his house, in Baker-street, where she 
 will be more safe from impertinent intrusions than she has been 
 in Mucklebury-square. 
 
 " Mrs. Biggs, 
 
 " Caroline-place, 
 
 " Mecklenburgh-square." 
 
 When poor John Perkins read this epistle, blank rage and won- 
 der filled his soul, at the audacity of the little general, who thus, 
 without the smallest title in the world, pretended to dispose of 
 the hand and fortune of his niece. The fact is, that Sir George 
 had such a transcendent notion of his own dignity and station, 
 that it never for a moment entered his head that his niece, or 
 anybody else connected with him, should take a single step in 
 life without previously receiving his orders, and Mr. Fitch, a 
 baronet's son, having expressed an admiration of Lucy, Sir George 
 had determined that his suit should be accepted, and really con- 
 sidered Lucy's preference of another as downright treason. 
 
 John Perkins determined on the death of Pitch as the very least 
 reparation that should satisfy him ; and vowed too that some of 
 the general's blood should be shed for the words which he had 
 dared to utter. 
 
 We have said that William Pitt Scully, Esq., M.P., occupied
 
 492 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 the first floor of Mr. Perkins's house, in Bedford-row ; and the 
 reader is further to be informed that an immense friendship had 
 sprung up between these two gentlemen. The fact is, that poor 
 John was very much flattered by Scully's notice, and began in a 
 very short time to fancy himself a political personage ; for he had 
 made several of Scully's speeches, written more than one letter 
 from him to his constituents, and, in a word, acted as his gratis 
 clerk. At least a guinea a-week did Mr. Perkins save to the 
 pockets of Mr. Scully, and with hearty good will too, for he adored 
 the great William Pitt, and believed every word that dropped from 
 the pompous lips of that gentleman. 
 
 "Well, after having discussed Sir George Gorgon's letter, poor 
 Perkins, in the utmost fury of mind that his darling should be 
 slandered so, feeling a desire for fresh air, determined to descend 
 to the garden, and smoke a cigar in that rural, quiet spot. The 
 night was very calm. The moonbeams slept softly upon the 
 herbage of Gray's Inn-gardens, and bathed with silver splendour 
 Theobald' s-row. A million of little frisky twinkling stars attended 
 their queen, who looked with bland round face upon their gambols, 
 as they peeped in and out from the azure heavens. Along Gray's 
 Inn wall a lazy row of cabs stood listlessly, for who would call a 
 cab on such a night ? Meanwhile their drivers, at the alehouse 
 near, smoked the short pipe or quaffed the foaming beer. Per- 
 haps from Gray's Inn-lane some broken sounds of Irish revelry 
 might rise. Issuing perhaps from Eaymond-buildings gate, six 
 lawyers' clerks might whoop a tipsy song — or the loud watchman 
 yell the passing hour — but beyond this all was silence, and young 
 Perkins, as he sat in the summer-house at the bottom of the 
 garden, and contemplated the peaceful heaven, felt some influences 
 of it entering into his soul, and almost forgetting revenge, thought 
 but of peace and love. 
 
 Presently, he was aware there was some one else pacing the 
 garden. Who could it be ? — Not Blatherwick, for he passed the 
 Sabbath with his grandmamma at Clapham — not Scully surely, 
 for he always went to Bethesda chapel, and to a select prayer- 
 meeting afterwards. Alas ! it was Scully — for though that gentle- 
 man said that he went to chapel, we have it for a fact that he did 
 not always keep his promise, and was at this moment employed in
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 493 
 
 rehearsing an extempore speech, which he proposed to deliver at 
 St. Stephen's. 
 
 "Had I, sir," spouted he, with folded arms, slowly pacing to 
 and fro, " had I, sir, entertained the smallest possible intention of 
 addressing the House on the present occasion — hum, on the pre- 
 sent occasion — I would have endeavoured to prepare myself in a 
 way that should have at least shown my sense of the greatness of 
 the subject before the House's consideration, and the nature of 
 the distinguished audience I have the honour to address. I am, 
 sir, a plain man— born of the people — myself one of the people, 
 having won, thank Heaven, an honourable fortune and position by 
 
 my own honest labour ; and standing here as I do — " 
 
 ***** 
 
 Here Mr. Scully (it may be said that he never made a speech 
 without bragging about himself, and an excellent plan it is, for 
 people cannot help believing you at last) — here, I say, Mr. Scully, 
 who had one arm raised, felt himself suddenly tipped on the 
 shoulder, and heard a voice saying, "Your money or your 
 
 life!" 
 
 The honourable gentleman twirled round as if he had been shot 
 — the papers on which a great part of this impromptu were written 
 dropped from his lifted hand, and some of them were actually borne 
 on the air into neighbouring gardens. The man was, in fact, in 
 the direst fright. 
 
 " It's only I," said Perkins, with rather a forced laugh, when he 
 saw the effect that his wit had produced. 
 
 " Only you ! And pray what the dev — what right have you to 
 — to come upon a man of my rank in that way, and disturb me in 
 the midst of very important meditations?" asked Mr. Scully, 
 beginning to grow fierce. 
 
 " I want your advice," said Perkins, " on a matter of the very 
 greatest importance to me. You know my idea of marrying ? ' : 
 
 " Marry ! " said Scully ; " I thought you had given up that silly 
 scheme. And how, pray, do you intend to live ? " 
 
 " Why my intended has a couple of hundreds a year, and 
 my clerkship in the Tape-and-Sealing-Wax Office will be as much 
 
 more." 
 
 " Clerkship — Tape-and-Sealing-Wax Office — government sine-
 
 494 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 cure ! — Why, good Heavens ! John Perkins, you don't tell me 
 that you are going to accept any such thing ? " 
 
 "It is a very small salary, certainly," said John, who had a 
 decent notion of his own merits ; " but consider, sis months* 
 vacation, two hours in the day, and those spent over the news- 
 papers. After all, it's " 
 
 " After all, it's a swindle," roared out Mr. Scully, " a swindle 
 upon the country ; an infamous tax upon the people, who starve 
 that you may fatten in idleness. But take this clerkship in the 
 Tape-and-Sealing-Wax Office," continued the patriot, his bosom 
 heaving with noble indignation, and his eye flashing the purest 
 fire, — " Take this clerkship, John Perkins, and sanction tyranny, by 
 becoming one of its agents ; sanction dishonesty by sharing in 
 its plunder — do this, but never more be friend of mine. Had I 
 a child," said the patriot, clasping his hands and raising his eyes 
 to heaven, " I would rather see him — dead, sir — dead, dead at my 
 feet, than the servant of a government' which all honest men 
 despise ; " and here giving a searching glance at Perkins, Mr. 
 Scully began tramping up and down the garden in a perfect fury. 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " exclaimed the timid John Perkins — " don't 
 say so. My dear Mr. Scully, I'm not the dishonest character you 
 suppose me to be— I never looked at the matter in this light. 
 I'll — I'll consider of it. I'll tell Crampton that I will give up 
 the place ; but for Heaven's sake, don't let me forfeit your friend- 
 ship, which is dearer to me than any place in the world." 
 
 Mr. Scully pressed his hand, and said nothing ; and though 
 their interview lasted a full half hour longer, during which they 
 paced up and down the gravel-walk, we shall not breathe a single 
 syllable of their conversation, as it has nothing to do with our 
 tale. 
 
 The next morning, after an interview with Miss Lucy, John 
 Perkins, Esq., was seen to issue from Mrs. Biggs' house, looking 
 particularly pale, melancholy, and thoughtful ; and he did not 
 stop until he reached a certain door in Downing-street, where was 
 the office of a certain great minister, and the offices of the clerks 
 in his lordship's department. 
 
 The head of them was Mr. Josiah Crampton, who has now to
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 495 
 
 be introduced to the public. He was a little old gentleman, some 
 sixty years of age, maternal uncle to John Perkins ; a bachelor, 
 Avho had been about forty-two years employed in the department 
 of "which he was now the head. 
 
 After waiting four hours in an ante-room, where a number of 
 Irishmen, some newspaper editors, many pompous-looking political 
 personages, asking for the "first lord;" a few sauntering clerks, 
 and numbers of swift active messengers passed to and fro. After 
 waiting for four hours, making drawings on the blotting-book, and 
 reading the " Morning Post " for that day week, Mr. Perkins was 
 informed that he might go into his uncle's room, and did so 
 accordingly. 
 
 He found a little hard old gentleman seated at a table covered 
 with every variety of sealing-wax, blotting-paper, envelopes, despatch- 
 boxes, green-tapers, &c. &c. An immense fire was blazing in the 
 grate, an immense sheet-almanac hung over that, a screen, three 
 or four chairs, and a faded Turkey carpet formed the rest of the 
 furniture of this remarkable room, which I have described thus 
 particularly, because, in the course of a long official life, I have 
 remarked that such is the invariable decoration of political 
 rooms. 
 
 " "Well, John," said the little hard old gentleman, pointing to 
 an arm-chair, " I'm told you've been here since eleven. Why the 
 deuce do you come so early ? " 
 
 " I had important business," answered Mr. Perkins, stoutly ; 
 and as his uncle looked up with a comical expression of wonder, 
 John began in a solemn tone to deliver a little speech which he 
 had composed, and w T hich proved him to be a very worthy, easy, 
 silly fellow. 
 
 " Sir," said Mr. Perkins, "you have known for some time past 
 the nature of my political opinions, and the intimacy which I have 
 had the honour to form with one — with some of the leading 
 members of the liberal party. (A grin from Mr. Crampton.) 
 When first, by your kindness, I was promised the clerkship in the 
 Tape-and-Sealing-Wax Office, my opinions were not formed as 
 they are now ; and having taken the advice of the gentlemen with 
 whom I act, — (an enormous grin,) — the advice, I say, of the 
 gentlemen with whom I act, and the counsel likewise of my own
 
 496 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 conscience, I am compelled, with the deepest grief, to say, my 
 dear nncle, that I — I — " 
 
 "That you — what, sir?" exclaimed little Mr. Crampton, 
 bouncing off his chair. " Tou don't mean to say that you are 
 such a fool as to decline the place ? " 
 
 " I do decline the place," said Perkins, whose blood rose at the 
 word " fool ; " " as a man of honour, I cannot take it." 
 
 " Not take it ! and how are you to live ? On the rent of that 
 house of yours ? For by gad, sir, if you give up the clerkship, I 
 never will give you a shilling." 
 
 " It cannot be helped," said Mr. Perkins, looking as much like 
 a martyr as he possibly could, and thinking himself a very fine 
 fellow. " I have talents, sir, which I hope to cultivate ; and am 
 member of a profession by which a man may hope to rise to the 
 very highest offices of the state." 
 
 " Profession, talents, offices of the state ! Are you mad, John 
 Perkins, that you come to me with such insufferable twaddle as 
 this ? Why, do you think if you had been capable of rising at 
 the bar, I would have taken so much trouble about getting you a 
 place ? No, sir ; you are too fond of pleasure, and bed, and tea- 
 parties, and small-talk, and reading novels, and playing the flute, 
 and writing sonnets. You would no more rise at the bar than 
 my messenger, sir ; it was because I knew your disposition — that 
 hopeless, careless, irresolute, good humour of yours, that I had 
 determined to keep you out of danger, by placing you in a snug 
 shelter, where the storms of the world would not come near you. 
 Tou must have principles, forsooth ! and you must marry Miss 
 Gorgon, of course ; and by the time you have gone ten circuits, and 
 had six children, you will have eaten up every shilling of your 
 wife's fortune, and be as briefless as you are now. AVho the 
 deuce has put all this nonsense into your head ? I think I know." 
 
 Mr. Perkins's ears tingled as these hard words saluted them ; 
 and he scarcely knew whether he ought to knock his uncle down 
 or fall at his feet, and say, " Uncle, I have been a fool, and I know 
 it." The fact is, that in his interview with Miss Gorgon and her 
 aunt in the morning, when he came to tell them of the resolution 
 he had formed to give up the place, both the ladies and John 
 himself had agreed, with a thousand rapturous tears and excla-
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 497 
 
 mations, that he was one of the noblest young men that ever 
 lived, had acted as became himself, and might with perfect pro- 
 priety give up the place, his talents being so prodigious that no 
 power on earth could hinder him from being lord chancellor. 
 Indeed, John and Lucy had always thought the clerkship quite 
 beneath him, and were not a little glad, perhaps, at finding a 
 pretext for decently refusing it. But as Perkins was a young 
 gentleman whose candour was such that he was always swayed 
 by the opinions of the last speaker, he did begin to feel now 
 the truth of his uncle's statements, however disagreeable they 
 might be. 
 
 Mr. Crampton continued : — 
 
 " I think I know the cause of your patriotism. Has not 
 William Pitt Scully, Esq., had something to do with it ? " 
 
 Mr. Perkins could not turn any redder than he was, but con- 
 fessed with deep humiliation that " he had consulted Mr. Scully, 
 among other friends." 
 
 Mr. Crampton smiled — drew a letter from a heap before him, 
 and tearing off the signature, handed over the document to his 
 nephew. It contained the following paragraphs : — 
 
 " Hawksby has sounded Scully : we can have him any day we 
 want him. He talks very big at present, and says he would not 
 take anything under a * * *. This is absurd. He has a 
 Yorkshire nephew coming up to town, and wants a place for him. 
 There is one vacant in the Tape Office, he says : have you not a 
 promise of it ? " 
 
 "I can't — I can't believe it," said John; "this, sir, is some 
 weak invention of the enemy. Scully is the most honourable 
 man breathing." 
 
 " Mr. Scully is a gentleman in a very fair way to make a 
 fortune," answered Mr. Crampton. " Look you, John — it is just 
 as well for your sake that I should give you the news a few 
 weeks before the papers, for I don't want you to be ruined, if I 
 can help it, as I don't wish to have you on my hands. We know 
 all the particulars of Scully's history. He was a Tory attorney at 
 Oldborough ; he was jilted by the present Lady Gorgon ! turned 
 Eadical, and fought Sir George in his own borough. Sir George 
 would have had the peerage he is dying for, had he not lost that 
 
 VOL. HI. K K
 
 498 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 second seat (by-the-by, my lady will be here in five minutes), 
 and Scully is now quite firm there. Well, my dear lad, we have 
 bought your incorruptible Scully. Look here," — and Mr. Cramp- 
 ton produced three Morning Posts. 
 
 "'The Honourable Henry Hawksby's Dinner Party. — 
 Lord So-and-So — Duke of So-and-So — W. Pitt Scully, Esq., 
 M.P.' 
 
 " Hawksby is our neutral, our dinner-giver. 
 
 " ' Lady Diana Doldruh's Bout. — W. Pitt Scully, Esq., 
 again.' 
 
 " ' The Earl of Mantrap's Grand Dinner. — A Duke — four 
 lords — Mr. Scully, and Sir George Gorgon.'' " 
 
 " Well, but I don't see how you have bought him ; look at 
 his votes." 
 
 " My dear John," said Mr. Crampton, jingling his watch-seals 
 very complacently, " I am letting ycu into fearful secrets. The 
 great common end of party is to buy your opponents — the great 
 statesman buys them for nothing." 
 
 Here the attendant genius of Mr. Crampton made his appear- 
 ance, and whispered something, to which the little gentleman 
 said, "Show her ladyship in," — when the attendant dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 "John," said Mr. Crampton, with a very queer smile, "you 
 ean't stay in this room while Lady Gorgon is with me ; but there 
 is a little clerk's room behind the screen there, where you can 
 wait until I call you." 
 
 John retired, and as he closed the door of communication 
 strange to sa}^ little Mr. Crampton sprung up and said, " Con- 
 found the young ninny, he has shut the door ! " 
 
 Mr. Crampton then, remembering that he wanted a map in the 
 next room, sprang into it, left the door half open in coming out, 
 and was in time to receive her ladyship witli smiling face as 
 she, ushered by Mr. Strongitharm, majestically sailed in.
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 499 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BEHIND THE SCENES. 
 
 In issuing from, and leaving open, the door of the inner room, 
 Mr. Crampton had bestowed upon Mr. Perkins a look so pecu- 
 liarly arch, that even he, simple as he was, began to imagine that 
 some mystery was about to be cleared up, or some mighty matter 
 to be discussed. Presently he heard the well-known voice of 
 Lady Gorgon in conversation with his uncle. What could their 
 talk be about ? Mr. Perkins was dying to know, and, shall we say 
 it ? advanced to the door on tiptoe and listened with all his might • 
 
 Her ladyship, that Juno of a woman, if she had not borrowed 
 Yenus's girdle to render herself irresistible, at least had adopted 
 a tender, coaxing, wheedling, frisky tone, quite different from her 
 ordinary dignified style of conversation. She called Mr. Crampton 
 a naughty man, for neglecting his old friends, vowed that Sir 
 George was quite hurt at his not coming to dine — nor fixing a 
 dav when he would come — and added with a most engaging: ogle, 
 that she had three fine girls at home, who would perhaps make 
 an evening pass pleasantly, even to such a gay bachelor as 
 Mr. Crampton. 
 
 " Madam," said he, with much gravity, " the daughters of such 
 a mother must be charming, but I, who have seen your ladyship, 
 am, alas ! proof against even them." 
 
 Both parties here heaved tremendous sighs, and affected to be 
 wonderfully unhappy about something. 
 
 " I wish," after a pause, said Lady Gorgon — " I wish, dear Mr. 
 Crampton, you would not use that odious title ' my ladyship,' you 
 know it always makes me melancholy." 
 
 " Melancholy, my dear Lady Gorgon, and why ? " 
 
 " Because it makes me think of another title that ought to have 
 been mine — ours (I speak for dear Sir George's and my darling 
 boy's sake, Heaven knows, not mine) . What a sad disappointment 
 
 k k 2
 
 500 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 it has been to my husband, that after all his services, all the 
 promises he has had, they have never given him his peerage. As 
 for me, you know " 
 
 " For you, my dear madam, I know quite well that you care for 
 no such bauble as a coronet, except in so far as it may confer 
 honour upon those most dear to you — excellent wife and noble 
 mother as you are. Heigho ! what a happy man is Sir George ! " 
 
 Here there was another pause, and if Mr. Perkins could have 
 seen what was taking place behind the screen, he would have 
 beheld little Mr. Crampton looking into Lady Gorgon's face, 
 with as love-sick a Romeo-gaze as he could possibly counterfeit, 
 while her ladyship, blushing somewhat and turning her own grey 
 gogglers up to heaven, received all his words for gospel, and sat 
 fancying herself to be the best, most meritorious, and most 
 beautiful creature in the three kingdoms. 
 
 "You men are terrible flatterers," continued she, "but you 
 say right, for myself I value not these empty distinctions. I am 
 growing old, Mr. Crampton, — yes, indeed, I am, although you 
 smile so incredulously, — and let me add, that my thoughts are 
 fixed upon Mglier things than earthly crowns. But tell me, you 
 who are all-in-all with Lord Bagwig, are we never to have our 
 peerage ? His majesty, I know, is not averse ; the services of 
 dear Sir George to a member of his majesty's august family, I 
 know, have been appreciated in the highest quarter. Ever since 
 the peace we have had a promise. Four hundred pounds has 
 Sir George spent at the heralds' office, (I, myself, am of one of 
 the most ancient families in the kingdom, Mr. Crampton,) and 
 the poor dear man's health is really ruined by the anxious, 
 sickening feeling of hope so long delayed." 
 
 Mr. Crampton now assumed an air of much solemnity. 
 
 " My dear Lady Gorgon," said he, " will you let me be frank 
 with you, and will you promise solemnly that what I am going to 
 tell you shall never be repeated to a single soul ? " 
 
 Lady Gorgon promised. 
 
 " Well, then, since the truth you must know, you yourselves 
 have been in part the cause of the delay of which you complain. 
 You gave us two votes five years ago, you now only give us one. 
 If Sir George were to go up to the Peers, we should lose even
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 501 
 
 that one vote ; and would it be common sense in us to incur such 
 a loss ? Mr. Scully, the Liberal, would return another member 
 of his own way of thinking ; and as for the Lords, we have, you 
 know, a majority there." 
 
 " Oh, that horrid man ! " said Lady Gorgon, cursing Mr. 
 Scully in her heart, and beginning to play a rapid tattoo with her 
 feet, " that miscreant, that traitor, that — that attorney has been 
 our ruin." 
 
 " Horrid man if you please, but give me leave to tell you that 
 the horrid man is not the sole cause of your ruin — if ruin you will 
 call it. I am sorry to say that I do candidly think ministers 
 think that Sir George Gorgon has lost his influence in Old- 
 borough as much through his own fault, as through Mr. Scully's 
 cleverness." 
 
 " Our own fault ! Good heavens ! Have we not done every- 
 thing — everything that persons of our station in the county could 
 do, to keep those misguided men ? Have we not remonstrated, 
 threatened, taken away our custom from the mayor, established 
 a Conservative apothecary — in fact done all that gentlemen could 
 do ? But these are such times, Mr. Crampton, the spirit of 
 revolution is abroad, and the great families of England are 
 menaced by democratic insolence." 
 
 This was Sir George Gorgon's speech always after dinner, and 
 was delivered by his lady with a great deal of stateliness. Some- 
 what, perhaps, to her annoyance, Mr. Crampton only smiled, 
 shook his head, and said — 
 
 " Nonsense, my dear Lady Gorgon — pardon the phrase, but I 
 am a plain old man, and call things by their names. Now, will 
 you let me whisper in your ear one word of truth ? Tou have 
 tried all sorts of remonstrances, and exerted yourself to main- 
 tain your influence in every way, except the right one, and 
 that is ! " 
 
 " What, in Heaven's name ? " 
 
 " Conciliation. "We know your situation in the borough. Mr. 
 Scully's whole history, and, pardon me for saying so (but we men 
 in office know everything), yours " 
 
 Lady Gorgon's ears and cheeks now assumed the hottest hue 
 of crimson. She thought of her former passages with Scully, aud
 
 502 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 of the days when — but never mind when, for she suffered her veil 
 to fall, and buried her head in the folds of her handkerchief. Yain 
 folds ! The wily little Mr. Crampton could see all that passed 
 behind the cambric, and continued — 
 
 " Yes, madam, we know the absurd hopes that were formed' 7 by 
 a certain attorney twenty years since. We know how, up to this 
 moment, he boasts of certain walks " 
 
 " With the governess — we were always with the governess ! " 
 shrieked out Lady Gorgon, clasping her hands. " She was not 
 the wisest of women." 
 
 " With the governess, of course," said Mr. Crampton, firmly. 
 " Do you suppose that any man dare breathe a syllable against 
 your spotless reputation ? Never, my dear madam ; but what I 
 would urge is this — you have treated your disappointed admirer 
 too cruelly." 
 
 " What, the traitor who has robbed us of our rights ? " 
 
 " He never would have robbed you of your rights if you had 
 been more kind to him. You should be gentle, madam ; you 
 should forgive him — you should be friends with him." 
 
 " With a traitor, never ! " 
 
 " Think what made him a traitor, Lady Gorgon ; look in your 
 glass, and say if there be not some excuse for him. Think of the 
 feelings of the man who saw beauty such as yours — I am a plain 
 man and must speak — Yirtue such as yours, in the possession of 
 a rival. By heavens, madam, I think he was right to hate Sir 
 George Gorgon ! Would you have him allow such a prize to be 
 ravished from him without a pang on his part ? " 
 
 " He was, I believe, very much attached to me," said Lady 
 Gorgon quite delighted ; " but you must be aware that a young 
 man of his station in life could not look up to a person of 
 my rank." 
 
 " Surely not ; it was monstrous pride and arrogance in Mr. 
 Scully; but que voulez-vous ? Such is the world's way — Scully 
 could not help loving you — who that knows you can ? I am a 
 plain man, and say what I think. He loves you still. Why 
 make an enemy of him, who would at a word be at your feet ? 
 Dearest Lady Gorgon, listen to me. Sir George Gorgon and 
 Mr. Scully have already met — their meeting was our contrivance,
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 503 
 
 it is for our interest, for yours, that they should be friends ; if 
 there were two ministerial members for Oldborough, do you 
 think your husband's peerage would be less secure ? I am not 
 at liberty to tell you all I know on this subject ; but do, I entreat 
 you, be reconciled to him." 
 
 And after a little more conversation which was carried on by 
 Mr. Crampton in the same tender way, this important interview 
 closed, and Lady Gorgon, folding her shawl round her, threaded 
 certain mysterious passages, and found her way to her carriage 
 in Whitehall. 
 
 "I hope you have not been listening, you rogue," said Mr 
 Crampton to his nephew, who blushed most absurdly by way of 
 answer. " Tou would have heard great state secrets, if you had 
 dared to do so. That woman is perpetually here, and if peerages 
 are to be had for the asking, she ought to have been a duchess 
 by this time. I would not have admitted her but for a reason 
 that I have. Go you now and ponder upon what you have 
 heard and seen. Be on good terms with Scully, and, above all, 
 speak not a word concerning our interview — no, not a word even 
 to your mistress. By the way, I presume, sir, you will recall your 
 resignation ? " 
 
 The bewildered Perkins was about to stammer out a speech, 
 when his uncle, cutting it short, pushed him gently out of the 
 
 door. 
 
 * * * * * * * 
 
 At the period when the important events occurred which 
 have been recorded here, parties ran very high, and a mighty 
 struggle for the vacant speakership was about to come on. The 
 Bi^ht Honourable Bobert Pincher was the ministerial candidate, 
 and Sir Charles Macabaw was patronised by the opposition. 
 The two members for Oldborough of course took different sides, 
 the baronet being of the Pincher faction, while Mr. William Pitt 
 Scully strongly supported the Macabaw party. 
 
 It was Mr. Scully's intention to deliver an impromptu speech 
 upon the occasion of the election, and he and his faithful Perkins 
 prepared it between them ; for the latter gentleman had wisely 
 kept his uncle's counsel and his own, and Mr. Scully was quite 
 ignorant of the conspiracy that was brooding. Indeed, so art-
 
 504 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 fully had that young Machiavel of a Perkins conducted himself, 
 that when asked by his patron whether he had given up his 
 place in the Tape-and-Sealing-Wax Office, he replied that "he 
 7iad tendered his resignation," but did not say one word about 
 having recalled it. 
 
 "You were right, my boy, quite right," said Mr. Scully; "a 
 man of uncompromising principles should make no compro- 
 mise ;" and herewith he sat down and wrote off a couple of 
 letters, one to Mr. Eingwood, telling him that the place in 
 the Sealing-"Wax Office was, as he had reason to know, vacant ; 
 and the other to his nephew, stating that it was to be his. 
 "Under the rose, my dear Bob," added Mr. Scully, "it will 
 cost you five hnndred pounds, but you cannot invest your money 
 better." 
 
 It is needless to state that the affair was to be conducted 
 " with the strictest secrecy and honour," and that the money 
 was to pass through Mr. Scully's hands. 
 
 While, however, the great Pincher and Macabaw question was 
 yet undecided, an event occurred to Mr. Scully, which had a 
 great influence upon his after-life. A second grand banquet was 
 given at the Earl of Mantrap's ; Lady Mantrap requested him 
 to conduct Lady Gorgon to dinner, and the latter, with a charm- 
 ing timidity, and a gracious melancholy look into his face, (after 
 which her veined eyelids veiled her azure eyes,) put her hand 
 into the trembling one of Mr. Scully, and said, as much as looks 
 could say, " Eorgive and forget." 
 
 Down went Scully to dinner ; there were dukes on his right 
 hand, and earls on his left ; there were but two persons without 
 title in the midst of that glittering assemblage ; the very 
 servants looked like noblemen, the cook had done wonders, the 
 wines were cool and rich, and Lady Gorgon was splendid ! What 
 attention did everybody pay to her and to him ! Why would 
 she go on gazing into his face with that tender, imploring look ? 
 In other words, Scully, after partaking of soup and fish, (he, 
 during their discussion, had been thinking over all the former 
 love-and-hate passages between himself and Lady Gorgon,) 
 turned very red, and began talking to her. 
 
 "Were you not at the opera on Tuesday?" began he,
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 505 
 
 assuming at once the airs of a man of fashion. " I thought 
 I caught a glimpse of you in the Duchess of Diddlebury's 
 
 box." 
 
 " Opera, Mr. Scully ? " (pronouncing the word " Scully " with 
 the utmost softness.) "Ah, no! we seldom go, and yet too 
 often. For serious persons the enchantments of that place are 
 too dangerous — I am so nervous — so delicate ; the smallest 
 trifle so agitates, depresses, or irritates me, that I dare not yield 
 myself up to the excitement of music. I am too passionately 
 attached to it ; and shall I tell you, it has such a strange influence 
 upon me, that the smallest false note almost drives me to dis- 
 traction, and for that very reason I hardly ever go to a concert 
 or a ball." 
 
 " Egad," thought Scully, " I recollect when she would dance 
 down a matter of five-and-forty couple, and jingle away at the 
 Battle of Prague all day." 
 
 She continued, "Don't you recollect, I do — with, oh, what 
 regret ! — that day at Oldborough race-ball, when I behaved 
 with such sad rudeness to you ; you will scarcely believe me, and 
 yet I assure you 'tis the fact, the music had made me almost 
 mad ; do let me ask your pardon for my conduct. I was not 
 myself. Oh, Mr. Scully ! I am no worldly woman ; I know my 
 duties, and I feel my wrongs. Nights and nights have I lain 
 awake weepiug and thinking of that unhappy day. That I should 
 ever speak so to an old friend, for we were old friends, were we 
 not?" 
 
 Scully did not speak ; but his eyes were bursting out of his 
 head, and his face was the exact colour of a deputy-lieutenant's 
 uniform. 
 
 " That I should ever forget myself and you so ! How I have 
 been longing for this opportunity to ask you to forgive me ! I 
 asked Lady Mantrap, when I heard you were to be here, to 
 invite me to her party. Come, I know you will forgive me — your 
 eyes say you will. You used to look so in old days, and forgive 
 me my caprices then. Do give me a little wine — we will drink to 
 the memory of old days." 
 
 Her eyes filled with tears, and poor Scully's hand caused such 
 a rattling and trembling of the glass and the decanter, that the
 
 506 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 Duke of Doldrum, who had been, during the course of this 
 whispered sentimentality, describing a famous run with the 
 queen's hounds at the top of his voice, stopped at the jingling of 
 the glass, and his tale was lost 'for ever. Scully hastily drank his 
 wine, and Lady Gorgon turned round to her next neighbour, a 
 little gentleman in black, between whom and herself certain 
 conscious looks passed. 
 
 " I am glad poor Sir George is not here," said he, smiling. 
 
 Lady Gordon said, " Pooh, for shame ! " The little gentleman 
 was no other than Josiah Crampton, Esq., that eminent financier, 
 and he was now going through the curious calculation which we 
 mentioned in our last, and by which you buy a man for nothing. 
 He intended to pay the very same price for Sir George Gorgon, 
 too, but there was no need to tell the baronet so ; only of this 
 the reader must be made aware. 
 
 While Mr. Crampton was conducting this intrigue, which was 
 to bring a new recruit to the ministerial ranks, his mighty spirit 
 condescended to ponder upon subjects of infinitely less import- 
 ance, and to arrange plans for the welfare of his nephew and the 
 young woman to whom he had made a present of his heart. 
 These young persons, as we said before, had arranged to live in 
 Mr. Perkins's own house in Bedford-row. It was of a peculiar 
 construction, and might more properly be called a house and a 
 half; for a snug little tenement of four chambers protruded from 
 the back of the house into the garden. These rooms communi- 
 cated with the drawing-rooms occupied by Mr. Scully ; and 
 Perkins, who acted as his friend and secretary, used frequently to 
 sit in the one nearest the member's study, in order that he might 
 be close at hand to confer with that great man. The rooms had 
 a private entrance, too, were newly decorated, and in them the 
 young couple proposed to live ; the kitchen and garrets being 
 theirs likewise. What more could they need ? We are obliged 
 to be particular in describing these apartments, for extraordinary 
 events occurred therein. 
 
 To say the truth, until the present period Mr. Crampton had 
 taken no great interest in his nephew's marriage, or, indeed, in 
 the young man himself. The old gentleman was of a a saturnine 
 turn, and inclined to undervalue the qualities of Mr. Perkins,
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 507 
 
 ■which were idleness, simplicity, enthusiasm, and easy good- 
 nature. 
 
 " Such fellows never do any thing in the world," he -would say, 
 and for such he had accordingly the most profound contempt. 
 But when, after John Perkins's repeated entreaties, he had been 
 induced to make the acquaintance of Miss Gorgon, he became 
 instantly charmed with her, and warmly espoused her cause 
 against her overbearing relations. 
 
 At his sue:e:e8tion she wrote back to decline Sir George 
 Gorgon's peremptory invitation, and hinted at the same time 
 that she had attained an age and a position which enabled her to 
 be the mistress of her own actions. To this letter there came an 
 answer from Lady Gorgon which we shall not copy, but which 
 simply stated, that Miss Lucy Gorgon's conduct was unchristian, 
 ungrateful, unladylike, and immodest; that the Gorgon family 
 disowned her for the future, and left her at liberty to form what- 
 ever base connections she pleased. 
 
 " A pretty world this," said Mr. Crampton, in a great rage, 
 when the letter was shown to him. " This same fellow, Scully, 
 dissuades my nephew from taking a place, because Scully 
 wants it for himself. This prude of a Lady Gorgon cries out 
 shame, and disowns an innocent amiable girl ; she, a heartless jilt 
 herself once, and a heartless flirt now. The Pharisees, the 
 Pharisees ! And to call mine a base family, too ! " 
 
 Xow, Lady Gorgon did not in the least know Mr. Crampton's 
 connection with Mr. Perkins, or she would have been much more 
 guarded in her language ; but whether she knew it or not, the old 
 gentleman felt a huge indignation, and determined to have his 
 revenue. 
 
 "That's right, uncle; shall I call Gorgon out?" said the 
 impetuous young Perkins, who was all for blood. 
 
 "John, you are a fool," said his uncle. "Ton shall have a 
 better revenge ; you shall be married from Sir George Gorgon's 
 house, and you shall see Mr. "William Pitt Scully sold for nothing." 
 This to the veteran diplomatist, seemed to be the highest triumph 
 which man could possibly enjoy. 
 
 It was very soon to take place ; and as has been the case ever 
 since the world began, woman, lovely woman was to be the cause
 
 508 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 of Scully's fall. The tender scene at Lord Mantrap's was followed 
 by many others equally sentimental. Sir George Gorgon called 
 upon his colleague the very next day, and brought with him a card 
 from Lady Gorgon, inviting Mr. Scully to dinner. The attorney 
 eagerly accepted the invitation, was received in Baker-street by 
 the whole amiable family with much respectful cordiality, and. was 
 pressed to repeat his visits as country neighbours should. More 
 than once did he call, and somehow always at the hour when Sir 
 George was away at his club, or riding in the park, or elsewhere 
 engaged. Sir George Gorgon was very old, very feeble, very 
 much shattered in constitution. Lady Gorgon used to impart 
 her fears to Mr. Scully every time he called there, and the sym- 
 pathising attorney used to console her as best he might. Sir 
 George's country agent neglected the property — his lady consulted 
 Mr. Scully concerning it ; he knew to a fraction how large her 
 jointure was ; how she was to have Gorgon Castle for her life ; 
 and how, in the event of the young baronet's death, (he, too, was 
 a sickly poor boy,) the chief part of the estates, bought by her 
 money, would be at her absolute disposal. 
 
 " What a pity these odious politics prevent me from having you 
 for our agent," would Lady Gorgon say; and indeed Scully 
 thought it was a pity too. Ambitious Scully ! what wild notions 
 filled his brain. He used to take leave of Lady Gorgon and 
 ruminate upon these things ; and when he was gone, Sir George 
 and her ladyship used to laugh. 
 
 " If we can but commit him — if we can but make him vote for 
 Pincher," said the General, " my peerage is secure. Hawksby and 
 Crampton as good as told me so." 
 
 The point had been urged upon Mr. Scully repeatedly and 
 adroitly. " Is not Pincher a more experienced man than Maca- 
 baw ? " would Sir George say to his guest over their wine. Scully 
 allowed it. " Can't you vote for him on personal grounds, and say 
 so in the house ? " Scully wished he could, — how he wished he 
 could ! Every time the General coughed, Scully saw his friend's 
 desperate situation more and more, and thought how pleasant it 
 would be to be Lord of Gorgon Castle. " Knowing my property," 
 cried Sir George, " as you do, and with your talents and integrity, 
 what a comfort it would be could I leave you as guardian to my
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 509 
 
 boy ! But these cursed politics prevent it, my dear fellow. "Why 
 will you be a Radical ? " And Scully cursed politics too. " Hang 
 the low-bred rogue," added Sir George, when "William Pitt Scully 
 left the house, " he will do everything but promise." 
 
 "My dear General," said Lady Gorgon, sidling up to him and 
 patting him on his old yellow cheek — " my dear Georgy, tell me 
 one thing, — are you jealous ? " 
 
 " Jealous, my dear! and jealous of that fellow — pshaw ! " 
 " "Well, then, give me leave, and you shall have the promise to 
 morrow." 
 
 To-morrow arrived. It was a remarkably fine day, and in the 
 forenoon Mr. Perkins gave his accustomed knock at Scully's study, 
 which was only separated from his own sitting-room by a double 
 door. John had wisely followed his uncle's advice, and was on 
 the best terms with the honourable member. 
 
 "Here are a few sentences," said he, " which I think may suit 
 your purpose. Great public services — undeniable merit — years 
 of integrity — cause of reform, and Macabaw for ever! " He put 
 down the paper. It was, in fact, a speech in favour of Mr. Macabaw. 
 
 "Hush," said Scully, rather surlily, for he was thinking how 
 disagreeable it was to support Macabaw, and besides, there were 
 clerks in the room, whom the thoughtless Perkins had not at first 
 perceived. As soon as that gentleman saw them, " You are busy, 
 I see," continued he in a lower tone. " I came to say, that I 
 must be off duty to-day, for I am engaged to take a walk with 
 some ladies of my acquaintance." 
 
 So saying, the light-hearted young man placed his hat uncere- 
 moniously on his head, and went off through his own door, hum- 
 ming a song. He was in such high spirits, that he did not even 
 think of closing the doors of communication, and Scully looked 
 after him with a sneer. 
 
 " Ladies, forsooth," thought he ; "I know who they are. This 
 precious girl that he is fooling with, for one, I suppose." He 
 was right, Perkins was off on the wings of love, to see Miss Lucy ; 
 and she and aunt Biggs, and uncle Crampton had promised this 
 very day to come and look at the apartments which Mrs. John 
 Perkins was to occupy with her happy husband.
 
 510 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 "Poor devil," so continued Mr. Scully's meditations, "it is 
 almost too bad to do him out of bis place, but my Bob wants it, 
 and John's girl has, I bear, seven thousand pounds. His uncle 
 will get him another place before all that money is spent ; " and 
 herewith Mr. Scully began conning the speech which Perkins had 
 made for him. 
 
 He had not read it more than six times, — in truth, he was 
 getting it by heart, — when his head-clerk came to him from the 
 front room, bearing a card : a footman had brought it, who said 
 his lady was waiting below. Lady Gorgon's name was on the 
 card ! To seize his hat and rush down stairs was, with Mr. Scully, 
 the work of an infinitesimal portion of time. 
 
 It was indeed Lady Gorgon, in her Gorgonian chariot. 
 
 " Mr. Scully," said she, popping her head out of window and 
 smiling in a most engaging way, " I want to speak to you on 
 something very particular indeed" and she held him out her hand. 
 Scully pressed it most tenderly ; he hoped all heads in Bedford- 
 row were at the windows to see him. " I can't ask you into the 
 carriage, for you see the governess is with me, and I want to talk 
 secrets to you." 
 
 " Shall I go and make a little promenade ? " said mademoiselle, 
 innocently. And her mistress hated her for that speech. 
 
 " ~No. Mr. Scully, I am sure, will let me come in for five 
 minutes." 
 
 Mr. Scully was only too happy. My lady descended and walked 
 up stairs, leaning on the happy solicitor's arm. But how should 
 he manage ? The front room was consecrated to clerks ; there 
 were clerks, too, as ill-luck would have it, in his private room. 
 " Perkins is out for the day," thought Scully; "I will take her 
 into his room ; " and into Perkins's room he took her — ay, and he 
 shut the double doors after him too, and trembled as he thought 
 of his own happiness. 
 
 " What a charming little study," said Lady Gorgon, seating her- 
 self. And indeed it was very pretty, for Perkins had furnished it 
 beautifully, and laid out a neat tray with cakes, a cold fowl, and 
 sherry, to entertain his party withal. "And do you bachelors 
 always live so well ? " continued she, pointing to the little cold 
 collation.
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 511 
 
 Mr. Scully looked rather blank when he saw it, and a dreadful 
 suspicion crossed his soul; but there was no need to trouble 
 Lady Gorgon with explanations, therefore, at once, and with 
 much presence of mind, he asked her to partake of his bachelor's 
 fare (she would refuse Mr. Scully nothing that day). A pretty 
 sight would it have been for young Perkins to see strangers 
 so unceremoniously devouring his feast. She drank — Mr. Scully 
 drank — and so emboldened was he by the draught that he actually 
 seated himself by the side of Lady Gorgon, on John Perkins's new 
 sofa. 
 
 Her ladyship had of course something to say to hiin. She was 
 a pious woman, and had suddenly conceived a violent wish for 
 building a chapel- of-ease at Oldborough, to which she entreated 
 him to subscribe. She enlarged upon the benefits that the 
 town would derive from it, spoke of Sunday-schools, sweet spiritual 
 instruction, and the duty of all well-minded persons to give aid to 
 the scheme. 
 
 " I will subscribe a hundred pounds," said Scully, at the 
 end of her ladyship's harangue: "would I not do any thiuo 
 for you ?" 
 
 " Thank you, thank you, dear Mr. Scully," said the enthusiastic 
 woman. (How the " dear " went burning through his soul !) 
 "Ah!" added she, "if you would but do any thing for me — if 
 you, who are so eminently, so truly distinguished, in a religious 
 point of view, would but see the truth in politics, too ; and if I 
 could see your name among those of the true patriot party in 
 this empire, how blest — oh! how blest, should I be! Poor 
 Sir George often says he should go to his grave happy, could he 
 but see you the guardian of his boy, and I, your old friend, (for 
 we were friends, William,) how have I wept to think of you, as 
 one of those who are bringing our monarchy to ruin. Do, do, 
 promise me this too!" and she took his hand and pressed it 
 between hers. 
 
 The heart of William Pitt Scully, during this speech, was 
 thumping up and down with a frightful velocity and strength. 
 His old love, the agency of the Gorgon property — the dear widow 
 — five thousand a-year clear— a thousand delicious hopes rushed 
 madly through his brain, and almost took away his reason. And
 
 512 THE BEDFORD -ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 there she sat — she, the loved one, pressing his hand and looking 
 softly into his eyes. 
 
 Down, down, he plumped on his knees. 
 
 "Juliana!" shrieked he, " don't take away your hand! My 
 love — my only love ! — speak but those blessed words again ! Call 
 me "William once more, and do with me what you will." 
 
 Juliana cast down her eyes and said, in the very smallest 
 
 type, 
 
 "William!" 
 
 * * * * • 
 
 when the door opened, and in walked Mr. Crampton, leading 
 Mrs. Biggs, who could hardly contain herself for laughing, and 
 Mr. John Perkins, who was squeezing the arm of Miss Lucy. 
 They had heard every word of the two last speeches. 
 
 For at the very moment when Lady Gorgon had stopped at 
 Mr. Scully's door, the four above-named individuals had issued 
 from Great James-street into Bedford-row. Lucy cried out that it 
 was her aunt's carriage, and they all saw Mr. Scully come out, 
 bare-headed, in the sunshine, and my lady descend, and the pair 
 go into the house. They meanwhile entered by Mr. Perkins's 
 own private door, and had been occupied in examining the delight- 
 ful rooms on the ground floor, which were to be his dining-room 
 and library, from which they ascended a stair to visit the other 
 two rooms, which were to form Mrs. John Perkins's drawing- 
 room and bed-room. Now whether it was that they trod softly, or 
 that the stairs were covered with a grand new carpet and drugget, 
 as was the case, or that the party within were too much occupied 
 in themselves to heed any outward disturbances, I know not ; but 
 Lucy, who was advancing within John, (he was saying something 
 about one of the apartments the rogue!) — Lucy suddenly started, 
 and whispered, " There is somebody in the rooms!" and at that 
 instant began the speech already reported, " Thank you, thank you, 
 dear Mr. Scully," &c. &c. which was delivered by Lady Gorgon, 
 in a full, clear voice : for, to do her ladyship justice, she had not 
 one single grain of love for Mr. Scully, and, during the delivery of 
 her little oration, was as cool as the coolest cucumber. 
 
 Then began the impassioned rejoinder to which the four listened 
 on the landing-place ; and then the little " William" as narrated
 
 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 513 
 
 above ; at which juncture Mr. Crampton thought proper to rattle 
 at the door, and after a brief pause, to enter with his party. 
 
 " "William " had had time to bounce off his knees, and was on a 
 chair at the other end of the room. 
 
 "What, Lady Gorgon!" said Mr. Crampton, with excellent 
 surprise, " how delighted I am to see you ! Always, I see, 
 employed in works of charity, (the chapel-of-ease paper was on her 
 knees,) and on such an occasion, too, — it is really the most wonder- 
 ful coincidence ! My dear madam, here is a silly fellow, a nephew 
 of mine, who is going to marry a silly girl, a niece of your own." 
 
 " Sir, I — " began Lady Gorgon, rising. 
 
 " They heard every word," whispered Mr. Crampton, eagerly. 
 " Come forward, Mr. Perkins, and show yourself." Mr. Perkins 
 made a genteel bow. " Miss Lucy, please to shake hands with 
 your aunt ; and this, my dear madam, is Mrs. Biggs, of Mecklen- 
 burgh-square, who, if she were not too old, might marry a gentle- 
 man in the treasury, who is your very humble servant ; " and with 
 this gallant speech, old Mr. Crampton began helping every body 
 to sherry and cake. 
 
 As for William Pitt Scully, he had disappeared, evaporated, 
 in the most absurd, sneaking way imaginable. Lady Gorgon 
 made good her retreat presently, with much dignity, her 
 countenance undismayed, and her face turned resolutely to 
 the foe. 
 
 About five days afterwards, that memorable contest took place 
 in the House of Commons, in which the partisans of Mr. Macabaw 
 were so very nearly getting him the speakership. On the day 
 that the report of the debate appeared in the "Times," there 
 appeared also an announcement in the " Gazette " as follows: — 
 
 " The king has been pleased to appoint John Perkins, Esq., to 
 be Deputy-subcomptroller of his majesty's Tape-office, and Custos 
 of the Sealing-wax department." 
 
 Mr. Crampton showed this to his nephew with great glee, and 
 was chuckling to think how Mr. William Pitt Scully would be 
 annoyed, who had expected the place, when Perkins burst out 
 laughing, and said, " By Heavens ! here is my own speech ; Scully 
 has spoken every word of it, he has only put in Mr. Pincher's 
 name in the place of Mr. Macabaw's." 
 
 vol. in. L L
 
 514 THE BEDFORD-ROW CONSPIRACY. 
 
 "He is ours now," responded his uncle, " and I told you we 
 rcoultl have him for nothing. I told you, too, that you should be 
 married from Sir George Gorgon's, and here is proof of it." 
 
 It was a letter from Lady Gorgon, in which she said that, " had 
 she known Mr. Perkins to be a nephew of her friend Mr. Cramp- 
 ton, she never for a moment would have opposed his marriage 
 with her niece, and she had written that morning to her dear 
 Lucy, begging that the marriage breakfast should take place in 
 Baker-street." 
 
 "It shall be in Mecklenburgh-square," said John Perkins, 
 stoutly ; and in Mecklenburgh-square it was. 
 
 William Pitt Scully, Esq., was, as Mr. Crampton said, hugely 
 annoyed at the loss of the place for his nephew. He had still, 
 however, his hopes to look forward to but these were unluckily 
 dashed by the coming in of the Whigs. As for Sir George 
 Gorgon, when he came to ask about his peerage, Hawksby told 
 him that they could not afford to lose him in the Commons, for a 
 liberal member would infallibly fill his place. 
 
 And now that the Tories are out and the Whigs are in, strange 
 to say a Liberal does fill his place. This Liberal is no other than 
 Sir George Gorgon himself, who is still longing to be a lord, and 
 his lady is still devout and intriguing. So that the members for 
 Oldborough have changed sides, and taunt each other with 
 apostasy, and hate each other cordially. Mr. Crampton still 
 chuckles over the manner in which he tricked them both, and 
 talks of those five minutes during which he stood on the landing- 
 place, and hatched and executed his " Bedford-row Conspiracy." 
 
 end or VOL. III. 
 
 BUADDURY AMD EVAKS, PRINTERS?, WHITEFBIABS.
 
 MR. THACKERAY'S COLLECTED WORKS, 
 
 MISCELLANIES, 
 
 PROSE AND VERSE: 
 
 STORIES, ESSAYS AND SKETCHES, SATIRICAL, BURLESQUE, 
 AND SENTIMENTAL. 
 
 By W. M. THACKERAY. 
 
 The Collection will be comprised in Four Volumes, and will contain Mr. 
 Thackeray's early Novels — " Barry Lyndon," &c, revised and in part re- 
 written by the Author ; the " Burlesque Tales ; the " Social Sketches," 
 from Punch, Fraser's Magazine, and other Periodicals ; and the Ballads and 
 Verses written during the last ten years. 
 
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 following prices : 
 
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 BALLADS 1 6 
 
 THE SNOB PAPERS 2 
 
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 MAJOR GAHAGAN 1 
 
 THE FATAL BOOTS | 
 
 COX'S DIARY J 
 
 VOL. II. 
 THE YELLOWPLUSH MEMOIRS) I NOVELS BY EMINENT HANDS ^ 
 
 JEAMES'S DIARY > I CHARACTER SKETCHES ) 
 
 SKETCHES AND TRAVELS IN LONDON, 2s. 
 
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 service done to the general public. Few- 
 books of this season are so sure of a wide 
 and welcome acceptance." — Athenceum, Nov. 
 10, 1S55. 
 
 "There are not many English writers 
 who have furnished contributions to esta- 
 blished periodicals which when collected 
 are so truly, and in the most delightful 
 sense of the word, 'Miscellanies,' as the 
 
 minor works of Mr. Thackeray. Of the 
 humour and feeling of his ballads, and the 
 light touch of his satire in short tales and 
 essays, we have charming specimens in the 
 particular volumes before us ; and the union 
 of good writing with an excellent spirit of 
 fun promises to make of every volume 
 forming this collected edition a book as per- 
 fectly amusing as the present." — Examiner, 
 Nov. 3, 1855. 
 
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 WORKS BY W. M. THACKERAY. 
 
 (Not included in " Ifiscellanies") 
 
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 Illustrated by R. Doyle. In 2 vols. Svo, cloth, price 26s. 
 
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 VANITY FAIE. 
 
 Illustrated by the Author. 1 vol. large Svo, cloth, price 21s. 
 
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 Illustrated by the Author. 1 vol. small Svo, cloth, price 4s. 
 
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 Publishing in Monthly Parts, price One Shilling each, 
 
 THE 
 
 POPULAR HISTORY OF ENGLAND 
 
 AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY 
 
 OF SOCIETY AND GOVERNMENT FROM THE EARLIEST PERIOD TO OUR 
 
 OWN TIMES. 
 
 By CHARLES KNIGHT. 
 
 rPHE term Popular has been chosen for this New History of England, 
 as a distinctive title, to imply that it is for the People and of the People. 
 The author de.sire.s to produce a History of moderate dimensions, adapted for popular 
 use, as a Library Book, amongst all classes and ages. 
 
 Its essential characteristic will he, a constant interfusion of what may be called 
 the History of Society — that is, of the Condition of the People — with the History of 
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 exemplify the mode of treatment which will prevail throughout the work. The 
 subjects marked in italics are those which mere particularly illustrate the History of 
 Society. 
 
 "With the new year Mr. Charles Knight began the publication in shilling numbers of a 
 History of England, plainly and well written by himself, liberal in spirit, unstrained in 
 manner, and very full of a right knowledge, especially upon those points which mark the 
 growth of civilisation. . . . We can conceive that such a history, when a complete work, 
 will be a family book seldom suffered to be idle. It is an attempt to supply a well-known 
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 fairness, and admirably written, but very freely illustrated with good woodcuts." — Examiner. 
 
 " A book that shall be light and readable, without being superficial, full of pictures rather 
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 the work proposed by Mr. Knight. The idea is good ; and the first part of the work opens the 
 subject well as to style and literary execution." — Athenaeum. 
 
 The Popular History of England is publishing in Monthly Parts, eight of which 
 are issued. Each Part contains a beautiful Steel Plate, and the whole work — to be 
 complete in Five handsome volumes — will contain upwards of 1000 Wood Engravings. 
 
 *,* The First Volume o/The Popular History or England, handsomely 
 hound in cloth, will he ready in August, price 9s., illustrated with 
 several steel plates and numerous woodcuts. 
 
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 Just reach/, price 10s. cloth, Vol. I. of 
 
 THE CYCLOPEDIA OF BIOGRAPHY; 
 
 OR, THIRD DIVISION OF THE ENGLISH CYCLOPEDIA, 
 
 Conducted by CHARLES KNIGHT. 
 
 'V ;l This Cyclopaedia, which will form the most complete Biographical Dictionary- 
 extant, possesses the new and most important feature, — in addition to presenting a 
 large amount of information connected with the History of Distinguished Men of 
 .indent and modern time, — of giving a characteristic detailed account of all living 
 men of any degree of celebrity ; as the following list will more fully show : — 
 
 Living Biographies already published. 
 
 Abd-el-Kader 
 Abdu-1-Mejid 
 
 Aberdeen, Earl of 
 
 Adams, John C. 
 
 Agassiz, Louis 
 
 Ainswortk, W. H. 
 
 Any, G. B., Astronomer Royal 
 
 Albert, Prince 
 
 Alexander II., Emperor of 
 
 Russia 
 Alison, Sir Archibald, Bart. 
 Andersen, Hans Christian 
 Argyll, Duke of 
 Arndt, Ernest Moritz 
 Amott, Dr. Neil 
 Auber, D. F. E. 
 Babbage, Charles 
 Back, Sir George 
 Baily, Edward H. 
 Bancroft, George 
 Barante, Baron de Brugiere 
 Barlow, Peter 
 Barry, Sir Charles 
 Bathyani, Count Casimir 
 Beechy, Frederick William 
 Bell, John, Sculptor 
 Bell, Thomas 
 Beranger, Pierre-John de 
 Berghaus, Heinrich 
 Berlioz, Hector 
 Berry, Duchesse de 
 Biard, Auguste-Fran^ois 
 Bjrot, Jean-Baptiste 
 Bianc, Louis 
 
 Blomtield, C. J., Bp. of Lond. 
 Boeckh, August 
 Boisseree, Sulpiz 
 Boissonade, Jean-Francois 
 Bonaparte — Napoleon III. 
 Bonaparte, Jerome 
 Bonaparte, Charles -Lucieu, 
 
 Prince of Canino 
 Bonaparte, Louis-Lucicn. 
 Bonaparte, Napoltou-Josoph- 
 
 Charles-Paul 
 Bonheur, Rosa 
 upland, Ain 
 Bopp, Franz 
 Bordeaux, Due de 
 
 Borrow, George 
 
 Bosquet, General 
 
 Bosworth, Joseph, D.D. 
 
 Botta, Paul-Emile 
 
 Bowring, Sir John 
 
 Bremer, Fredrika 
 
 Brewster, Sir David 
 
 Bright, John 
 
 Britton, John 
 
 Broderip. W. J. 
 
 Brodie. Sir Benjamin C. 
 
 Brongniavt, Adolphe-Theodore 
 
 Brooke, Sir James 
 
 Brougham, Henry, Lord 
 
 Brown, General Sir George 
 
 Brown, John, D.D. 
 
 Brown, Robert 
 
 Browning, Robert 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 
 
 Brunei, Isambard K. 
 
 Bryant, William Cullen 
 
 Buckland, Dean 
 
 Bulgarin, Thaddeus 
 
 Bulwer, Sir Henry Lytton 
 
 Bunsen, Chevalier 
 
 Burgoyne, Lieutenant-Gcueral 
 Str John 
 
 Burnet, John 
 
 Burritt, Elihu 
 
 Burton, John Hill 
 
 Caballero, Fermin 
 
 Cabet, Etienne 
 
 Cabrera, Don Ramon 
 
 Cahen, Samuel 
 
 Cailliaui, Frederic 
 
 Campbell, John, Lord 
 
 Campbell, Sir Colin 
 
 Candlish, R. S., D.D. 
 
 Canrobert, Francois-Certain de 
 
 Carlyle, Thorn 
 
 Carpenter, \V. B., II. D. 
 
 Cass, General Lewis 
 
 Castiglioni, Carlo Ottavio 
 
 Castilho, Antonio Felicianodc 
 
 Cattermole, George 
 
 Cauchy, Augustin-Louis 
 
 i<jnac, General Louis- 
 Eugene 
 
 Cayley, Arthur 
 
 Ciiadwick, Edwin 
 
 Chambers, William and Robert 
 
 Champollion, Jean Jacques 
 
 Changamier, Nicolas - Anne" - 
 Theodule 
 
 Chasles, Michel 
 
 Chesuey, Colonel Francis Raw- 
 don 
 
 Chevreul, Michel Eugene 
 
 Chisholm, Mrs. Caroline 
 
 Chodzko, Alexander 
 
 Chodzko, Jakob Leonard 
 
 Christiana, Maria, of Spain 
 
 Clare, John 
 
 Clarendon, George W. F. V., 
 Earl of 
 
 Clark, Sir James, Bart., M.D. 
 
 Cobden. Richard 
 
 Cockerell, C. R., R.A. 
 
 Codrington, General Sir Wil- 
 li, mi John, K.C.B. 
 
 Cole, He my 
 
 Coleridge, Rev. Derwent 
 
 Collier, J. Payne 
 
 Collins, William Wilkie 
 
 Collins, Charles Allston 
 
 Combe, George 
 
 Combercnere, Stapleton Cot- 
 ton, Viscount 
 
 Comte, Auguste 
 
 Constantino, Nikolaevick 
 
 Couybeare, Very Reverend 
 William Daniel 
 
 Cooper, Thomas Sidney, A. R. A. 
 
 Cope, Charles West, ft. A. 
 
 Cornelius, Peter Von 
 
 Cousin, Victor 
 
 Cowley, Henry Richard Wel- 
 lesley. Lord 
 
 Cox, David 
 
 Craik, George Liilie 
 
 Crcswick, Tiiomas, R.A. 
 
 Croker, Right Honourable J. 
 Wilson 
 
 Croly, Rev. George, LL. D. 
 
 Cruikshank. George 
 
 Cubitt, Sir William 
 
 I ''i mining, John, D.D. 
 
 Cunningham, Peter 
 
 Published in Weekly Numbers and in Monthly Parts, which ere always 
 
 on sale. 
 
 PRADBURY & EVANS, 11, BOUVERIE STREET.
 
 11, Bouveeie Street, 
 
 July, 1856. 
 
 Important itorib 
 
 PUBLISHED BY BRADBURY AND EVANS. 
 
 INDISPENSABLE WORKS OF REFERENCE, 
 
 COMPLETE UP TO THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 Price £2 2$., in Four cloth Volumes, 
 
 THE CYCLOPEDIA OF GEOGRAPHY 
 
 OB FIRST DIVISION OF THE "ENGLISH CYCLOP.EDIA," 
 C uducted by CHARLES KNIGHT. With Illustrations. 
 
 Also, price £2 2-s., iu Four cloth Volumes, 
 
 THE CYCLOPEDIA OF NATURAL HISTORY ; 
 
 OR SECOND DIVISION OF THE "ENGLISH CYCLOPAEDIA," 
 Conducted by CHARLES KNIGHT. With upwards of 2000 Illustrations. 
 
 \* These two works, illustrated with upwards of 2000 Wood Engravings, contain 
 every possible degree of information on their respective subjects, brought up to 
 the commencement of the present year ; and are earnestly recommended, not 
 only for the daily purposes of reference, but also for the deeper researches of 
 the student, who will find therein all that is requisite to be known in connection 
 with these two large departments of human learning. 
 
 ft^" These two Cyclopedias may also be had, each in two large volumes 
 handsomely half-bound, price £2 10$.
 
 The British Ferns Illustrated by Nature -Printing. 
 
 Nearly complete, in Seventeen Parts, Price Six Shillings each, 
 
 THE FERNS OF GREAT BRITAIN, 
 
 NATURE PRINTED BY HENRY BRADBURY, 
 
 WITH DESCRIPTIONS OF THE INDIGENOUS SPECIES AND VARIETIES BY 
 THOMAS MOORE, F.L.S., AND EDITED BY DR. LINDLEY. 
 
 " Leaves and roots, to the minutest fibre, being reproduced with the most scrupulous 
 exactness and delicacy, while the various tints are faithfully preserved : surely the force of 
 imitation can no further go. The description and history of the Ferns in this important 
 publication are ample and lucid." — Art-Journal. 
 
 " A most remarkable scries of illustrations has just been commenced, a monograph of the 
 ' Ferns of Great Britain.' It is a truly uniijue work, comprising in itself two kinds of novelty ; 
 it is printed after the process called Nature- Printing. The nature of the process is not 
 explained, but it consists in some way of taking the impress of the plants themselves, so that 
 they appear to constitute a kind of model of the plant compressed upon paper In this way 
 it forms an exact transcript of the leaves, their shape, the veins, indentations, &c, by which 
 the botanist immediately recognises the plant in all its delicate varieties." — Leader. 
 
 " The Ferns being 1 thin and flat, are, perhaps, the most suitable of all plants for the Nature- 
 Printing process, and the result, so far as it illustrates the form of indentations, the general 
 outline, the root fibres, the phenomena of repeated subdivision, and the distribution of veins 
 scarcely visible to the naked eye, is truly astonishing, far excelling in accuracy and minutest 
 detail anything that can be represented by the pencil." — Literary Gazdte. 
 
 " The so-called Nature-Printing process is superior to all others for botanical representations 
 of this kind ; giving as it does not only general form with absolute accuracy, but also hairs, 
 veins, and other minutia; of superficial structure by which plants are known, irrespective of 
 the hidden details of their internal organisation." — Spectator. 
 
 " The plants being represented in relief, as if painted upon paper, and all the parts in their 
 several appropriate colours, the result is a complete substitute for the original specimen To 
 the botanical student such a means of study must be invaluable. The work is printed in 
 large folio size, and when completed will be a valuable standard addition to the scientific 
 library." — Illustrated London News. 
 
 " The Nature Self-Printing process is a method of obtaining facsimiles of leaves, mosses, 
 plants, and other subjects, the perfect reproduction of which requires a minuteness of detail 
 which is not within the province of the human hand to execute." — The Times. 
 
 " The process by which the casts of natural objects are transferred to paper and printed in 
 colours, and which at first sight look like very beautiful dried specimens of the plants 
 themselves, and so life-like, that only a close inspection reveals the fact of their being 
 copies." — Atlienceum. 
 
 " It is impossible to conceive any reproduction of a natural object more perfect than the 
 plates of botanical specimens given in the work before us. The plants are printed in their 
 natural size and colour, with an accuracy that could never be attained by any artist, even 
 after the sacrifice of a lifetime of study." — Daily News. 
 
 " Whoever desires to know plants out of doors by sight, and to be reminded of them 
 indoors pleasantly by faithful copies, can do no better than lay up for himself a store of these 
 pictures which Nature-Printing puts at his disposal."— Examiner. 
 
 The volume of the Nature-Printed British Ferns w ill be completed and 
 2>ublished in August. The Parts, seventeen in number, may be had sepa- 
 rately through any bookseller, 2?rice (is. each ; and for their better pre- 
 servation, a handsome portfolio has been specially prepared, price Is. Gd. 
 
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