THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 Ada Nisbet 
 
 ENGLISH READING ROOM
 
 17 1986 
 
 V
 
 DEVEREUX.
 
 A TALE 
 
 SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON, BART. 
 
 ' He that knows most men's manners, must of necessity 
 Best know his own. and mend those by example. 
 
 . . . . Pure and strong spirits 
 Do, like the fire, still covet to fly upward." 
 
 The Queen of Corinth, Act 2, Seftrt A. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE CASSELL PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 31 EAST i7TH ST. (UNION SQUARE)
 
 THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, 
 EAHWAV, K. i. 

 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAP. I. Of the Hero's Birth and Parentage. Nothing can differ 
 
 more from the End of things than their beginning - - - 1 1 
 
 CHAP. II. A Family Consultation. A Priest, and an JEr& in Life 15 
 
 CHAP. III. A Change in Conduct and in Character our evil Passions 
 will sometimes produce good Effects ; and, on the contrary, an 
 Alteration for the better in Manners will, not unfrequently, have 
 amongst its Causes a little Corruption of Mind ; for the Feelings 
 are so blended, that in suppressing those disagreeable to others, 
 we often suppress those which are amiable in themselves - 19 
 
 CHAP. IV. A Contest of Art, and a League of Friendship Two 
 Characters in mutual Ignorance of each other, and the reader no 
 wiser than either of them -------- 27 
 
 CHAP. V. Royal Hospitality an extraordinary Guest. A Fine 
 
 Gentleman is not necessarily a Fool 32 
 
 CHAP. VI. A Dialogue, which might be dull if it were longer - 36 
 
 CHAP. VII. A change of Prospects a new insight into the character 
 
 of the Hero a Conference between two Brothers - - - 39 
 
 CHAP. VIII. First Love - - - - - - 44 
 
 CHAP. IX. A Discovery, and a Departure 54 
 
 CHAP. X. A very short Chapter containing a Valet 60 
 
 CHAP. XI. The Hero acquits himself honorably as a Coxcomb a 
 Fine Lady of the Eighteenth Century, and a fashionable Dia- 
 logue the Substance of fashionable Dialogue being in all Cen- 
 turies the same -6: 
 
 CHAP. XII. The Abbe's return a Sword, and a Soliloquy - - 67 
 
 CHAP. XIII. A mysterious Letter a Duel the Departure of one of 
 
 the Family - - - - - - - - -69 
 
 CHAP. XIV. Being a Chapter of Trifles 78 
 
 CHAP. XV. The Mother and Son Virtue should be the Sovereign of 
 
 the Feelings, not their Destroyer .... - 80 
 
 iU
 
 Jy CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 CHAP. I. The Hero in London Pleasure is often the shortest, as it 
 is the earliest road to Wisdom, and we may say of the World 
 what Zeal-of-the-Land-Busy says of the Pig- Booth, "We escape 
 so much of the other vanities by pur early entering " - - - 84 
 
 CHAP. II. Gay Scenes and Conversations: the New Exchange and 
 
 the Puppet Show: The Actor, the Sexton, and the Beauty - 88 
 
 CHAP. III. More Lions 93 
 
 CHAP. IV. An Intellectual Adventure 97 
 
 CHAP. V. The Beau in his Den, and a Philosopher discovered - 99 
 
 CHAP. VI. An Universal Genius Pericles turned Barber Names of 
 
 Beauties in 171 the Toasts of the Kit-Cat Club - - ' - 107 
 
 CHAP. VII. A Dialogue of Sentiment succeeded by the Sketch of a 
 Character, in whose eyes Sentiment was to Wise Men what Re- 
 ligion is to Fools, viz. a subject of ridicule in 
 
 CHAP. VIII. Lightly won lightly lost. ; A Dialogue of equal In- 
 struction and Amusement. A Visit to Sir Godfrey Kneller - 116 
 
 CHAP. IX. A Development of Character, and a long Letter a Chap- 
 ter, on the whole, more important than it seems ... 120 
 
 CHAP. X. Being a short Chapter, containing a most important Event 129 
 
 CHAP. XI. Containing more than any other Chapter in the Second 
 
 Book of this History - - - - 133 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 CHAP. I. Wherein the History makes great Progress and is marked 
 
 by 6ne important Event in Human Life 149 
 
 CHAP. II. Love Parting a Death Bed. After all Human Nature 
 is a beautiful Fabric ; and even its Imperfections are not odious 
 to him who has studied the Science of its Architecture, and 
 formed a reverent Estimate of its Creator .... - 160 
 
 CHAP. III. A great Change of Prospects 168 
 
 CHAP. IV. An Episode The Son of the Greatest Man who (one only 
 excepted) ever rose to a Throne, but by no means of the Greatest 
 Man (save one) who ever existed - - - - - - - i?3 
 
 CHAP. V. In which the Hero shows decision on more points than one 
 
 More of Isora's character is developed 181 
 
 CHAP. VI. An Unexpected Meeting Conjecture and Anticipation 191 
 
 VII. The Events of a Single Night Moments make the Hues 
 
 in which Years are colored - - - . . .. -194
 
 CONTENTS. V 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAP. I. A Re-entrance into Life through the Ebon Gate Affliction 205 
 
 CHAP. II. Ambitious Projects - 210 
 
 CHAP. III. The real Actors Spectators of the false ones - - 218 
 
 CHAP. IV. Paris A Female Politician, and an Ecclesiastical one 
 
 Sundry other Matters - ....... 220 
 
 CHAP. V. A Meeting of Wits Conversation gone out to Supper in 
 
 her Dress of Velvet and Jewels - 226 
 
 CHAP. VI. A Court, Courtiers, and a King ----- 235 
 
 CHAP. VII. Reflections A Soiree The appearance of one important 
 in the History A Conversation with Madame de Balzac highly 
 satisfactory and cheering A Rencontre with a curious old Soldier 
 The extinction of a once great Luminary . . . 246 
 
 CHAP. VIII. In which there is reason to fear that Princes are not in- 
 variably free from Human Peccadillos 260 
 
 CHAP. IX. A Prince an Audience and a Secret Embassy - - 264 
 CHAP. X. Royal Exertions for the good of the People ... 271 
 CHAP. XI. An Interview 276 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 CHAP. I. A Portrait 279 
 
 CHAP. II. The entrance into Petersburgh a Rencontre with an inquisi- 
 tive and mysterious Stranger Nothing like Travel - - - 284 
 
 CHAP. III. The Czar the Czarina a Feast at a Russian Nobleman's 289 
 
 CHAP. IV. Conversation with the Czar if Cromwell was the greatest 
 man (Caesar excepted) who ever rose to the Supreme Power, Peter 
 was the greatest man ever born to it 293 
 
 CHAP. V. Return to Paris Interview with B -lingbroke A gallant . 
 Adventure Affair with Dubois Public Life is a Drama, in 
 which private Vices generally play the part of the scene-shifters 298 
 
 CHAP. VI. A long Interval of Years a Change of Mind and its 
 
 Causes .---. 308
 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 CHAP. I. The Retreat 3*8 
 
 CHAP. II. The Victory 322 
 
 CHAP. III. The Hermit of the Well - 325 
 
 CHAP. IV. The Solution of Many Mysteries a dark View of the 
 
 Life and Nature of Man 336 
 
 CHAP. V. In which the History makes a great Stride towards the 
 final Catastrophe the Return to England, and the Visit to a 
 Devotee - 368 
 
 CHAP. VI. The Retreat of a celebrated Man, and a Visit to a great 
 
 Poet - - 375 
 
 CHAP. VII. The Plot approaches its Denouement .... 385 
 CHAP. VIII. The Catastrophe - - - - - - -401
 
 DEDICATORY EPISTLE TO JOHN AULDJO, ESQ., &c. 
 
 AT NAPLES. 
 
 London. 
 MY DEAR AULDJO : 
 
 Permit me, as a memento of the pleasant hours we passed together, and the 
 intimacy we formed, by the winding shores and the rosy seas of the old Parthe- 
 nope, to dedicate to you this romance. It was written in, perhaps, the happiest 
 period of my literary life when success began to brighten upon my labors, and 
 it seemed to me a fine thing to make a name. Reputation, like all possessions, 
 fairer in the hope than in the reality, shone before me, in the gloss of novelty 
 and I had neither felt the envy it excites, the weariness it occasions, nor (worse 
 than all) that coarse and painful notoriety, that something between the gossip 
 and the slander, which attends every man whose writings become known sur- 
 rendering the grateful privacies of life to 
 
 The gaudy, babbling, and remorseless day. 
 
 In short yet almost a boy (for, in years at least, I was little more, when 
 "Pelham" and "The Disowned" were conceived and composed), and full of 
 the sanguine arrogance of hope, I pictured to myself far greater triumphs lhan 
 it will ever be mine to achieve : and never did architect of dreams build his pyra- 
 mid upon (alas !) a narrower base, or a more crumbling soil ! . . . . Time cures 
 us effectually of these self-conceits, and brings us, somewhat harshly, from the gay 
 extravagance of confounding the much that we design with the little that we can 
 accomplish. 
 
 ' ' The Disowned " and ' ' Devereux " were both completed in retirement and 
 in the midst of metaphysical studies and investigations, varied and miscellaneous 
 enough, if not very deeply conned. At that time I was indeed engaged in pre- 
 paring for the press a Philosophical Work, which I had afterwards the good 
 sense to postpone to a riper age and a more sobered mind. But the effect of these 
 studies is somewhat prejudicially visible in both the romances I have referred to ; 
 and the external and dramatic colorings which belong to fiction are too often for- 
 saken for the inward and subtle analysis of motives, characters, and actions. 
 The workman was not sufficiently master of his art to forbear the vanity of 
 parading the wheels of the mechanism, and was too fond of calling attention to 
 the minute and tedious operations by which the movements were to be performed, 
 and the result obtained. I believe that an author is generally pleased with his 
 work, less in proportion as it fulfils the idea with which he commenced it. He is 
 rarely, perhaps, an accurate judge how far the execution is in itself faulty or meri- 
 torious but he judges with tolerable success how far it accomplishes the end and 
 objects of the conception. He is pleased with his work, in short, according as he 
 can say, "This has expressed what I meant to convey." But the reader, who is 
 not in the secret of the author's original design, usually views the work through a 
 different medium and is perhaps, in this, the wiser critic of the two ; for the 
 Book that wanders the most from the idea which originated it, may often be better 
 than that which is rigidly limited to the unfolding and denouement of a single 
 conception. If we accept this solution, we may be enabled to understand why an 
 author not unfrequently makes favorites of some of his productions most con- 
 demned by the public. For my own part, I remember that " Devereux" pleased 
 me better than "Pelham" or "The Disowned," because the execution more 
 exactly corresponded with the design. It expressed with tolerable fidelity what I
 
 IV DEDICATORY EPISTLE. 
 
 meant it to express. That was a happy age, my dear Auldjo, when, on finishing; 
 a work, we could feel contented with our labor, and fancy we had done our best ! 
 Now, alas ! I have learned enough of the wonders of the Art to recognize all the 
 deficiencies of the Disciple ; and to know that no author, worth the reading can 
 ever in one single work do half of which he is capable. 
 
 What man ever wrote anything really good, who did not feel that he had the 
 ability to write something better ? Writing, after all, is a cold and a coarse inter- 
 preter of thought. How much of the imagination how much of the intellect, 
 evaporates and is lost while we seek to embody it in words ! Man made language, 
 and God the genius. Nothing short of an eternity could enable men who 
 imagine, think, and feel, to express all they have imagined, thought, and felt. 
 Immortality, the spiritual desire, is the intellectual necessity. 
 
 In "Devereux," I wished to portray a man flourishing in the last century, with 
 the train of mind and sentiment peculiar to the present ; describing a life, and 
 not its dramatic epitome, the historical characters introduced are not closely 
 woven with the main plot, like those in the fictions of Sir Walter Scott but are 
 rather, like the narrative romances of an earlier school, designed to relieve the 
 predominant interest, and give a greater air of truth and actuality to the sup- 
 posed memoir. It is a fiction which deals less with the Picturesque than the 
 Real. Of the principal character thus introduced (the celebrated and graceful, 
 but charlatanic, Bolingbroke) I still think that my sketch, upon the whole, is sub- 
 stantially just. We must not judge of the politicians of one age by the lights of 
 another. Happily we now demand in a statesman a desire for other aims than 
 his own advancement ; but, at that period, ambition was almost universally 
 selfish the Statesman was yet a Courtier a man whose very destiny it was to in- 
 trigue, to plot, to glitter, to deceive. It is in proportion as politics have ceased to 
 be a secret science in proportion as courts are less to be flattered, and tools to be 
 managed, that politicians have become useful and honest men : and the statesman 
 now directs a people, where once he outwitted an antechamber. Compare Boling- 
 broke not with the men and by the rules of this day but with the men and by 
 the rules of the last. He will lose nothing in comparison with a Walpole, with a 
 Marlborough on the one side with an Oxford or a Swift upon the other. 
 
 And now, my dear Auldjo you have had enough of my egotisms. As our 
 works grow up like old parents, we grow garrulous, and love to recur to the 
 happier days of their childhood ; we talk over the pleasant pain they cost us in 
 their rearing and memory renews the season of dreams and hopes ; we speak of 
 their faults as of things past of their merits as of things enduring : we are 
 proud to see them still living, and, after many a harsh ordeal and rude assault, 
 keeping a certain station in the world ; we hoped perhaps something better for 
 them in their cradle but, as it is, we have good cause to be contented. You, a 
 fellow-author, and one whose spirited and charming sketches embody so much of 
 personal adventure, and therefore so much connect themselves with associations 
 of real life as well as of the studious closet ; you know, and roust feel, with me, 
 that these our books are a part of us, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh ! 
 They treasure up the thoughts which stirred us the affections which warmed us, 
 years ago they are the mirrors of how much of what we were ! To the world, 
 they are but as a certain number of pages good or bad tedious or diverting; 
 but to ourselves, the authors, they are as marks in the wild maze of life by which 
 we can retrace our steps and be with our youth again. What would I not give 
 to feel as I felt to hope as I hoped to believe as I believed when this work 
 was first launched upon the world ! But time gives, while it takes away and, 
 amongst its recompenses for many losses, are the memories I referred to in com- 
 mencing this letter, and gratefully revert to at its close. From the land of cloud 
 and the life of toil, I turn to that golden clime and the happy indolence that so 
 well accords with it and hope once more, ere I die, with a companion whose 
 knowledge can recall the past, and whose gayety can enliven the present, to visit 
 the Disburied City of Pompeii and see the moonlight sparkle over the waves of, 
 Naples. Adieu, my dear Auldjo, 
 
 And believe me 
 
 Your obliged and attached friend, 
 
 E. B. LYTTON.
 
 DEVEREUX. 
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of the Hero's Birth and Parentage. Nothing can Differ more from the End 
 of Things than their Beginning. 
 
 MY grandfather, Sir Arthur Devereux (peace be with his 
 ashes !) was a noble old knight and cavalier, possessed of a 
 property sufficiently large to have maintained in full dignity 
 half a dozen peers such as peers have been since the days of 
 the First James. Nevertheless, my grandfather loved the 
 equestrian order better than the patrician, rejected all offers 
 of advancement, and left his posterity no titles but those to his 
 estate. 
 
 Sir Arthur had two children by wedlock both sons : at his 
 death, my father, the youager, bade adieu to the old hall and 
 his only brother, prayed to the grim portraits of his ancestors 
 to inspire him, and set out to join as a volunteer the armies 
 of that Louis, afterwards surnamed le grand. Of him I shall 
 say but little ; the life of a soldier has only two events worth 
 recording, his first campaign and his last. My uncle did as 
 his ancestors had done before him, and, cheap as the dignity 
 had grown, went up to court to be knighted by Charles II. 
 He was so delighted with what he saw of the metropolis that 
 he forswore all intention of leaving it, took to Sedley and 
 champagne, flirted with Nell Gwynne, lost double the value of 
 his brother's portion at one sitting to the chivalrous Grammont, 
 wrote a comedy corrected by Etherege, and took a wife recom- 
 mended by Rochester. The wife brought him a child six 
 months after marriage, and the infant was born on the same 
 day the comedy was acted. Luckily for the honor of the 
 house, my uncle shared the fate of Plimneus, king of Sicyon, 
 and all the offspring he ever had (that is to say, the child and
 
 12 UEVEREUX. 
 
 the play), "died as soon as they were born." My uncle was 
 now only at a loss what to do with his wife that remaining 
 treasure, whose readiness to oblige him had been so miracu- 
 lously evinced. She saved him the trouble of long cogitation 
 an exercise of intellect to which he was never too ardently 
 inclined. There was a gentleman of the court, celebrated for 
 his sedateness and solemnity ; my aunt was piqued into emu- 
 lating Orpheus, and, six weeks after her confinement, she put 
 this rock into motion they eloped. Poor gentleman ! it 
 must have been a severe trial of patience to a man never known 
 before to trangress the very slowest of all possible walks to 
 have had two events of the most rapid nature happen to him 
 in the same week : scarcely had he recovered the shock of 
 being run away with by my aunt, before, terminating for ever 
 his vagrancies, he was run through by my uncle. The wits 
 made an epigram upon the event, and my uncle, who was as 
 bold as a lion at the point of a sword, was, to speak frankly, 
 terribly disconcerted by the point of a jest. He retired to the 
 country in a fit of disgust and gout. Here his natural goodness 
 soon recovered the effects of the artificial atmosphere to which 
 it had been exposed, and he solaced himself by righteously 
 governing domains worthy of a prince, for the mortifications 
 he had experienced in the dishonorable career of a courtier. 
 
 Hitherto I have spoken somewhat slightingly of my uncle, 
 and in his dissipation he deserved it, for lie was both too honest 
 and too simple to shine in that galaxy of prostituted genius of 
 which Charles II. was the centre. But in retirement he was 
 no longer the same person ; and I do not think that the 
 elements of human nature could have furnished forth a more 
 amiable character than Sir William Devereux presiding at 
 Christinas over the merriment of his great hall. 
 
 Good old man ! his very defects were what we loved best in 
 him vanity was so mingled with good nature that it became 
 graceful, and we reverenced one the most, while we most 
 smiled at the other. 
 
 One peculiarity had he, which the age he had lived in and 
 his domestic history rendered natural enough, viz., an exceed- 
 ing distaste to the matrimonial state : early marriages were 
 misery, imprudent marriages idiotism, and marriage, at the 
 best, he was wont to say, with a kindling eye and a heightened 
 color, marriage at the best was the devil ! Yet it must not 
 be supposed that Sir William Devereux was an ungallant man 
 On the contrary, never did the beau sexe have a humbler or 
 more devoted servant. As nothing in his estimation was less
 
 DEVEREUX. 13 
 
 becoming to a wise man than matrimony, so nothing was more 
 ornamental than flirtation. 
 
 He had the old man's weakness, garrulity ; and he told the 
 wittiest stories in the world, without omitting anything in them 
 but the point. This omission did not arise from the want 
 either of memory or humor ; but solely from a deficiency in 
 the malice natural to all jesters. He could not persuade his 
 lips to repeat a sarcasm hurting even the dead or the ungrate- 
 ful ; and when he came to the drop of gall which should have 
 given zest to the story, the milk of human kindness broke its 
 barrier, despite of himself and washed it away. He was a 
 fine wreck, a little prematurely broken by dissipation, but not 
 perhaps the less interesting on that account ; tall, and some- 
 what of the jovial old English girth, with a face where good 
 nature and good living mingled their smiles and glow. He 
 wore the garb of twenty years back, and was curiously particular 
 in the choice of his silk stockings. Between you and me, he 
 was not a little vain of his leg, and a compliment on that score 
 was always sure of a gracious reception. 
 
 The solitude of my uncle's household was broken by an 
 invasion of three boys none of the quietest ; and their mother, 
 who, the gentlest and saddest of womankind, seemed to follow 
 them, the emblem of that primeval Silence from which all noise 
 was born. These three boys were my two brothers and myself. 
 My father, who had conceived a strong personal attachment 
 for Louis Quatorze, never quitted his service, and the great 
 King repaid him by orders and favors without number ; he 
 died of wounds received in battle a Count and a Marshal, 
 full of renown, and destitute of money. He had married 
 twice : his first wife, who died without issue, was a daughter of 
 the noble house of La Tremouille his second, our mother, 
 was of a younger branch of the English race of Howard. 
 Brought up in her native country, and influenced by a primitive 
 and retired education, she never loved that gay land which her 
 husband had adopted as his own. Upon his death, she 
 hastened her return to England, and refusing, with somewhat 
 of honorable pride, the magnificent pension which Louis wished 
 to settle upon the widow of his favorite, came to throw herself 
 and her children upon those affections which she knew they 
 were entitled to claim. 
 
 My uncle was unaffectedly rejoiced to receive us. To say 
 nothing of his love for my father, and his pride at the honors 
 the latter had won to their ancient house the good gentleman 
 was very well pleased with the idea of obtaining four new lis<-
 
 14 DEVEREUX. 
 
 teners, out of whom he might select an heir, and he soon grew 
 as fond of us as we were of him. At the time of our new set- 
 tlement, I had attained the age of twelve; my second brother 
 (we were twins) was born an hour after me; my third was about 
 fifteen months younger. I had never been the favorite of the 
 three. In the first place, my brothers (the youngest especially) 
 were uncommonly handsome, and, at most, I was but tolerably 
 good-looking ; in the second place, my mind was considered as 
 much inferior to theirs as my body I was idle and dull, sullen 
 and haughty the only wit 1 ever displayed was in sneering at 
 my friends/and the only spirit, in quarrelling with my twin 
 brother ; so said or so thought all who saw us in our childhood; 
 and it follows, therefore, that I was either very unamiable or 
 very much misunderstood. 
 
 But, to the astonishment of myself and my relations, my fate 
 was now to be reversed, and I was no sooner settled at Devereux 
 Court, than I became evidently the object of Sir William's pre- 
 eminent attachment. The fact was, that I really liked both the 
 knight and his stories better than my brothers did ; and the 
 very first time I had seen my uncle, I had commented on the 
 beauty of his stocking, and envied the constitution of his leg ; 
 from such trifles spring affection ! In truth, our attachment to 
 each other so increased that we grew to be constantly together; 
 and while my childish anticipations of the world made me love 
 to listen to stories of courts and courtiers, my uncle returned the 
 compliment, by declaring of my wit, as the angler declared of 
 the River Lea, that one would find enough in it, if one would 
 but angle sufficiently long. 
 
 Nor was this all ; my uncle and myself were exceedingly like 
 the waters of Alpheus and Arethusa nothing was thrown into 
 the one without being seen very shortly afterwards floating upon 
 the other. Every witticism or legend Sir William imparted to 
 me (and some, to say truth, were a little tinged with the licen- 
 tiousness of the times he had lived in), I took the first oppor- 
 tunity of retailing, whatever might be the audience ; and few 
 boys, at the age of thirteen, can boast of having so often as my- 
 self excited the laughter of the men and the blushes of the 
 women. This circumstance, while it aggravated my own van- 
 ity, delighted my uncle's ; and as I was always getting into 
 scrapes on his account, so he was perpetually bound, by duty, 
 to defend me from the charges of which he was the cause. No 
 man defends another long without loving him the better for it; 
 and perhaps Sir William Devereux and his eldest nephew were 
 the only allies in the world who had no jealousy of each other.
 
 DEVEREUX. 15 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A Family Consultation. A Priest, and an Era in Life. 
 
 "You are ruining the children, my dear Sir William," said my 
 gentle mother, one day, when I had been particularly witty, "and 
 the Abbe Montreuil declares it absolutely necessary that they 
 should go to school." 
 
 " To school !" said my uncle, who was caressing his right leg, 
 as it lay over his left knee " to school, Madam ! you are jok- 
 ing. What for, pray ? " 
 
 " Instruction, my dear Sir William," replied my mother. 
 
 " Ah, ah ; I forgot that ; true, true ! " said my uncle despond- 
 ingly, and there was a pause. My mother counted her rosary; 
 my uncle sank into a reverie ; my twin brother pinched my leg 
 under the table, to which I replied by a silent kick : and my 
 youngest fixed his large, dark, speaking eyes upon a picture of 
 the Holy Family, which hung opposite to him. 
 
 My uncle broke silence ; he did it with a start. 
 
 " Od's fish, Madam," (my uncle dressed his oaths, like him- 
 self, a little after the example of Charles II.) " od's fish, Madam. 
 I have thought of a better plan than that ; they shall have in- 
 struction without going to school for it." 
 
 " And how, Sir William ? " 
 
 " I will instruct them myself, Madam," and Sir William 
 slapped the calf of the leg he was caressing. 
 
 My mother smiled. 
 
 " Ay, Madam, you may smile ; but I and my Lord Dorset 
 were the best scholars of the age ; you shall read my play." 
 
 "Do, mother," said I, "read the play. Shall I tell her some 
 of the jests in it, uncle?" 
 
 My mother shook her head in anticipative horror, and raised 
 her finger reprovingly. My uncle said nothing, but winked at 
 me ; I understood the signal, and was about to begin, when the 
 door opened, and the Abbe Montreuil entered. My uncle re- 
 leased his right leg, and my jest was cut off. Nobody ever in- 
 spired a more dim, religious awe than the Abbe Montreuil. The 
 priest entered with a smile. My mother hailed the entrance of 
 an ally. 
 
 "Father," said she, rising, "I have just represented to my 
 good brother the necessity of sending my sons to school ; he 
 has proposed an alternative w'hich I will leave you to discuss 
 with him."
 
 l<5 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " And what is it ? " said Montreuil, sliding into a chair, and 
 patting Gerald's head with a benignant air. 
 
 " To educate them himself," answered my mother, with a sort 
 of satirical gravity. My uncle moved uneasily in his seat, as if, 
 for the first time, he saw something ridiculous in the proposal. 
 
 The smile, immediately fading from the thin lips of the priest, 
 gave way to an expression of respectful approbation. "An ad- 
 mirable plan," said he slowly, " but liable to some little excep- 
 tions, which Sir William will allow me to point out." 
 
 My mother called to us, and we left the room with her. The 
 next time we saw my uncle, the priest's reasonings had pre- 
 vailed. The following week we all three went to school. My 
 father had been a Catholic, my mother was of the same creed, 
 and consequently we were brought up in that unpopular faith. 
 But my uncle, whose religion had been sadly undermined at 
 court, was a terrible caviller at the holy mysteries of Catholicism ; 
 and while his friends termed him a Protestant, his enemies hinted, 
 falsely enough, that he was a sceptic. When Montreuil first 
 followed us to Devereux Court, many and bitter were the little 
 jests my worthy uncle had provided for his reception ; and he 
 would shake his head with a notable archness whenever he heard 
 our reverential description of the expected guest. But, some- 
 how or other, no sooner had he seen the priest, than all his 
 purposed railleries deserted him. Not a single witticism came 
 to his assistance, and the calm, smooth face of the ecclesiastic 
 seemed to operate upon the fierce resolves of the facetious 
 knight in the same manner as the human eye is supposed to awe 
 into impotence the malignant intentions of the ignobler animals. 
 Yet nothing could be blander than the demeanor of the Abbe 
 Montreuil nothing more worldly, in their urbanity, than his 
 manner and address. His garb was as little clerical as possible, 
 his conversation rather familiar than formal, and he invariably 
 listened to every syllable the good knight uttered, with a coun- 
 tenance and mien of the most attentive respect. 
 
 What then was the charm by which this singular man never 
 failed to obtain an ascendancy, in some measure allied with fear, 
 over all in whose company he was thrown ? That was a secret 
 my uncle never could solve, and which, only in later life, I 
 myself was able to discover. It was partly by the magic of an 
 extraordinary and powerful mind, partly by an expression of 
 manner, if I may use such a phrase, that seemed to sneer most, 
 when most it affected to respect ; and partly by an air like that 
 of a man never exactly at his ease ; not that he was shy, or un- 
 graceful, or even taciturn no! it was an indescribable er-
 
 DEVEREUX. 17 
 
 batrassnlent, resembling that of one playing a part, familiar to 
 him, indeed, but somewhat distasteful. This embarrassment, 
 however, was sufficient to be contagious, and to confuse that 
 dignity in others which, strangely enough, never forsook himself. 
 
 He was of low origin, but his address and appearance did 
 not betray his birth. Pride suited his mien better than famil- 
 iarity and his countenance, rigid, thoughtful, and cold, even 
 through smiles, in expression was strikingly commanding. In 
 person, he was slightly above the middle standard ; and had 
 not the texture of his frame been remarkably hard, wiry, and 
 muscular, the total absence of all superfluous flesh would have 
 given the lean gauntness of his figure an appearance of almost 
 spectral emaciation. In reality, his age did not exceed twenty- 
 eight years ; but his high, broad forehead was already so marked 
 with line and furrow, his hair was so staid and quiet, his figure 
 so destitute of the roundness and elasticity of youth, that his 
 appearance always impressed the beholder with the involuntary 
 idea of a man more considerably advanced in life. Abstemi- 
 ous to habitual penance, and regular to mechanical exactness in 
 his frequent and severe devotions, he was as little inwardly ad- 
 dicted to the pleasures and pursuits of youth, as he was exter- 
 nally possessed of its freshness and its bloom. 
 
 Nor was gravity with him that unmeaning veil to imbecility, 
 which Rochefoucauld has so happily called " the mystery of 
 the body." The variety and depth of his learning fully sus- 
 tained the respect which his demeanor insensibly created. To 
 say nothing of his lore in the dead tongues, he possessed a 
 knowledge of the principal European languages besides his own, 
 viz., English, Italian, German, and Spanish, not less accurate 
 and little less fluent than that of a native ; and he had not only 
 gained the key to these various coffers of intellectual wealth, 
 but he had also possessed himself of their treasures. He had 
 been educated at St. Omer ; and, young as he was, he had al- 
 ready acquired no inconsiderable reputation among his brethren 
 of that illustrous and celebrated Order of Jesus which has pro- 
 duced some of the worst and some of the best men that the 
 Christian world has ever known which has, in its successful 
 zeal for knowledge, and the circulation of mental light, be- 
 queathed a vast depth of gratitude to posterity ; but which, un- 
 happily encouraging certain scholastic doctrines, that by a mind 
 at once subtle and vicious can be easily perverted into the 
 sanction of the most dangerous and systematized immorality, 
 has already drawn upon its professors an almost universal odium. 
 
 So highly established was the good name of Montrcuil that
 
 l8 I)EVEREUX. 
 
 when, three years prior to the time of which I now speak, he 
 had been elected to the office he held in our family, it was scarcely 
 deemed a less fortunate occurrence for us to gain so learned 
 and so pious a preceptor, than it was for him to acquire a situa- 
 tion of such trust and confidence in the household of a Marshal 
 of France, and the special favorite of Louis XIV. 
 
 It was pleasant enough to mark the gradual ascendancy he 
 gained over my uncle ; and the timorous dislike which the 
 good knight entertained for him, yet struggled to conceal. Per- 
 haps that was the only time in his life in which Sir William 
 Devereux was a hypocrite. 
 
 Enough of the priest at present I return to his charge. To 
 school we went ; our parting with our uncle was quite pathetic 
 mine in especial. "Harkye, Sir Count," whispered he (I bore 
 my father's title), " harkye, don't mind what the old priest tells 
 you ; your real man of wit never wants the musty lessons of 
 schools in order to make a figure in the world. Don't cramp 
 your genius, my boy ; read over my play, and honest George 
 Etherege's ' Man of Mode '; they'll keep your spirits alive, after 
 dozing over these old pages which Homer (good soul!) 
 dozed over before. God bless you, .my child write to me 
 no one, not even your mother, shall see your letters and 
 and be sure, my fine fellow, that you don't fag too hard. The 
 glass of life is the best book and one's natural wit the only 
 diamond that can write legibly on it." 
 
 Such were my uncle's parting admonitions ; it must be con- 
 fessed that, coupled with the dramatic gifts alluded to, they 
 were likely to be of infinite service to the debutant for academ- 
 ical honors. In fact, Sir William Devereux was deeply im- 
 pregnated with the notion of his time, that ability and inspira- 
 tion were the same thing, and that, unless you were thoroughly 
 idle, you could not be thoroughly a genius. I verily believe 
 that he thought wisdom got its gems, as Abu Zeid al Hassan* 
 declares some Chinese philosophers thought oysters got their 
 pearls viz., by gaping! 
 
 * In his Commentary on the account of China by two Travellers.
 
 t)EVEREUX. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A Change in Conduct and in Character Our evil Passions will sometimes 
 produce good Effects ; and, on the contrary, an Alteration for the better 
 in Manners will, not unfrequently, have amongst its Causes a little Cor- 
 ruption of Mind ; for the Feelings are so blended, that in suppressing 
 those disagreeable to others, we often suppress those which are amiable 
 in themselves. 
 
 MY twin brother, Gerald, was a tall, strong, handsome boy, 
 blessed with a great love for the orthodox academical studies, 
 and extraordinary quickness of ability. Nevertheless, he was 
 indolent by nature, in things which were contrary to his taste 
 fond of pleasure and, amidst all his personal courage, ran a 
 certain vein of irresolution, which rendered it easy for a cool 
 and determined mind to awe or to persuade him. I cannot 
 help thinking, too, that, clever as he was, there was something 
 commonplace in the cleverness ; and that his talent was of that 
 mechanical, yet quick, nature, which makes wonderful boys, but 
 mediocre men. In any other family he would have been con- 
 sidered the beauty in ours he was thought the genius. 
 
 My youngest brother, Aubrey, was of a very different dispo- 
 sition of mind and frame of body ; thoughtful, gentle, suscep- 
 tible, acute ; with an uncertain bravery, like a woman's, and a 
 taste for reading, that varied with the caprice of every hour. 
 He was the beauty of the three, and my mother's favorite. 
 Never, indeed, have I seen the countenance of man so perfect, 
 so glowingly, yet delicately handsome, as that of Aubrey Dever- 
 eux. Locks soft, glossy, and twining into ringlets, fell in dark 
 profusion over a brow whiter than marble ; his eyes were black 
 and tender as a Georgian girl's ; his lips, his teeth, the contour 
 of his face, were all cast in the same feminine and faultless 
 mould; his hands would have shamed those of Madame.de la 
 Tisseur, whose lover offered six thousand marks to any Euro- 
 pean who could wear her glove ; and his figure would have 
 made Titania give up her Henchman, and the King of the 
 Fairies be anything but pleased with the exchange. 
 
 Such were my two brothers ; or, rather (so far as the internal 
 qualities are concerned), such they seemed to me ; for it is a 
 singular fact that we never judge of our near kindred so well 
 as we judge of others ; and I appeal to any one, whether, of all 
 people by whom he has been mistaken, he has not been most 
 often mistaken by those with whom he was brought up ! 
 
 I had always loved Aubrey, but they had not suffered him to love 
 tne; and we had been so little together that we had in common
 
 20 DEVEREUX. 
 
 none of those childish remembrances which serve, more power- 
 fully than all else in later life, to cement and soften affection. 
 In fact, I was the scapegoat of the family. What I must have 
 been in early childhood, I cannot tell but, before I was ten 
 years old, I was the object of all the despondency and evil fore- 
 bodings of my relations. My father said I laughed at la gloirc 
 et le grand monarque, the very first time he attempted to explain 
 to me the value of the one and the greatness of the other. The 
 countess said I had neither my father's eye, nor her own smile 
 that I was slow at my letters, and quick with my tongue ; and, 
 throughout the whole house, nothing was so favorite a topic as 
 the extent of my rudeness, and the venom of my repartee. 
 Montreuil, on his entrance into our family, not only fell in with, 
 but favored and fostered, the reigning humor against me ; 
 whether from that divide etimpera system, which was so grateful 
 to his temper, or from the mere love of meddling and intrigue, 
 which in him, as in Alberoni, attached itself equally to petty as 
 to large circles, was not then clearly apparent ; it was only cer- 
 tain that he fomented the dissensions and widened the breach 
 between my brothers and myself. Alas ! after all, I believe my 
 sole crime was my candor. I had a spirit of frankness, which 
 no fear could tame, and my vengeance for any infantine pun- 
 ishment was in speaking veraciously of my punishers. Never 
 tell me of the pang of falsehood to the slandered : nothing is 
 so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a 
 rough truth ! 
 
 As I grew older, I saw my power, and indulged it ; and, be- 
 ing scolded for sarcasm, I was flattered into believing I had 
 wit ; so I punned and jested, lampooned and satirised, till I 
 was as much a torment to others as I was tormented myself. 
 The secret of all this was that I was unhappy. Nobody loved 
 me I felt it to my heart of hearts. I was conscious of in- 
 justice, and the sense of it made me bitter. Our feelings, es- 
 pecially in youth, resemble that leaf which, in some old traveller, 
 is described as expanding itself to warmth, but when chilled, 
 not only shrinking and closing, but presenting to the spectator 
 thorns, which had lain concealed upon the opposite side of it 
 before. 
 
 With my brother Gerald, I had a deadly and irreconcilable 
 feud. He was much stouter, taller, and stronger than myself ; 
 and, far from conceding to me that respect which I imagined 
 my priority of birth entitled me to claim, he took every oppor- 
 tunity to deride my pretensions, and to vindicate the cause of 
 the superior strength and vigor which constituted his own. It
 
 DEVEREUX. 21 
 
 would have done your heart good to have seen us cuff one 
 another, we did it with such zeal. There is nothing in human 
 passion like a good brotherly hatred ! my mother said, with the 
 most feeling earnestness, that she used to feel us fighting even 
 before our birth : we certainly lost no time directly after it. 
 Both my parents were secretly vexed that I had come into the 
 world an hour sooner than my brother ; and Gerald himself 
 looked upon it as a sort of juggle a kind of jockeyship by 
 which he had lost the prerogative of birthright. This very 
 early rankled in his heart, and he was so much a greater favor- 
 ite than myself that, instead of rooting out so unfortunate a 
 feeling on his part, my good parents made no scruple of openly 
 lamenting my seniority. I believe the real cause of our being 
 taken from the domestic instructions of the Abbe (who was an 
 admirable teacher) and sent to school, was solely to prevent 
 my uncle deciding everything in my favor. Montreuil, how- 
 ever, accompanied us to our academy, and remained with us 
 during the three years in which we were perfecting ourselves in 
 the blessings of education. 
 
 At the end of the second year, a prize was instituted for the 
 best proficient at a very severe examination ; two months be- 
 fore it took place we went home for a few days. After dinner 
 my uncle asked me to walk with him in the park. I did so : 
 we strolled along the margin of a rivulet, which ornamented 
 the grounds. There my uncle, for the first time, broke silence. 
 
 " Morton," said he, looking down at his left leg, " Morton 
 let me see thou art now of a reasonable age fourteen at the 
 least." 
 
 " Fifteen, if it please you, sir," said I, elevating my stature 
 as much as I was able. 
 
 "Humph! my boy; and a pretty time of life it is, too. Your 
 brother Gerald is taller than you by two inches." 
 
 " But I can beat him, for all that, uncle," said I, coloring, and 
 .clenching my fist. 
 
 My uncle pulled down his right ruffle. " 'Gad so, Morton, 
 you're a brave fellow," said he ; " but I wish you were less of 
 a hero and more of a scholar. I wish you could beat him in 
 Greek, as well as in boxing. I will tell you what Old Rowley 
 said," and my uncle occupied the next quarter of an hour with 
 a story. The story opened the good old. gentleman's heart my 
 laughter opened it still more. " Hark ye, sirrah ! " said he, 
 pausing abruptly, and grasping my hand with a vigorous effort 
 of love and muscle, " hark ye, sirrah I love you 'Sdeath, I 
 do. I love you better than both your brothers, and that crab
 
 i2 DEVEREUX. 
 
 of a priest into the bargain ; but I am grieved to the heart to 
 hear what I do of you. They tell me you are the idlest boy 
 in the school that you are always beating your brother 
 Gerald, and making a scurrilous jest of your mother or 
 myself." 
 
 '"Who says so ? who dares say so ?" said I, with an empha- 
 sis that would have startled a less hearty man than Sir William 
 Devereux. "They lie, uncle, by my soul they do. Idle I am 
 quarrelsome with my brother I confess myself ; but jesting 
 at you or my mother never never. No, no ; you, too, who 
 have been so kind to me the only one who ever was ! No, 
 no ; do not think I could be such a wretch," and as I said this 
 the tears gushed from my eyes. 
 
 My good uncle was exceedingly affected. " Look ye, child," 
 said he, "I do not believe them. 'Sdeath, not a word I would 
 repeat to you a good jest now of Sedley's, 'Gad, I would, but I 
 am really too much moved just at present. I tell you what, my 
 boy, I tell you what you shall do : there is a trial coming on at 
 school eh ? well, the Abbe tells me, Gerald is certain of being 
 first, and you of being last. Now, Morton, you shall beat your 
 brother, and shame the Jesuit. There my mind's spoken 
 dry your tears, my boy, and I'll tell you the jest Sedley made : 
 it was in the Mulberry Garden one day " And the knight told 
 his story. 
 
 I dried my tears pressed my uncle's hand escaped from 
 him as soon as I was able hastened to my room, and surren- 
 dered myself to reflection. 
 
 When my uncle so good-naturedly proposed that I should 
 conquer Gerald at the examination, nothing appeared to him 
 more easy he was pleased to think I had more talent than my 
 brother, and talent, according to his creed, was the only master- 
 key to unlock every science. A problem in Euclid, or a phrase 
 in Pindar, a secret in astronomy, or a knotty passage in the 
 fathers, were all riddles, with the solution of which application 
 had nothing to do. One's mother-wit was a precious sort of 
 necromancy, which could pierce every mystery at first sight ; 
 and all the gifts of knowledge, in his opinion, like reading and 
 writing in that of the sage Dogberry, " came by nature." 
 Alas ! I was not under the same pleasurable delusion ; I 
 rather exaggerated than diminished the difficulty of my task, 
 and thought, at the first glance, that nothing short of a miracle 
 would enable me to excel my brother. Gerald, a boy of natu- 
 ral talent, and as I said before, of great assiduity in the ortho- 
 dox studies especially favored too by the instruction of Mon-
 
 DEVEREUX. 23 
 
 treuil had long been esteemed the first scholar of our littl 
 world ; and though I knew that with some branches of learn- 
 ing I was more conversant than himself, yet, as my emulation 
 had been hitherto solely directed to bodily contention, I had 
 never thought of contesting with him a reputation for which I 
 cared little, and on a point in which I had been early taught 
 that I could never hope to enter into any advantageous com- 
 parison with the " genius " of the Devereuxs. 
 
 A new spirit now passed into me I examined myself with a 
 jealous and impartial scrutiny I weighed my acquisitions 
 against those of my brother -I called forth, from their secret 
 recesses, the-unexercised and almost unknown stores I had from 
 time to time laid up in my mental armory to moulder and to 
 rust. I surveyed them with a feeling that they might yet be 
 polished into use : and, excited alike by the stimulus of affec- 
 tion on one side, and hatred on the other, my mind worked it- 
 self from despondency into doubt, and from doubt into the 
 sanguineness of hope. I told none of my design, I exacted 
 from my uncle a promise not to betray it I shut myself in my 
 room I gave out that I was ill I saw no one, not even the 
 Abbe I rejected his instructions, for I looked upon him as an 
 enemy ; and, for the two months before my trial, I spent night 
 and day in an unrelaxing application, of which, till then, I had 
 not imagined myself capable. 
 
 Though inattentive to the school exercises, I had never been 
 wholly idle. I was a lover of abstruser researches than the 
 hackneyed subjects of the school, and we had really received 
 such extensive and judicious instructions from the Abbe during 
 our early years that it would have been scarcely possible for 
 any of us to have fallen into a thorough distaste for intellectual 
 pursuits. In the examination, I foresaw that much which I had 
 previously acquired might be profitably displayed much secret 
 and recondite knowledge of the customs and manners of the 
 ancients, as well as their literature, which curiosity had led me 
 to obtain, and which I knew had never entered into the heads 
 of those who, contented with their reputation in the customary 
 academical routine, had rarely dreamed of wandering into less 
 beaten paths of learning. Fortunately too for me, Gerald was 
 so certain of success that latterly he omitted all precaution to 
 obtain it ; and as none of our schoolfellows had the vanity to 
 think of contesting with him, even the Abbe seemed to imagine 
 him justified in his supineness. 
 
 The day arrived. Sir William, my mother, the whole aris- 
 tocracy of the neighborhood, were present at the trial. The
 
 24 DEVEREUX. 
 
 Abbe came to my room a few hours before it commenced ; he 
 found the door locked. 
 
 " Ungracious boy," said he, "admit me I come at the earn- 
 est request of your brother, Aubrey, to give you some hints pre- 
 paratory to the examination." 
 
 " He has indeed come at my wish," said the soft and silver 
 voice of Aubrey, in a supplicating tone : " do admit him, dear 
 Morton, for my sake ! " 
 
 " Go," said I, bitterly, from within, " go ye are both my foes 
 and slanderers you come to insult my disgrace beforehand ; 
 but perhaps you will be disappointed." 
 
 "You will not open the door?" said the priest. 
 
 " I will not begone." 
 
 " He will indeed disgrace his family," said Montreuil, mov- 
 ing away. 
 
 " He will disgrace himself," said Aubrey, dejectedly. 
 
 I laughed scornfully. If ever the consciousness of strength 
 is pleasant, it is when we are thought most weak. 
 
 The greater part of our examination consisted in the answer- 
 ing of certain questions in writing, given to us in the three days 
 immediately previous to the grand and final one ; for this last 
 day was reserved the paper of composition (as it was termed) 
 in verse and prose, and the personal examination in a few 
 showy, but generally understood, subjects. When Gerald gave 
 in his paper, and answered the verbal questions, a buzz of ad- 
 miration and anxiety went round the room. His person was so 
 handsome, his address so graceful, his voice so assured and 
 clear, that a strong and universal sympathy was excited in his 
 favor. The head-master publicly complimented him. He re- 
 gretted only the deficiency of his pupil in certain minor but im- 
 portant matters. 
 
 I came next, for I stood next to Gerald in our class. As I 
 walked up the hall, I raised my eyes to the gallery in which 
 my uncle and his party sat. I saw that my mother was 
 listening to the Abbe", whose eye, severe, cold, and con- 
 temptuous, was bent upon me. But my uncle leant over 
 the railing of the gallery, with his plumed hat in his hand, 
 which, when he caught my look, he waved gently as if in 
 token of encouragement, and with an air so kind and cheering, 
 that I felt my step grow prouder as I approached the conclave 
 of the masters. 
 
 " Morton Devereux," said the president of the school in a calm, 
 loud, austere voice, that filled the whole hall, "we have looked 
 over your papers on the three previous days, and they have given
 
 DEVEREUX. 25 
 
 us no less surprise than pleasure. Take heed and time how you 
 answer us now." 
 
 At this speech a loud murmur was heard in my uncle's party, 
 which gradually spread round the hall. I again looked up my 
 mother's face was averted : that of the Abbe was impenetrable, 
 but I saw my uncle wiping his eyes, and felt a strange emotion 
 creeping into my own. I turned hastily away, and presented my 
 paper the head-master received it, and, putting it aside, pro- 
 ceeded to the verbal examination. 
 
 Conscious of the parts in which Gerald was likely to fail, I had 
 paid especial attention to the minutiae of scholarship, and my 
 forethought stood me in good stead at the present moment. My 
 trial ceased my last paper was read. I bowed, and retired to 
 the other end of the hall. I was not so popular as Gerald a 
 crowd was assembled round him, but I stood alone. As I leant 
 against a column, with folded arms, and a countenance which I 
 felt betrayed little of my internal emotions, my eye caught Ger- 
 ald's. He was very pale, and I could see that his hand trem- 
 bled. Despite of our enmity, I felt for him. The worst pas- 
 sions are softened by triumph, and I foresaw that mine was at 
 hand. 
 
 The whole examination was over. Every boy had passed it. 
 The masters retired for a moment they reappeared and re- 
 seated themselves. The first sound I heard was that of my own 
 name. I was the victor of the day I was more I was one 
 hundred marks before my brother. My head swam round my 
 breath forsook me. Since then I have been placed in many trials 
 of life, and had many triumphs ; but never was I so overcome as 
 at that moment. I left the hall I scarcely listened to the ap- 
 plauses with which it rang. I hurried to my own chamber, and 
 threw myself on the bed in a delirium of intoxicated feeling, 
 which had in it more of rapture than anything but the gratifica- 
 tion of first love or first vanity can bestow. 
 
 Ah ! it would be worth stimulating our passions if it were only 
 for the pleasure of remembering their effect ; and all violent ex- 
 citement should be indulged less for the present joy than for 
 future retrospection. 
 
 My uncle's step was the first thing which intruded on my soli- 
 tude. 
 
 "Od's fish, my boy! " said he, crying like a child, "this is fine 
 work 'Gad, so it is. I almost wish I were a boy myself to have 
 a match with you faith I do see what it is to learn a little of 
 life. If you had never read my play, do you think you would 
 have done half so well ? no, my boy, I sharpened your wits for
 
 26 DEVEREUX. 
 
 you. Honest George Etherege and I we were the making of 
 you ; and when you come to be a great man, and are asked what 
 made you so, you shall say ' My uncle's play ' 'Gad, you shall. 
 Faith, boy never smile ! Od's fish I'll tell you a story as a 
 propos to the present occasion as if it had been made on pur- 
 pose. Rochester, and I, and Sedley, were walking one day, 
 and enlre nous awaiting certain appointments hem ! for my 
 part I was a little melancholy or so, thinking of my catastrophe 
 that is, of my play's catastrophe ; and so, said Sedley, winking 
 at Rochester, 'Our friend is sorrowful.' 'Truly,' said I, seeing 
 they were about to banter me for you know they were arch 
 fellows 'truly, little Sid' (we called Sedley Sid), 'you are 
 greatly mistaken,' you see, Morton, I was thus sharp upon 
 him, because, when you go to Court, you will discover that it 
 does not do to take without giving. And then Rochester said, 
 looking roguishly towards me, the wittiest thing against 
 Sedley that I ever heard it was the most celebrated ban mot at 
 Court for three weeks he said No, boy, 'od's fish, it was so 
 stinging I can't tell it thee ; faith, I can't. Poor Sid ; he was a 
 good fellow, though malicious and he's dead now. I'm sorry 
 I said a word about it. Nay, never look so disappointed, boy. 
 You have all the cream of the story as it is. And now put on 
 your hat, and come with me. I've got leave for you to take a 
 walk with your old uncle." 
 
 That night, as I was undressing, I heard a gentle rap at the 
 door, and Aubrey entered. He approached me timidly, and 
 then, throwing his arms round my neck, kissed me in silence. I 
 had not for years experienced such tenderness from him ; and I 
 sat now mute and surprised. At last I said, with the sneer which 
 I must confess I usually assumed towards those persons whom 
 I imagined I had a right to think ill of: 
 
 "Pardon me, my gentle brother, there is something porten- 
 tous in this sudden change. Look well round the room, and 
 tell me at your earliest leisure what treasure it is that you are 
 desirous should pass from my possession into your own." 
 
 " Your love, Morton," said Aubrey, drawing back, but appar- 
 ently in pride, not anger; "your love I ask nothing more." 
 
 "Of a surety, kind Aubrey," said I, "the favor seems some- 
 what slight to have caused your modesty such delay in request- 
 ing it. I think you have been some years nerving your mind to 
 the exertion." 
 
 " Listen to me, Morton," said Aubrey, suppressing his emo- 
 tion ; "you have always been my favorite brother. From our 
 first childhood my heart yearned to you. Do you remember the
 
 DEVEREUX. 27 
 
 time when an enraged bull pursued me, and you, then only ten 
 years old, placed yourself before it and defended me at the risk 
 of your own life ? Do you think I could ever forget that child 
 as I was? never, Morton, never!" 
 
 Before I could answer, the door was thrown open, and the 
 Abbe entered. "Children," said he, and the single light of the 
 room shone full upon his unmoved, rigid, commanding features 
 "children, be as Heaven intended you friends and brothers. 
 Morton, I have wronged you, I own it here is my hand ; 
 Aubrey, let all but early love, and the present promise of excel- 
 lence which your brother displays, be forgotten." 
 
 With these words, the priest joined our hands. I looked on 
 my brother, and my heart melted. I flung myself into his arms 
 and wept. 
 
 That day was a new era in my boyish life. I grew hence- 
 forth both better and worse. Application and I, having once 
 shaken hands, became very good acquaintance. I had hitherto 
 valued myself upon supplying the frailties of a delicate frame 
 by an uncommon agility in all bodily exercises. I now strove 
 rather to improve the deficiencies of my mind, and became 
 orderly, industrious, and devoted to study. So far so well 
 but as I grew wiser, I grew also more wary. Candor no longer 
 seemed to me the finest of virtues. I thought before I spoke ; 
 and second thought sometimes quite changed the nature of the 
 intended speech ; in short, gentlemen of the next century, to 
 tell you the exact truth, the little Count Devereux became 
 somewhat of a hypocrite ! 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A Contest of Art, and a League of Friendship Two Characters in mutual 
 Ignorance of each other, and the reader no wiser than either of them. 
 
 THE Abbe was now particularly courteous to me. He made 
 Gerald and myself breakfast with him, and told us nothing was 
 so amiable as friendship among brothers. We agreed to the 
 sentiment, and, like all philosophers, did not agree a bit the 
 better for acknowledging the same first principles. Perhaps, 
 nothwithstanding his fine speeches, the Abbe" was the real 
 cause of our continued want of cordiality. However, we did 
 not fight any more we avoided each other, and at last became* 
 as civil and as distant as those mathematical lines, which 
 appear to be taking all possible pains to approach one another,
 
 28 EEVEREUX. 
 
 and never get a jot the nearer for it. Oh, your civility is the 
 prettiest invention possible for dislike ! Aubrey and I were 
 inseparable, and we both gained by the intercourse. I grew 
 more gentle, and he more masculine ; and, for my part, the 
 kindness of his temper so softened the satire of mine that I 
 learned at last to smile full as often as to sneer. 
 
 The Abbe" had obtained a wonderful hold over Aubrey ; he 
 had made the poor boy think so much of the next world, that 
 he had lost all relish for this. He lived in a perpetual fear of 
 offence he was like a chemist of conscience, and weighed 
 minutiae by scruples. To play, to ride, to run, to laugh at a 
 jest, or to banquet on a melon, were ail sins to be atoned for ; 
 and I have found (as a penance for eating twenty-three cherries 
 instead of eighteen), the penitent of fourteen standing, bare- 
 footed, in the coldest nights of winter, upon the hearth-stones, 
 almost naked, and shivering like a leaf, beneath the mingled 
 effect of frost and devotion. At first I attempted to wrestle 
 with this exceeding holiness, but finding my admonitions re- 
 ceived with great distaste and some horror, I suffered my 
 brother to be happy in his own way. I only looked with a 
 very evil and jealous eye upon the good Abbe\ and examined, 
 while I encouraged them, the motives of his advances to 
 myself. What doubled my suspicions of the purity of the 
 priest was my perceiving that he appeared to hold out different 
 inducements for trusting him, to each of us, according to his 
 notions of our respective characters. My brother Gerald he 
 alternately awed and persuaded, by the sole effect of superior 
 intellect. With Aubrey he used the mechanism of superstition. 
 To me, he, on the one hand, never spoke of religion, nor, on 
 the other, ever used threats or persuasion, to induce me to 
 follow any plan suggested to my adoption ; everything seemed 
 to be left to my reason and my ambition. He would converse 
 with me for hours upon the world and its affairs, speak of 
 courts and kings, in an easy and unpedantic strain ; point but 
 the advantage of intellect in acquiring power and controlling 
 one's species ; and, whenever I was disposed to be sarcastic 
 upon the human nature I had read of, he supported my 
 sarcasm by illustrations of the human nature he had seen. We 
 were both, I think (for myself I can answer), endeavoring to 
 pierce the real nature of the other ; and perhaps the talent of 
 diplomacy for which, years afterwards, I obtained some ap- 
 plause, was first learned in my skirmishing warfare with the 
 Abbe Montreuil. 
 
 At last, the evening before we quitted school for good arrived.
 
 DEVEREUX. 29 
 
 Aubrey had just left me for solitary prayers, and I was sitting 
 alone by my fire, when Montreuil entered gently. He sat 
 himself down by me, and, after giving me the salutation 
 of the evening, sunk into a silence which I was the first to 
 break. 
 
 "Pray, Abbe," said I, " have one's years anything to do with 
 one's age? " 
 
 The priest was accustomed to the peculiar tone of my 
 sagacious remarks, and answered drily : 
 
 " Mankind in general imagine that they have." 
 
 " Faith then," said I, " mankind know very little about the 
 matter. To-day I am at school and a boy, to-morrow I leave 
 school if I hasten to town I am presented at court and lo ! 
 I am a man ; and this change within half a dozen changes of 
 the sun ! therefore, most reverend father, I humbly opine 
 that age is measured by events not years." 
 
 " And are you not happy at the idea of passing the age of 
 thraldom, and seeing arrayed before you the numberless and 
 dazzling pomps and pleasures of the great world?" said 
 Montreuil abruptly, fixing his dark and keen eye upon me. 
 
 " I have not yet fully made up my mind whether to be 
 happy or not," said I carelessly. 
 
 "It is a strange answer," said the priest; "but " (after a 
 pause) " you are a strange youth a character that resembles 
 a riddle is at your age uncommon, and, pardon me, unamiable. 
 Age, naturally repulsive, requires a mask ; and in every wrinkle 
 yon may behold the ambush of a scheme ; but the heart of 
 youth should be open as its countenance ! However, I will 
 not weary you with homilies let us change the topic. Tell 
 me, Morton, do you repent having turned your attention of 
 late to those graver and more systematic studies which can 
 alone hereafter obtain you distinction?" 
 
 "No, father," said I, with a courtly bow, "for the change 
 has gained me your good opinion." 
 
 A smile of peculiar and undefinable expression crossed the 
 thin lips of the priest ; he rose, walked to the door, and saw 
 that it was carefully closed. I expected some important com- 
 munication, but in vain ; pacing the small room to and fro, as 
 if in a musing mood, the Abbe remained silent, till, pausing 
 opposite some fencing foils, which, among various matters 
 (books, papers, quoits, etc.), were thrown idly in one corner 
 of the room, he said : 
 
 " They tell me that you are the best fencer in the school is 
 it so?"
 
 30 DEVEREUX. 
 
 "I hope not, for fencing is an accomplishment in which Ger- 
 ald is very nearly my equal," I replied. 
 
 " You run, ride, leap, too, better than any one else, according 
 to the votes of your comrades ?" 
 
 " It is a noble reputation," said I, "in which I believe I am 
 only excelled by our huntsman's eldest son." 
 
 "You are a strange youth," repeated the priest; "no pursuit 
 seems to give you pleasure, and no success to gratify your vanity. 
 Can you not think of any triumph which would elate you?" 
 
 I was silent. 
 
 " Yes," cried Montreuil, approaching me " yes," cried he, " I 
 read your heart, and I respect it; these are petty competitions 
 and worthless honors. You require a nobler goal, and a more 
 glorious reward. He who feels in his soul that Fate has reserved 
 for him a great and exalted part in this world's drama, may 
 reasonably look with indifference on these paltry rehearsals of 
 common characters." 
 
 I raised my eye, and as it met that of the priest, I was irre- 
 sistibly struck with the proud and luminous expression which 
 Montreuil's look had assumed. Perhaps something kindred to its 
 nature was perceptible in my own; for, after surveying me with 
 an air of more approbation than he had ever honored me with 
 before, he grasped my arm firmly, and said: " Morton, you know 
 me not for many years I have not known you that time is 
 past. No sooner did your talents develop themselves than I 
 was the first to do homage to their power let us henceforth be 
 more to each other than we have been let us not be pupil and 
 teacher let us be friends. Do not think that I invite you to 
 an unequal exchange of good offices you may be the heir to 
 wealth, and a distinguished name I may seem to you but an 
 unknown and undignified priest but'the authority of the Al- 
 mighty can raise up, from the sheep-fold and the cottar's shed, 
 a power which, as the organ of His own, can trample upon 
 sceptres, and dictate to the supremacy of kings. And / /, " 
 the priest abruptly paused, checked the warmth of his manner, 
 as if he thought it about to encroach on indiscretion, and, sink- 
 ing into a calmer tone, continued: "Yes, I, Morton, insignificant 
 as I appear to you, can, in every path through this intricate laby- 
 rinth of life, be more useful to your desires than you can ever 
 be to mine. I offer to you in my friendship, a fervor of zeal 
 and energy of power, which in none of your equals, in age and 
 station, you can hope to find. Do you accept my offer?" 
 
 "Can you doubt," said I, with eagerness, "that I would avail 
 myself of the services of any man, however displeasing to me,
 
 DEVEREUX. 3t 
 
 worthless in himself ? How, then, can I avoid embracing 
 the friendship of one so extraordinary in knowledge and intellect 
 as yourself? I do embrace it, and with rapture." 
 
 The priest pressed my hand. " But," continued he, fixing his 
 eyes upon mine, "all alliances have their conditions I require 
 implicit confidence; and, for some years, till time gives you ex- 
 perience, regard for your interests induces me also to require 
 obedience. Name any wish you may form for worldly advance- 
 ment, opulence, honor, the smile of kings, the gifts of states, 
 and I I will pledge myself to carry that wish into effect. 
 Never had Eastern prince so faithful a servant among the Dives 
 and Genii as Morton Devereux shall find in me ; but question 
 me not of the sources of my power be satisfied when their 
 channel wafts you the success you covet. And, more, when I 
 in my turn (and this shall be but rarely) request a favor of 
 you, ask me not for what end, nor hesitate to adopt the means 
 I shall propose. You seem startled; are you content at .this 
 understanding between us, or will you retract the bond?" 
 
 " My father," said I, " there is enough to startle me in your 
 proposal; it greatly resembles that made by the Old Man of the 
 Mountains to his vassals, and it would not exactly suit my in- 
 clinations to be called upon some morning to act the part of a 
 private executioner." 
 
 The priest smiled. "My young friend," said he, "those days 
 have passed: neither religion nor friendship requires of her vo- 
 taries sacrifices of blood. But make yourself easy ; whenever 
 I ask of you what offends your conscience, even in a punctilio, 
 refuse my request. With this exception what say you ?" 
 
 "That I think I will agree to the bond ; but, father, I am an 
 irresolute person I must have time to consider." 
 
 " Be it so. To-morrow, having surrendered my charge to 
 your uncle, I depart for France." 
 
 " For France ! " said I; " and how ? Surely the war will pre- 
 vent your passage." 
 
 The priest smiled. Nothing ever displeased me more than 
 that priest's smile. "The ecclesiastics," said he, "are the am- 
 bassadors of Heaven, and have nothing to do with the wars of 
 earth. I shall find no difficulty in crossing the Channel. I shall 
 not return for several months, perhaps not till the expiration of 
 a year : I leave you, till then, to decide upon the terms I have 
 proposed to you. Meanwhile, gratify my vanity, by employing 
 my power ; name some commission in France which you wish 
 me to execute." 
 
 " I can think of none yet, stay, " and I felt some curiosity
 
 32 DEVEREUX. 
 
 to try the power of which he boasted " I have read that kings 
 are blest with a most accommodating memory, and perfectly for- 
 get their favorites, when they can be no longer useful. You will 
 see, perhaps, if my father's name has become a gothic and un- 
 known sound at the court of the Great King. I confess myself 
 curious to learn this, though I can have no personal interest 
 in it." 
 
 " Enough, the commission shall be done. And now, my child, 
 Heaven bless you! and send you many such friends as the hum- 
 ble priest, who, whatever be his failings, has at least the merit 
 of wishing to serve those whom he loves." 
 
 So saying, the priest closed the door. Sinking into a revery, 
 as his footsteps died upon my ear, I muttered to myself: " Well, 
 well, my sage ecclesiastic, the game is not over yet; let us see if, 
 at sixteen, we cannot shuffle cards, and play tricks with the 
 gamester of thirty. Yet, he may be in earnest, and faith I be- 
 lieve he is ; but I must look well before I leap, or consign my 
 actions into such spiritual keeping. However, if the worst come 
 to the worst, if I do make this compact, and am deceived if, 
 above all, I am ever seduced, or led blindfold into one of those 
 snares which priestcraft sometimes lays to the cost of honor 
 why I shall have a sword, which I shall never be at a loss to use, 
 and it can find its way through a priest's gown as well as a sol- 
 dier's corslet." 
 
 Confess, that a youth, who could think so promptly of his 
 sword, was well-fitted to wear one ! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Rural Hospitality an extraordinary'Guest. A fine Gentleman is not neces- 
 sarily a Fool. 
 
 WE were all three (my brothers and myself) precocious 
 geniuses. Our early instructions, under a man like the Abbe", 
 at once learned and worldly, and the Society into which we had 
 been initiated from our childhood, made us premature adepts 
 in the manners of the world ; and I, in especial, flattered my- 
 self that a quick habit of observation rendered me no despicable 
 profiler by my experience. Our academy, too, had been more 
 like a college than a school ; and we had enjoyed a license that 
 seemed, to the superficial, more likely to benefit our manners 
 than to strengthen our morals. I do not think, however, that
 
 DEVEREUX. 33 
 
 the latter suffered by our freedom from restraint. On the con- 
 trary, we the earlier learnt that vice, but for the piquancy of its 
 unlawfulness, would never be so captivating a goddess ; and 
 our errors and crimes, in after-life, had certainly not their origin 
 in our wanderings out of academical bounds. 
 
 It is right that I should mention our prematurity of intellect, 
 because, otherwise, much of my language and reflections, as 
 detailed in the first book of this history, might seem ill suited 
 to the tender age at which they occurred. However, they ap- 
 proach, as near as possible, to my state of mind at that period ; 
 and I have, indeed, often mortified my vanity, in later life, by 
 thinking how little the march of time has ripened my abilities, 
 and how petty would have been the intellectual acquisitions of 
 manhood if they had not brought me something like content ! 
 
 My uncle had always, during his retirement, seen as many 
 people as he could assemble out of the "mob of Gentlemen 
 who live at ease." But, on our quitting school, and becoming 
 men, be resolved to set no bounds to his hospitality. His doors 
 were literally thrown open ; and as he was by far the greatest 
 person in the district to say nothing of his wines, and his 
 French cook many of the good people of London did not 
 think it too great an honor to confer upon the wealthy repre- 
 sentative of the Devereuxs the distinction of their company and 
 compliments. Heavens ! what notable samples of court breed- 
 ing and furbelows did the crane-neck coaches, which made 
 our own family vehicle look like a gilt tortoise, pour forth by 
 couples and leashes into the great hall while my gallant uncle, 
 in a new perriwig, and a pair of silver-clocked stockings ( a 
 present from a ci-devant fine lady), stood at the far end of the 
 picture gallery, to receive his visitors, with all the graces of the 
 last age. 
 
 My mother, who had preserved her beauty wonderfully, sat 
 in a chair of green velvet, and astonished the courtiers by the 
 fashion of a dress just imported. The worthy Countess (she 
 had dropped in England the loftier distinction of Madame la 
 Mar^chale) was, however, quite innocent of any intentional 
 affectation of the mode : for the new stomacher, so admired in 
 London, had been the last alteration in female garniture at 
 Paris, a month before my father died. Is not this " Fashion " 
 a noble divinity to possess such zealous adherents ! a pitiful, 
 lackey-like creature, which struts through one country with 
 the cast-off finery of another ! 
 
 As for Aubrey and Gerald, they produced quite an effect 
 and I should most certainly have been thrown irrevocably into
 
 34 DEVEREUX. 
 
 the background, had I not been born to the good fortune of 
 an eldest son. This was far more than sufficient to atone for 
 the comparative plainness of my person ; and when it was dis- 
 covered that I was also Sir William's favorite, it is quite astonish- 
 ing what a beauty I became ! Aubrey was declared too effemi- 
 nate ; Gerald too tall. And the Duchess of Lackland one 
 day, when she had placed a lean, sallow ghost of a daughter 
 on either side of me, whispered my uncle in a voice, like the 
 aside of a player, intended for none but the whole audience, 
 that the young Count had the most imposing air and the finest 
 eyes she had ever seen. All this inspired me with courage, as 
 well as contempt ; and not liking to be beholden solely to my 
 priority of birth for my priority of distinction, I resolved to 
 become as agreeable as possible. If I had not in the vanity of 
 my heart resolved also to be "myself alone," Fate would have 
 furnished me at the happiest age for successful imitation with 
 an admirable model. 
 
 Time rolled on two years were flown since I had left school, 
 and Montreuil was not yet returned. I had passed the age of 
 eighteen, when the whole house, which, as it was summer, 
 when none but cats and physicians were supposed gifted by 
 Providence with the power to exist in town, was uncommonly 
 full the whole house, I say, was thrown into a positive fever 
 of expectation. The visit of a guest, if not of greater conse- 
 quence, at least of greater interest, than any who had hitherto 
 honored my uncle, was announced. Even the young Count, 
 with the most imposing air in the world, and the finest eyes, 
 was forgotten by everybody but the Duchess of Lackland and 
 her daughters, who had just returned to Devereux Court, to 
 observe how amazingly the Count had grown ! Oh, what a 
 prodigy wisdom would be, if it were but blessed with a memory 
 as keen and constant as that of interest ! 
 
 Struck with the universal excitement, I went to my uncle to 
 inquire the name of the expected guest. My uncle was occu- 
 pied in fanning the Lady Hasselton, a daughter of one of King 
 Charles's Beauties. He had only time to answer me literally, 
 and without comment ; the guest's name was Mr. St. John. 
 
 I had never conned the "Flying Post," and I knew nothing 
 about politics. "Who is Mr. St. John?" said I; my uncle 
 had renewed the office of a zephyr. The daughter of the 
 Beauty heard and answered, "The most charming person in 
 England." I bowed and turned away. "How vastly explana- 
 tory !" said I. I met a furious politician. "Who is Mr. St. 
 John ? " I asked.
 
 DEVEREUX. 35 
 
 "The cleverest man in England," answered the politician, 
 hurrying off with a pamphlet in his hand. 
 
 "Nothing can be more satisfactory," thought I. Stopping a 
 coxcomb of the first water, " Who is Mr. St. John ?" I asked. 
 
 " The finest gentleman in England," answered the coxcomb, 
 settling his cravat. 
 
 "Perfectly intelligible!" was my reflection on this reply ; 
 and I forthwith arrested a Whig parson " Who is Mr. St. John ? " 
 said I. 
 
 " The greatest reprobate in England!" answered the Whig 
 parson, and I was too stunned to inquire more. 
 
 Five minutes afterwards the sound of carriage wheels was 
 heard in the courtyard, then a slight bustle in the hall, and 
 the door of the anteroom being thrown open, Mr. St. John 
 entered. 
 
 He was in the very prime of life, about the middle height, and 
 of a mien and air so strikingly noble that it was some time 
 before you recovered the general effect of his person suffic- 
 iently to examine its peculiar claims to admiration. However, 
 he lost nothing by a farther survey : he possessed not only an 
 eminently handsome, but a very extraordinary countenance. 
 Through an air of nonchalance, and even something of lassi- 
 tude, through an ease of manners sometimes sinking into effemi- 
 nate softness, sometimes bordering upon licentious effrontery, 
 his eye thoughtful, yet wandering, seemed to announce that the 
 mind partook but little of the whim of the moment, or of those 
 levities of ordinary life over which the grace of his manner threw 
 so peculiar a charm. His brow was, perhaps, rather too large 
 and prominent for the exactness of perfect symmetry ; but it 
 had an expression of great mental power and determination. 
 His features were high, yet delicate, and his mouth, which, when 
 closed, assumed a firm and rather severe expression, softened, 
 when speaking, into a smile of almost magical enchantment. 
 Richly but not extravagantly dressed, he appeared to cultivate, 
 rather than disdain, the ornaments of outward appearance ; and 
 whatever can fascinate or attract was so inherent in this singu- 
 lar man that all which in others would have been most artificial 
 was in him most natural : so that it is no exaggeration to add 
 that to be well dressed seemed to the elegance of his person not 
 so much the result of art as of a property innate and peculiar to 
 himself. 
 
 Such was the outward appearance of Henry St. John ; one 
 well suited to the qualities of a mind at once more vigorous and 
 more accomplished than that of any other other person with
 
 36 DEVEREUX. 
 
 whom the vicissitudes of my life have ever brought me into 
 contact. 
 
 I kept my eye on the new guest throughout the whole day ; I 
 observed the mingled liveliness and softness which pervaded his 
 attentions to women, the intellectual yet unpedantic superiority 
 he possessed in his conversations with men ; his respectful de- 
 meanor to age ; his careless, yet not over-familiar, ease with the 
 young ; and, what interested me more than all, the occasional 
 cloud which passed over his countenance at moments when he 
 seemed sunk into a revery that had for its objects nothing in 
 common with those around him. 
 
 Just before dinner, St. John was talking to a little group, 
 among whom curiosity seemed to have drawn the Whig parson 
 whom I have before mentioned. He stood at a little distance, 
 shy and uneasy ; one of the company took advantage of so favor- 
 able a butt for jests, and alluded to the bystander in a witticism 
 which drew laughter from all but St. John, who, turning sud- 
 denly towards the parson, addressed an observation to him in 
 the most respectful tone. Nor did he cease talking with him 
 (fatiguing as the conference must have been, for never was there 
 a duller ecclesiastic than the gentleman conversed with) until 
 we descended to dinner. Then, for the first time, I learned that 
 nothing can constitute good breeding that has not good nature 
 for its foundation ; and then, too, as I was leading Lady Bar- 
 bara Lackland to the great hall, by the tip of her forefinger, I 
 made another observation. Passing the priest, I heard him say 
 to a fellow-clerk : 
 
 "Certainly, he is the greatest man in England"; and I men- 
 tally remarked, " There is no policy like politeness : and a good 
 manner is the best thing in the world, either to get one a good 
 name or to supply the want of it." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A Dialogue, which might be dull if it were longer. 
 
 THREE days after the arrival of St. John, I escaped from the 
 crowd of impertinents, seized a volume of Cowley, and, in a fit 
 of mingled poetry and melancholy, strolled idly into the park. 
 I came to the margin of the stream, and to the very spot on 
 which I had stood with my uncle on the evening when he had 
 first excited my emulation to scholastic rather than manual con- 
 tention with my brother. I seated myself by the water-side, and,
 
 DEVEREUX. 37 
 
 feeling indisposed to read, leant ray cheek upon my hand, and 
 surrendered my thoughts as prisoners to the reflections which I 
 could not resist. 
 
 I continued, I know not how long, in my meditation, till I 
 was roused by a gentle touch upon my shoulder ; I looked up, 
 and saw St. John. 
 
 "Pardon me, Count," said he, smiling, "I should not have 
 disturbed your reflections had not your neglect of an old friend 
 emboldened me to address you upon his behalf." And St. 
 John pointed to the volume of Cowley which he had taken up 
 without my perceiving it. 
 
 "Well," added he, seating himself on the turf beside me, "in 
 my younger days, poetry and I were better friends than we are 
 now. And if I had had Cowley as a companion, I should not 
 have parted with him as you have done, even for my own reflec- 
 tions." 
 
 "You admire him, then?" said I. 
 
 "Why, that is too general a question. I admire what is fine 
 in him, as in every one else, but I do not love him the better for 
 his points and his conceits. He reminds me of what Cardinal 
 Pallavicine said of Seneca, that he 'perfumes his conceits with 
 civet and ambergris.' However, Count, I have opened upon a 
 beautiful motto for you : 
 
 Here let me, careless and unthoughtful lying, 
 Hear the soft winds above me flying, 
 With all their wanton boughs dispute, 
 And the more tuneful birds to both replying ; 
 Nor be myself too mute. 
 
 What say you to that wish ? If you have a germ of poetry in 
 you, such verse ought to bring it into flower." 
 
 "Ay," answered I, though not exactly in accordance with the 
 truth ; " but I have not the germ. I destroyed it four years ago. 
 Reading the dedications of poets cured me of the love for poetry. 
 What a pity that the Divine Inspiration should have for its 
 oracles such mean souls ! " 
 
 " Yes, and how industrious the good gentlemen are in debas- 
 ing themselves. Their ingenuity is never half so much shown 
 in a simile as in a compliment ; I know nothing in nature more 
 melancholy than the discovery of any meanness in a great man. 
 There is so little to redeem the dry mass of follies and errors 
 from which the materials of this life are composed, that anything 
 to love or to reverence becomes, as it were, the Sabbath for the 
 mind. It is bitter to feel, as we grow older, how the respite is 
 abridged, and how the few objects left to our admiration are
 
 38 DEVEREUX. 
 
 abased. What a foe not only to life, but to all that dignifies and 
 ennobles it, is Time. Our affections and our pleasures resem- 
 ble those fabulous trees described by St. Oderic the fruits 
 which they bring forth are no sooner ripened into maturity than 
 they are transformed into birds, and fly away. But these reflec- 
 tions cannot yet be familiar to you. Let us return to Cowley. 
 Do you feel any sympathy with his prose writings ? For some 
 minds they have a great attraction." 
 
 " They have for mine," answered I ; " but then I am naturally 
 a dreamer ; and a contemplative egotist is always to me a mirror 
 in which I behold myself." 
 
 " The world," answered St. John, with a melancholy smile, 
 " will soon dissolve, or for ever confirm, your humor for dreaming; 
 in either case, Cowley will not be less a favorite. But you must, 
 like me, have long toiled in the heat and travail of business, or of 
 pleasure, which is more wearisome still, in order fully to sym- 
 pathize with those beautiful panegyrics upon solitude which 
 make, perhaps, the finest passages in Cowley. I have often 
 thought that he whom God hath gifted with a love of retirement 
 possesses, as it were, an extra sense. And among what our poet 
 so eloquently calls ' the vast and noble scenes of nature,' we find 
 the balm for the wounds we have sustained among the 'pitiful 
 shifts of policy'; for the attachment to solitude is the surest 
 preservative from the ills of life : and I know not if the Romans 
 ever instilled, under allegory, a sublimer truth than when they 
 inculcated the belief that those inspired by Feronia, the goddess 
 of woods and forests, could walk barefoot and uninjured over 
 burning coals." 
 
 At this part of our conference, the bell swinging hoarsely 
 through the long avenues, and over the silent water, summoned 
 us to the grand occupation of civilized life ; we rose and walked 
 slowly towards the house. 
 
 " Does not," said I, " the regular routine of petty occur- 
 rences this periodical solemnity of trifles weary and disgust 
 you? For my part, I almost long for the old days of knight- 
 errantry, and would rather be knocked on the head by a giant, 
 or carried through the air by a flying griffin, than live in this 
 circle of dull regularities the brute at the mill." 
 
 " You may live even in these days," answered St. John, " with- 
 out too tame a regularity. Women and politics furnish ample 
 food for adventure, and you must not judge of all life by country 
 life." 
 
 " Nor of all conversation," said I, with a look which implied 
 a compliment, " by the insipid idlers who fill our saloons. Be-
 
 DEVEREUX. 39 
 
 hold them now, gathered by the oriel window, yonder ; precious 
 distillers of talk sentinels of society with certain set phrases as 
 watchwords, which they never exceed ; sages, who follow Face's 
 advice to Dapper 
 
 ' Hum thrice, and buzz as often.' " 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A Change of Prospects A new Insight into the Character of the Hero A 
 Conference between two Brothers. 
 
 A DAY or two after the conversation recorded in my last 
 chapter, St. John, to my inexpressible regret, left us for London ; 
 however, we had enjoyed several conferences together during 
 his stay, and when we parted, it was with a pressing invitation 
 on his side to visit him in London, and a most faithful promise 
 on mine, to avail myself of the request. 
 
 No sooner was he fairly gone than I went to seek my uncle ; 
 I found him reading one of Farquhar's comedies. Despite my 
 sorrow at interrupting him in so venerable a study, I was too 
 full of my new plot to heed breaking off that in the comedy. In 
 very few words I made the good knight understand that his 
 descriptions had infected me, and that / was dying to ascertain 
 their truth ; in a word, that his hopeful nephew was fully 
 bent on going to town. My uncle first stared, then swore, then 
 paused, then looked at his leg, drew up his stocking, frowned, 
 whistled, and told me at last to talk to him about it another time. 
 Now, for my part, I think there are only two classes of people in 
 the world authorized to put one off to " another time," prime 
 ministers and creditors ; accordingly, I would not take my 
 uncle's dismissal. I had not read plays, studied philosophy, 
 and laid snares for the Abbe" Montreuil, without deriving some 
 little wisdom from my experience ; so I took to teasing, and a 
 notable plan it is too ! Whoever has pursued it may guess the 
 iresult ! My uncle yielded, and that day fortnight was fixed for 
 my departure. 
 
 Oh, with what transport did I look forward to the comple- 
 tion of my wishes, the goal of my ambition ! I hastened forth 
 I hurried into the woods I sang out in the gladness of my heart, 
 like a bird released I drank in the air with a rapturous sym- 
 pathy in its freedom ; my step scarcely touched th earth, and my 
 whole frame seemed ethereal elated exalted by the vivifying 
 inspiration of my hopes. I paused by a little streamlet, which,
 
 40 DfcVEREU*. 
 
 brawling over stones and through impenetrated thicknesses of 
 wood, seemed, like confined ambition, not the less restless for 
 its obscurity. 
 
 " Wild brooklet," I cried, as my thoughts rushed into words, 
 " fret on, our lot is no longer the same ; your wanderings and 
 your murmurs are wasted in solitude and shade ; your voice dies 
 and re-awakes, but without an echo ; your waves spread around 
 their path neither fertility nor terror ; their anger is idle, and 
 their freshness is lavished on a sterile soil ; the sun shines in vain 
 for you, through these unvarying wastes of silence and gloom ; 
 Fortune freights not your channel with her hoarded stores, and 
 Pleasure ventures not her silken sails upon your tide ; not even 
 the solitary idler roves beside you, to consecrate with human 
 fellowship your melancholy course ; no shape of beauty bends 
 over your turbid waters, or mirrors in your breast the love- 
 liness that hallows earth. Lonely and sullen, through storm or 
 sunshine, you repine along your desolate way and only catch, 
 through the matted boughs that darken over you, the beams 
 of the wan stars, which, like human hopes, tremble upon your 
 breast, and are broken, even before they fade, by the very 
 turbulence of the surface on which they fall. Rove repine 
 murmur on ! Such was my fate, but the resemblance is no 
 more. I shall no longer be a lonely and regretful being ; 
 my affections will no longer waste themselves upon barrenness 
 and stone. I go among the living and warm world of mortal 
 energies and desires : my existence shall glide alternately through 
 crested cities, and bowers in which Poetry worships Love ; and 
 the clear depths of my heart shall reflect whatever its young 
 dreams have shadowed forth the visioned form the gentle and 
 fairy spirit the Eye of my soul's imagined and foreboded 
 paradise." 
 
 Venting, in this incoherent strain, the exultation which filled 
 my thoughts, I wandered on, throughout the whole day, till my 
 spirits had exhausted themselves by indulgence ; and, wearied 
 alike by mental excitement and bodily exertion, I turned, with 
 slow steps, towards the house. As I ascended the gentle ac- 
 clivity on which it stood, I saw a figure approaching towards 
 me ; the increasing shades of the evening did not allow me to 
 recognize the shape until it was almost by my side it was 
 Aubrey. 
 
 Of late I had seen very little of him. His devotional studies 
 and habits seemed to draw him from the idle pursuits of myself 
 and my uncle's guests ; and Aubrey was one peculiarly suscep- 
 tible of neglect, and sore, to morbidity, at the semblance of
 
 4* 
 
 tmkindness ; so that he required to be sought, and rarely troubled 
 others with advances : that night, however, his greeting was 
 unusually warm. 
 
 " I was uneasy about you, Morton," said he, drawing my arm 
 in his; "you have not been seen since morning; and, oh ! 
 Morton, my uncle told me, with tears in his eyes, that you were 
 going to leave us. Is it so ? " 
 
 " Had he tears in his eyes ? Kind old man ! And you, 
 Aubrey, shall you, too, grieve for my departure ? " 
 
 " Can you ask it, Morton ? But why will you leave us ? Are 
 we not all happy here, now ? Now that there is no longer any 
 barrier or difference between us now that I may look upon 
 you, and listen to you, and love you, and own that I love you ? 
 Why will you leave us now ? And (continued Aubrey, as if 
 fearful of giving me time to answer) and every one praises 
 you so here ; and my uncle and all of us are so proud of you. 
 Why should you desert our affections merely because they are 
 not new ? Why plunge into that hollow and cold world which 
 all who have tried it picture in such fearful hues ? Can you 
 find anything there to repay you for the love you leave behind ? " 
 
 " My brother," said I, mournfully, and in a tone which startled 
 him, it was so different from that which I usually assumed, 
 " my brother, hear, before you reproach me. Let us sit down 
 upon this bank, and I will suffer you to see more of my restless 
 and secret heart than any hitherto have beheld." 
 
 We sat down upon a little mound how well I remember the 
 spot ! I can see the tree which shadows it from my window 
 at this moment. How many seasons have the sweet herb and 
 the emerald grass been withered there and renewed ! Ah, what 
 is this revival of all things fresh and youthful in external nature, 
 but a mockery of the wintry spot which lies perished and irrc- 
 neivable within ! 
 
 We drew near to each other, and as my arm wound around 
 him, I said, " Aubrey, your love has been to me a more precious 
 gift than any who have not, like me, thirsted and longed even 
 for the love of a dog, can conceive. Never let me lose that af- 
 fection ! And do not think of me hereafter as of one whose 
 heart echoed all that his lip uttered. Do not believe that irony, 
 and sarcasm, and bitterness of tongue, flowed from a malignant 
 or evil source. That disposition which seems to you alternately 
 so light and gloomy had, perhaps, its origin in a mind too in- 
 tense in its affections, and too exacting in having them returned. 
 Till you sought my friendship, three short years ago, none but 
 my uncle, with whom I could have nothing in common but at-
 
 42 DEVEREUX. 
 
 tachment, seemed to care for my very existence. I blame them 
 not ; they were deceived in my nature ; but blame me not too 
 severely if my temper suffered from their mistake. Your friend- 
 ship came to me, not too late to save me from a premature mis- 
 anthropy, but too late to eradicate every morbidity of mind. 
 Something of sternness on the one hand, and of satire on the 
 other, has mingled so long with my better feelings that the taint 
 and the stream have become inseparable. Do not sigh, Aubrey. 
 To be unamiable is not to be ungrateful ; and I shall not love 
 you the less if I have but a few objects to love. You ask me 
 my inducement to leave you. ' The World ' will be sufficient 
 answer. I cannot share your contempt of it, nor your fear. I 
 am, and have been of late, consumed with a thirst eager, and 
 burning, and unquenchable it is ambition ! " 
 
 " Oh, Morton ! " said Aubrey, with a second sigh, longer and 
 deeper than the first "that evil passion! the passion which 
 lost an angel Heaven." 
 
 " Let us not now dispute, my brother, whether it be sinful in 
 itself, or whether, if its object be virtuous, it is not a virtue. In 
 baring my soul before you, I only speak of my motives ; and 
 seek not to excuse them. Perhaps on this earth there is no 
 good without a little evil. When my mind was once turned to 
 the acquisition of mental superiority, every petty acquisition I 
 made increased my desire to attain more, and partial emulation 
 soon widened into universal ambition. We three, Gerald and 
 ourselves, are the keepers of a treasure more valuable than 
 gold the treasure of a not ignoble nor sullied name. For my 
 part, I confess that I am impatient to increase the store of honor 
 which our father bequeathed to us. Nor is this all : despite 
 our birth, we are poor in the gifts of fortune. We are all de- 
 pendents on my uncle's favor ; and, however we may deserve 
 it, there would be something better in earning an independence 
 for ourselves." 
 
 " That," said Aubrey, " may be an argument for mine and 
 Gerald's exertions; but not for yours. You are the eldest, and 
 my uncle's favorite. Nature and affection both point to you 
 as his heir." 
 
 "If so, Aubrey, may many years pass before that inheritance 
 be mine. Why should those years, that might produce so 
 much, lie fallow ? But though I would not affect an unreal 
 delicacy, and disown my chance of future fortune, yet you must 
 remember that it is a matter possible, not certain. My birth- 
 right gives me no claim over my uncle, whose estates are in his 
 cwn gift ; and favor, even in the good, is a wind which varies
 
 DEVEREUX. 43 
 
 without power on our side to calculate the season or the cause. 
 However this be, and I love the person on whom fortune de- 
 pends so much that I cannot, without pain, speak of the mere 
 chance of its passing from his possession into mine, you will 
 own at least that I shall not hereafter deserve wealth the less 
 for the advantages of experience." 
 
 " Alas ! " said Aubrey, raising his eyes, " the worship of our 
 Father in Heaven finds us ample cause for occupation, even in 
 retirement ; and the more we mix with His creatures, the more, 
 I fear, we may forget the Creator. But, if it must be so, I will 
 pray for you, Morton ; and you will remember that the power- 
 less and poor Aubrey can still lift up his voice in your behalf." 
 
 As Aubrey thus spoke, I looked with mingled envy and ad- 
 miration upon the countenance beside me, which the beauty of 
 a spirit seemed at once to soften and to exalt. 
 
 Since our conference had begun, the dusk of twilight had 
 melted away ; and the moon had called into lustre living, in- 
 deed, but unlike the common and unhallowing life of day the 
 wood and herbage, and silent variations of hill and valley, which 
 slept around us ; and, as the still and shadowy light fell over 
 the upward face of my brother, it gave to his features an addi- 
 tional, and not wholly earth-born, solemnity of expression. 
 There was indeed in his face and air that from which the painter 
 of a seraph might not have disdained to copy ; something re- 
 sembling the vision of an angel in the dark eyes that swam with 
 tears, in which emotion had so little of mortal dross in the 
 youthful and soft cheeks,' which the earnestness of divine 
 thought had refined by a pale but transparent hue in the high 
 and unclouded forehead, over which the hair, parted in the 
 centre, fell in long and wavelike curls and in the lips, silent, 
 yet moving with internal prayer, which seemed the more fer- 
 vent, because unheard. 
 
 I did not interrupt him in the prayer, which my soul felt, 
 though my ear caught it not, was for me. But when he had 
 ceased, and turned towards me, I clasped him to my breast. 
 " My brother," I said, " we shall part, it is true, but not till our 
 hearts have annihilated the space that was between them ; not 
 till we have felt that the love of brotherhood can pass the love 
 of woman. Whatever await you, your devoted and holy mind 
 will be, if not your shield from affliction, at least your balm for 
 its wounds. Remain here. The quiet which breathes around 
 you well becomes your tranquillity within ; and sometimes bless 
 me in your devotions, as you have done now. For me, I shall 
 not regret those harder and harsher qualities which you blame
 
 44 DEVEREUX. 
 
 in me, if hereafter their very sternness can afford me an op- 
 portunity of protecting your gentleness from evil, or redressing 
 the wrongs from which your nature may be too innocent to pre- 
 serve you. And now let us return home, in the conviction that 
 we have in our friendship one treasure beyond the reach pf 
 fate." 
 
 Aubrey did not answer ; but he kissed my forehead, and I 
 felt his tears upon my cheek. We rose, and with arms still 
 embracing each other as we walked, bent our steps to the house. 
 
 Ah, earth ! what hast thou more beautiful than the love of 
 those whose ties are knit by nature, and whose union seems or- 
 dained to begin from the very moment of their birth ? 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 First Love. 
 
 WE are under very changeful influences in this world ! The 
 night on which occurred the interview with Aubrey, that I have 
 just narrated, I was burning to leave Devereux Court. Within 
 one little week from that time my eagerness was wonderfully 
 abated. The sagacious reader will readily discover the cause 
 of this alteration. About eight miles from my uncle's house 
 was a seaport town ; there were many and varied rides leading 
 to it, and the town was a favorite place of visitation with all the 
 family. Within a few hundred yards of the town was a small 
 cottage, prettily situated in the midst of a garden, kept with 
 singular neatness, and ornamented with several rare shrubs and 
 exotics. I had more than once observed in the garden of this 
 house a female in the very first blush of youth, and beautiful 
 enough to excite within me a strong curiosity to learn the owner 
 of the cottage. I inquired, and ascertained that its tenant was 
 a Spaniard of high birth, and one who had acquired a melan- 
 choly celebrity by his conduct and misfortunes in the part he 
 had taken in a certain feeble but gallant insurrection in his na- 
 tive country. He had only escaped with life and a very small 
 
 sum of money, and now lived in the obscure seaport of , a 
 
 refugee and a recluse. He was a widower, and had only one 
 child a daughter ; and I was therefore at no loss to discover 
 who was the beautiful female I had noted and admired. 
 
 On the day after my conversation with Aubrey, detailed in 
 the last chapter, in riding past this cottage alone, I perceived a
 
 DEVEREUX. 45 
 
 crowd assembled round the entrance ; I paused to inquire the 
 cause. 
 
 " Why, your honor," quoth a senior of the village, " I believe 
 the tipstaves be come to take the foreigner for not paying his 
 rent ; and he does not understand our English liberty like, and 
 has drawn his sword, and swears, in his outlandish lingo, he 
 will not be made prisoner alive." 
 
 I required no further inducement to make me enter the house. 
 The crowd gave way when they saw me dismount, and suffered 
 me to penetrate into the first apartment. There I found the 
 gallant old Spaniard with his sword drawn, keeping at bay a 
 couple of sturdy looking men, who appeared to be only pre- 
 vented from using violence by respect for the person, or the 
 safety, of a young woman, who clung to her father's knees, and 
 implored him not to resist, where resistance was so unavailing. 
 Let me cut short this scene I dismissed the bailiffs, and paid 
 the debt. I then endeavored to explain to the Spaniard, in 
 French, for he scarcely understood three words of our language, 
 the cause of a rudeness towards him which he persisted in call- 
 ing a great insult and inhospitality manifested to a stranger and 
 an exile. I succeeded at length in pacifying him. I remained 
 for more than an hour at the cottage, and I left it with a heart 
 beating at the certain persuasion that I had established therein 
 the claim of acquaintance and visitation. 
 
 Will the reader pardon me for having curtailed this scene? 
 It is connected with a subject on which I shall better endure 
 to dwell as my narrative proceeds. From that time I paid 
 frequent visits to the cottage ; the Spaniard soon grew intimate 
 with me, and I thought the daughter began to blush when I 
 entered, and to sigh when I departed. 
 
 One evening I was conversing with Don Diego D' Alvarez 
 (such was the Spaniard's name), as he sat without his threshold, 
 inhaling the gentle air that stole freshness from the rippling 
 sea that spread before us, and fragrance from the earth, over 
 which the summer now reigned in its most mellow glory. Isora 
 (the daughter) sat at a little distance. 
 
 " How comes it," said Don Diego, " that you have never met 
 our friend Senor Bar Bar these English names are always 
 escaping my memory. How is he called, Isora? " 
 
 " Mr. Mr. Barnard," said Isora (who, brought early to 
 England, spoke its language like a native), but with evident 
 confusion, and looking down as she spoke " Mr. Barnard, I 
 believe you mean." 
 
 " Right, my love," rejoined the Spaniard, who was smoking
 
 (j6 DEVEREUX. 
 
 a long pipe with great gravity, and did not notice his daughter's 
 embarrassment " a fine youth, but somewhat shy and over- 
 modest in manner." 
 
 " Youth ! " thought I, and I darted a piercing look towards 
 Isora. " How comes it, indeed," I said aloud, " that I have 
 not met him ? Is he a friend of long standing ? " 
 
 " Nay, not very perhaps of some six weeks earlier date than 
 you, Senor Don Devereux. I pressed him, when he called this 
 morning, to tarry your coming ; but, poor youth, he is diffi- 
 dent, and not yet accustomed to mix freely with strangers, 
 especially those of rank ; our own presence a little overawes 
 him" and from Don Diego's gray mustachios issued a yet 
 fuller cloud than was ordinarily wont to emerge thence. 
 
 My eyes were still fixed on Isora ; she looked up, met them, 
 blushed deeply, rose, and disappeared within the house. I was 
 already susceptible of jealousy. My lip trembled, as I resumed : 
 "And will Don Diego pardon me for inquiring how com- 
 menced his knowledge of this ingenuous youth?" 
 
 The question was a little beyond the pale of good breeding ; 
 perhaps the Spaniard, who was tolerably punctilious in such 
 matters, thought so, for he did not reply. I was sensible of my 
 error, and apologizing for it, insinuated, nevertheless, the 
 question in a more respectful and covert shape. Still Don 
 Diego, inhaling the fragrant weed with renewed vehemence, 
 only like Pion's tomb, recorded by Pausanias replied to the 
 request of his petitioner by smoke. I did not venture to renew 
 my interrogatories, and there was a long silence. My eyes 
 fixed their gaze on the door by which Isora had disappeared. 
 In vain ; she returned not and as the chill of the increasing 
 evening began now to make itself felt by the frame of one 
 accustomed to warmer skies, the Spaniard soon rose to re-enter 
 his house, and I took my farewell for the night. 
 
 There were many ways (as I before said) by which I could 
 return home, all nearly equal in picturesque beauty ; for the 
 county in which my uncle's estates were placed was one where 
 stream roved and woodland flourished even to the very strand, 
 or cliff of the sea. The shortest route, though one the least 
 frequented by any except foot-passengers, was along the coast, 
 and it was by this path that I rode slowly homeward. On 
 winding a curve in the road about one mile from Devereux 
 Court, the old building broke slowly, tower by tower, upon me. 
 I have never yet described the house, and perhaps it will not 
 be uninteresting to the reader if I do so now. 
 
 It had anciently belonged to Ralph de Bigod. From his
 
 tJEVEREUX. 47 
 
 possession it had passed into that of the then noblest branch 
 of the stem of Devereux, whence, without break or flaw in the 
 direct line of heritage, it had ultimately descended to the 
 present owner. It was a pile of vast extent, built around three 
 quadrangular courts, the farthest of which spread to the very 
 verge of the gray, tall cliffs that overhung the sea : in this court 
 was a rude tower, which, according to tradition, had contained 
 the apartments ordinarily inhabited by our ill-fated namesake 
 and distant kinsman, Robert Devereux, the favorite and the 
 victim of Elizabeth, whenever he had honored the mansion 
 with a visit. There was nothing, it is true, in the old tower 
 calculated to flatter the tradition, for it contained only two 
 habitable rooms, communicating with each other, and by no 
 means remarkable for size or splendor ; and every one of our 
 household, save myself, was wont to discredit the idle rumor 
 which would assign to so distinguished a guest so unseemly a 
 lodgment. But, as I looked from the narrow lattices of the 
 chambers, over the wide expanse of ocean and of land which 
 they commanded as I noted, too, that the tower was utterly 
 separated from the rest of the house, and that the convenience 
 of its site enabled one, on quitting it, to escape at once, and 
 privately, either to the solitary beach or to the glades and 
 groves of the wide park which stretched behind I could not 
 help indulging the belief that the unceremonious, and not un- 
 romantic noble, had himself selected his place of retirement, 
 and that, in so doing, the gallant of a stately court was not, 
 perhaps, undesirous of securing at well-chosen moments a brief 
 relaxation from the heavy honors of country homage or that 
 the patron and poetic admirer of the dreaming Spenser might 
 have preferred, to all more gorgeous accommodation, the quiet 
 and unseen egress to that sea and shore, which, if we may be- 
 lieve the accomplished Roman,* are so fertile in the powers of 
 inspiration. 
 
 However this be, I had cheated myself into the belief that 
 my conjecture was true, and I had petitioned my uncle, when, 
 on leaving school, he assigned to each of us our several apart- 
 ments, to grant me the exclusive right to this dilapidated tower. 
 I gained my boon easily enough ; and so strangely is our 
 future fate compounded from past trifles I verily believe that 
 the strong desire which thenceforth seized me to visit courts, 
 and mix with statesmen which afterwards hurried me into 
 
 * " p mare, O litus, verura secretumque Monseion, quam multa dictatis quam multa 
 invenitis ! " PLINIUS. 
 
 " O sea, O shore, true and secret sanctuary f the Muses, how many things ye dictate, 
 bow many things ye discover."
 
 48 DEVEREUX. 
 
 intrigue, war, the plots of London, the dissipations of Paris, the 
 perilous schemes of Petersburg, nay, the very hardships of a 
 Cossack tent was first formed by the imaginary honor of in- 
 habiting the same chamber as the glittering but ill-fated 
 courtier of my own name. Thus youth imitates, where it 
 should avoid ; and thus that which should have been to me a 
 warning became an example. 
 
 In the oaken floor to the outer chamber of this tower was 
 situated a trap-door, the entrance into a lower room or rather 
 cell, fitted up as a bath ; and here a wooden door opened into 
 a long subterranean passage that led out into a cavern by the 
 sea-shore. This cave, partly by nature, partly by art, was 
 hollowed into a beautiful Gothic form : and here, on moonlight 
 evenings, when the sea crept gently over the yellow and smooth 
 sands, and the summer tempered the air from too keen a fresh- 
 ness, my uncle had often in his younger days, ere gout and 
 rheum had grown familiar images, assembled his guests. It 
 was a place which the echoes peculiarly adapted for rnusic ; 
 and the scene was certainly not calculated to diminish the 
 effect of "sweet sounds." Even now, though my uncle rarely 
 joined us, we were often wont to hold our evening revels in 
 this spot ; and the high cliffs, circling either side in the form 
 of a bay, tolerably well concealed our meetings from the gaze 
 of the vulgar. It is true (for these cliffs were perforated with 
 numerous excavations), that some roving peasant, mariner, or 
 perchance smuggler, would now and then, at low water, intrude 
 upon us. But our London Nereids and courtly Tritons were 
 always well pleased with the interest of what they graciously 
 termed " an adventure ": and our assemblies were too numer- 
 ous to think an unbroken secrecy indispensable. Hence, 
 therefore, the cavern was almost considered a part of the 
 house itself ; and though there was an iron door at the entrance 
 which it gave to the passage leading to my apartments, yet so 
 great was our confidence in our neighbors or ourselves that it 
 was rarely secured, save as a defence against the high tides of 
 winter. 
 
 The stars were shining quietly over the old gray castle (for 
 castle it really was), as I now came within view of it. To the 
 left, and in the rear of the house, the trees of the park, grouped 
 by distance, seemed blent into one thick mass of wood ; to the 
 right, as I now (descending the cliff by a gradual path,) entered 
 on the level sands, and at about the distance of a league from 
 the main shore, a small islet, notorious as the resort and shelter 
 of contraband adventurers, scarcely relieved the wide and glassy
 
 DEVEREUX. 49 
 
 azure of the waves. The tide was out ; and passing through 
 one of the arches worn in the bay, I came somewhat suddenly 
 by the cavern. Seated there on a crag of stone I found Aubrey. 
 
 My acquaintance with Isora and her father had so immediately 
 succeeded the friendly meeting with Aubrey which I last re- 
 corded, and had so utterly engrossed my time and thoughts, 
 that I had not taken of that interview all the brotherly advan- 
 tage which I might have done. My heart now smote me for 
 my involuntary negligence. I dismounted, and fastening my 
 horse to one of a long line of posts that ran into the sea, ap- 
 proached Aubrey and accosted him. 
 
 "Alone, Aubrey? and at an hour when my uncle always 
 makes the old walls ring with revel ! Hark, can you not hear 
 the music even now? it comes from the ball-room, I think, 
 does it not ? " 
 
 "Yes!" said Aubrey, briefly, and looking down upon a 
 devotional book, which (as was his wont) he had made his 
 companion. 
 
 "And we are the only truants! Well, Gerald will supply 
 our places with a lighter step, and, perhaps, a merrier heart." 
 
 Aubrey sighed. I bent over him affectionately (I loved that 
 boy with something of a father's as well as a brother's love), 
 and as I did bend over him, I saw that his eyelids were red 
 with weeping. 
 
 "My brother my own dear brother," said I, "what grieves 
 you? are we not friends, and more than friends? what can 
 grieve you that grieves not me?" 
 
 Suddenly raising his head, Aubrey gazed at me with a long, 
 searching intentness of eye; his lips moved, but he did not 
 answer. 
 
 "Speak to me, Aubrey," said I, passing my arm over his 
 shoulder; "has any one, any thing, hurt you? See, now, if I 
 cannot remedy the evil." 
 
 "Morton, "said Aubrey, speaking very slowly, "do you believe 
 that Heaven pre-orders as well as foresees our destiny?" 
 
 "It is the schoolman's question," said I, smiling, "but I 
 know how these idle subtleties vex the mind and you, my 
 brother, are ever too occupied with considerations of the future. 
 If Heaven does pre-order our destiny, we know that Heaven is 
 merciful, and we should be fearless, as we arm ourselves in 
 that knowledge." 
 
 " Morton Devereux," said Aubrey, again repeating my name, 
 and with an evident inward effort that left his lip colorless, and 
 yet lit his dark dilating eye with a strange and unwonted fire
 
 6 DEVEREUX. 
 
 "Morton Devereux, I feel that 1 am predestined to the power 
 of the Evil One ! " 
 
 I drew back, inexpressibly shocked. "Good Heavens!" I 
 exclaimed, "what can induce you to cherish so terrible a phan- 
 tasy ? What can induce you to wrong so fearfully the goodness 
 and mercy of our Creator ?" 
 
 Aubrey shrunk from ray arm, which had still been round him, 
 and covered his face with his hands. I took up the book he 
 had been reading : it was a Latin treatise on predestination, 
 and seemed fraught with the most gloomy and bewildering 
 subtleties. I sat down beside him, and pointed out the various 
 incoherencies and contradictions of the work, and the doctrine 
 it espoused so long and so earnestly did I speak that at length 
 Aubrey looked up, seemingly cheered and relieved. 
 
 " I wish," said he timidly, "I wish that you loved me, and 
 that you loved me only : but you love pleasure, and power, and 
 show, and wit, and revelry ; and you know not what it is to feel 
 for me, as I feel at times for you nay, perhaps you really 
 dislike or despise me ! " 
 
 Aubrey's voice grew bitter in its tone as he concluded these 
 words, and I was instantly impressed with the belief that some 
 one had insinuated distrust of my affection for him. 
 
 "Why should you think thus?" I said: "has any cause 
 occurred of late to make you deem my affection for you weaker 
 than it was ? Has any one hinted a surmise that I do not repay 
 your brotherly regard ? " 
 
 Aubrey did not answer. 
 
 "Has Gerald," I continued, '* jealous of our mutual attach- 
 ment, uttered aught tending to diminish it ? Yes, I see that 
 he has ! " 
 
 Aubrey remained motionless, sullenly gazing downward, and 
 still silent. 
 
 "Speak," said I, "in justice to both of us speak! You 
 know, Aubrey, how I have loved and love you : put your arms 
 round me, and say that thing on earth which you wish me to 
 do, and it shall be done ! " 
 
 Aubrey looked up ; he met my eyes, and he threw himself 
 upon my neck, and burst into a violent paroxysm of tears. 
 
 I was greatly affected. "I see my fault," said I, soothing 
 him ; "you are angry, and with justice, that I have neglected 
 you of late ; and, perhaps, while I ask your confidence, you 
 suspect that there is some subject on which I should have gran ted 
 you mine. You are right, and, at a fitter moment, I will. Now 
 let us turn homeward ; our uncle is never merry when we are
 
 DEVEREUX. 51 
 
 absent ; and when my mother misses your dark locks and fair 
 cheek, I fancy that she sees little beauty in the ball. And yet, 
 Aubrey," I added, as he now rose from my embrace, and dried 
 his tears, " I will own to you that I love this scene better than 
 any, however gay, within ;" and I turned to the sea, starlit as 
 it was, and murmuring with a silver voice, and I became sud- 
 denly silent. 
 
 There was a long pause. I believe we both felt the influence 
 of the scene around us, softening and tranquillizing our hearts ; 
 for, at length, Aubrey put his hand in mine, and said, " You 
 were always more generous and kind than I, Morton, though 
 there are times when you seem different from what you are ; 
 and I know you have already forgiven me." 
 
 I drew him affectionately towards me, and we went home. 
 
 But although I meant, from that night, to devote myself more 
 to Aubrey than I had done of late, my hourly increasing love 
 for Isora interfered greatly with my resolution. In order, how- 
 ever, to excuse any future neglect, I, the very next morning, be- 
 stowed upon him my confidence. Aubrey did not much encourage 
 my passion : he represented to me Isora's situation my own 
 youth my own worldly ambition and, more than all (remind- 
 ing me of my uncle's aversion even to the most prosperous and 
 well-suited marriage), he insisted upon the certainty that Sir 
 William would never yield consent to the lawful consummation 
 of so unequal a love. I was not too well pleased with this re- 
 ception of my tale, and I did not much trouble my adviser with 
 any farther communication and confidence on the subject. 
 Day after day I renewed my visits to the Spaniard's cottage; 
 and yet time passed on, and I had not told Isora a syllable of 
 my love. I was inexpressibly jealous of this Barnard, whom 
 her father often eulogized, and whom I never met. There ap- 
 peared to be some mystery in his acquaintance with Don Diego, 
 which that personage carefully concealed ; and once, when I 
 was expressing my surprise to have so often missed seeing his 
 friend, the Spaniard shook his head gravely, and said that he 
 had now learnt the real reason for it: there were circumstances 
 of state which made men fearful of new acquaintances, even in 
 their own country. He drew back, as if he had said too much, 
 and left me the conjecture that Barnard was connected with 
 him in some intrigue, more delightful in itself than agreeable 
 to the government. This belief was strengthened by my noting 
 that Alvarez was frequently absent from home, and this, too, in 
 the evening, when he was generally wont to shun the bleakness 
 of the English air an atmosphere, by the by, which I once
 
 52 bEVEREUX. 
 
 heard a Frenchman wittily compare to Augustus placed between 
 Horace and Virgil; viz., in the bon motoi the emperor himself 
 between sighs and tears. 
 
 But Isora herself never heard the name of this Barnard men- 
 tioned without a visible confusion, which galled me to the heart; 
 and at length, unable to endure any longer my suspense upon 
 the subject, I resolved to seek from her own lips its termination. 
 I long tarried my opportunity: it was one evening, that, coming 
 rather unexpectedly to the cottage, I was informed by the single 
 servant that Don Diego had gone to the neighboring town, but 
 that Isora was in the garden. Small as it was, this garden had 
 been cultivated with some care, and was not devoid of variety. 
 A high and very thick fence of living boxwood, closely inter- 
 laced with the honeysuckle and the common rose, screened a 
 few plots of rarer flowers, a small circular fountain, and a rustic 
 arbor, both from the sea breezes and the eyes of any passer by, 
 to which the open and sheltered portion of the garden was ex- 
 posed. When I passed through the opening cut in the fence, 
 I was somewhat surprised at not immediately seeing Isora. Per- 
 haps she was in the arbor. I approached the arbor tremblingly. 
 What was my astonishment and my terror when I beheld her 
 stretched lifeless on the ground. 
 
 I uttered a loud cry, and sprang forwards. I raised her from 
 the earth, and supported her in my arms ; her complexion 
 through whose pure and transparent white the wandering blood 
 was wont so gently, yet so glowingly, to blush, undulating while 
 it blushed, as youngest rose-leaves which the air just stirs into 
 trembling was blanched into the hues of death. My kisses 
 tinged it with a momentary color not its own ; and yet as I 
 pressed her to my heart, methought hers, which seemed still be- 
 fore, began, as if by an involuntary sympathy, palpably and sud- 
 denly to throb against my own. My alarm melted away as I 
 held her thus nay, I would not, if I could, have recalled her 
 yet to life ; I was forgetful I was unheeding I was uncon- 
 scious of all things else a few broken and passionate words es- 
 caped my lips, but even they ceased when I felt her breath just 
 stirring and mingling with my own. It seemed to me as if all 
 living kind but ourselves had, by a spell, departed from .the 
 earth, and we were left alone with the breathless and inaudible 
 Nature from which spring the love and the life of all things. 
 
 Isora slowly recovered ; her eyes, in opening, dwelt upon 
 mine her blood rushed at once to her cheek, and as suddenly 
 left it hueless as before. She rose from my embrace, but I still 
 extended my arms towards her ; and words over which I had
 
 DEVEREUJt. 5J 
 
 no control, and of which now I have no remembrance, rushed 
 from my lips. Still pale, and leaning against the side of the arbor, 
 Isora heard me, as confused, incoherent, impetuous, but still in- 
 telligible to her my released heart poured itself forth. And 
 when I had ceased, she turned her face towards me, and my blood 
 seemed frozen in its channel. Anguish, deep, ineffable anguish, 
 was depicted upon every feature ; and when she strove at last 
 to speak, her lips quivered so violently that, after a vain effort 
 she ceased abruptly. I again approached I seized her hand, 
 which I covered with my kisses. 
 
 "Will you not answer me, Isora?" said I tremblingly. " Be 
 silent then ; but give me one look, one glance of hope, of par- 
 don, from those dear eyes, and I ask no more." 
 
 Isora's whole frame seemed sinking beneath her emotions; 
 she raised her head, and looked hurriedly and fearfully round; 
 my eye followed hers, and I then saw upon the damp ground, 
 the recent print of a man's footsteps, not my own; and close to 
 the spot where I had found Isora, lay a man's glove. A pang 
 shot through me I felt my eyes flash fire, and my brow darken, 
 as I turned to Isora, and said, " I see it I see it all, I have a 
 rival, who has but just left you you love me not your affections 
 are for him ! " Isora sobbed violently, but made no reply. 
 "You love him," said I, but in a milder and more mournful 
 tone "you love him it is enough I will persecute you no 
 more ; and yet " I paused a moment, for the remembrance 
 of many a sign, which my heart had interpreted flatteringly, 
 flashed upon me, and my voice faltered. " Well, I have no 
 right to murmur only, Isora only tell me with your lips that 
 you love another, and I will depart in peace." 
 
 Very slowly Isora turned her eyes to me, and even through 
 her tears they dwelt upon me with a tender and a soft reproach. 
 
 " You love another ? " said I and from her lips, which scarce- 
 ly parted, came a single word which thrilled to my heart like 
 fire, lt No/" 
 
 "No!" I repeated, "No? say that again, and again; yet 
 who then is this that has dared so to agitate and overpower you? 
 Who is he whom you have met, and whom, even now while I 
 speak, you tremble to hear me recur to? Answer me one 
 word is it this mysterious stranger whom your father honors 
 with his friendship ? Is it Barnard ? " 
 
 Alarm and fear again wholly engrossed the expression of 
 Isora's countenance. 
 
 "Barnard ! " she said, "yes yes it is Barnard ! " 
 
 " Who is he ? " I cried vehemently " who or what is he ? and
 
 54 DEVEREUX. 
 
 of what nature is his influence upon you ? Confide in me " and 
 I poured forth a long tide of inquiry and solicitation. 
 
 By the time I had ended, Isora seemed to have recovered her- 
 self. With her softness, was mingled something of spirit and of 
 self-control, which was rare alike in her country and her sex. 
 
 "Listen to me ! " said she, and her voice, which faltered a lit- 
 tle at first, grew calm and firm as she proceeded. "You profess 
 to love me I am not worthy your love ; and if, Count Devereux, 
 I do not reject nor disclaim it for I am a woman and a weak 
 and fond one I will not at least wrong you by encouraging 
 hopes which I may not and I dare not fulfil. I cannot " here 
 she spoke with a fearful distinctness, " I cannot, I can never, 
 be yours ; and when you ask me to be so, you know not what 
 you ask nor what perils you incur. Enough I am grateful to 
 you. The poor exiled girl is grateful for your esteem and and 
 your affection. She will never forget them, never ! But be this 
 our last meeting our very last God bless you, Morton ! " and 
 as she read my heart, pierced and agonized as it was, in my 
 countenance, Isora bent over me, for I knelt beside her, and I 
 felt her tears upon my cheek,-^-" God bless you and farewell." 
 
 "You insult, you wound me," said I bitterly, "by this cold 
 and taunting kindness ; tell me, tell me only, who it is that you 
 love better than me." 
 
 Isora had turned to leave me, for I was too proud to detain 
 her ; but when I said this, she came back, after a moment's 
 pause, and laid her hand upon my arm. 
 
 " If it make you happy to know my unhappiness," she said, and 
 the tone of her voice made me look full in her face, which was 
 one deep blush, " know that I am not insensible " 
 
 I heard no more my lips pressed themselves involuntarily to 
 hers a long, long kiss, burning intense concentrating emo- 
 tion, heart, soul, all the rays of life's light into a single focus ; 
 and she tore herself from me and I was alone. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A Discovery, and a Departure. 
 
 I HASTENED home after my eventful interview with Isora, and 
 gave myself up to tumultuous and wild conjecture. Aubrey 
 sought me the next morning I narrated to him all that had oc- 
 curredhe said little, but that little enraged me, for it was con- 
 trary to the dictates of my own wishes. The character of
 
 DEVEREUX. 55 
 
 Morose in the "Silent Woman" is by no means an uncommon 
 one. Many men certainly many lovers would say with equal 
 truth, always provided they had equal candor "All discourses 
 but my own afflict me ; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irk- 
 some." Certainly I felt that amiable sentiment most sincerely, 
 with regard to Aubrey. I left him abruptly a resolution pos- 
 sessed me " I will see," said I, " this Barnard. I will lie in wait 
 for him ; I will demand and obtain, though it be by force, the 
 secret which evidently subsists between him and this exiled 
 family." 
 
 Full of this idea, I drew my cloak round me, and repaired on 
 foot to the neighborhood of the Spaniard's cottage. There was 
 no place near it very commodious for accommodation both of 
 vigil and concealment. However, I made a little hill, in a field 
 opposite the house, my warder's station, and, lying at full length 
 on the ground, wrapt in my cloak, I trusted to escape notice. 
 The day passed no visitor appeared. The next morning I went 
 from my own rooms, through the subterranean passage, into the 
 Castle Cave, as the excavation I have before described was 
 generally termed. On the shore I saw Gerald, by one of the 
 small fishing-boats usually kept there. I passed him with a sneer 
 at his amusements, which were always those of conflicts against 
 fish or fowl. He answered me in the same strain, as he threw 
 his nets into the boat, and pushed out to sea. "How is it, that 
 you go alone?" said I ; "is there so much glory in the capture 
 of mackerel and dogfish that you will allow no one to share it ?" 
 
 " There are other sports besides those for men," answered 
 Gerald, coloring indignantly ; "my taste is confined to amuse- 
 ments in which he is but a fool who seeks companionship ; and 
 if you could read character better, my wise brother, you would 
 know that the bold rover is ever less idle and more fortunate 
 than the speculative dreamer ! " 
 
 As Gerald said this, which he did with a significant emphasis, 
 he rowed vigorously across the water, and the little boat was 
 soon half way to the opposite islet. My eyes followed it mus- 
 ingly as it glided over the waves, and my thoughts painfully re- 
 volved the words which Gerald had uttered. "What can he 
 mean ? " said I, half aloud ; " yet what matters it ? perhaps some 
 low amour, some village conquest, inspires him with that becom- 
 ing fulness of pride and vain glory joy be with so bold a rover ! " 
 and I strode away, along the beach, towards my place of watch; 
 once only I turned to look at Gerald he had then just touched 
 the islet, which was celebrated as much for the fishing it afforded 
 as the smuggling it protected,
 
 56 DEVEREUX. 
 
 I arrived, at last, at the hillock, and resumed my station. 
 Time passed on, till, at the dusk of evening, the Spaniard came 
 out. He walked slowly towards the town ; I followed him at a 
 distance. Just before he reached the town, he turned off by a 
 path which led to the beach. As the evening was unusually fresh 
 and chill, I felt convinced that some cause, not wholly trivial, 
 drew the Spaniard forth to brave it. My pride a little revolted 
 at the idea of following him ; but I persuaded myself that Isora's 
 happiness, and perhaps her father's safety, depended on my ob- 
 taining some knowledge of the character and designs of this 
 Barnard, who appeared to possess so dangerous an influence 
 over both daughter and sire nor did I doubt but that the old 
 man was now gone forth to meet him. The times were those of 
 mystery and intrigue the emissaries of the House of Stuart 
 were restlessly at work, among all classes many of them, ob- 
 scure and mean individuals, made their way, the more dan- 
 gerously from their apparent insignificance. My uncle, a 
 moderate Tory, was opposed, though quietly, and without vehe- 
 mence, to the claims of the banished House. Like Sedley, who 
 became so staunch a revolutionist, he had seen the Court of 
 Charles II., and the character of that King's brother, too closely 
 to feel much respect for either ; but he thought it indecorous to 
 express opposition loudly, against a party among whom were 
 many of his early friends ; and the good old knight was too much 
 attached to private ties to be very much alive to public feeling. 
 However, at his well-filled board, conversation, generally, though 
 displeasingly to himself, turned upon politics, and I had there 
 often listened, of late, to dark hints of the danger to which 
 we were exposed, and of the restless machinations of the Jacob- 
 ites. I did not, therefore, scruple to suspect this Barnard of 
 some plot against the existing state ; and I did it the more from 
 observing that the Spaniard often spoke bitterly of the English 
 Court, which had rejected some claims he had imagined him- 
 self entitled to make upon it ; and that he was naturally of a tem- 
 per vehemently opposed to quiet, and alive to enterprise. With 
 this impression, I deemed it fair to seize any opportunity of see- 
 ing, at least, even if I could not question, the man whom the 
 Spaniard himself confessed to have state reasons for conceal- 
 ment ; and my anxiety to behold one whose very name could 
 agitate Isora, and whose presence could occasion the state in 
 which I had found her, sharpened this desire into the keenness 
 of a passion. 
 
 While Alvarez descended to the beach, I kept the upper 
 path, which wound along the cliff. There was a spot where the
 
 DEVEREUX. 57 
 
 rocks were rude and broken into crags, and afforded me a place 
 where, unseen, I could behold what passed below. The first 
 thing I beheld was a boat, approaching rapidly towards the 
 shore ; one man was seated in it ; he reached the shore, and I 
 recognized Gerald. That was a dreadful moment. Alvarez 
 now slowly joined him ; they remained together for nearly an 
 hour. I saw Gerald give the Spaniard a letter, which appeared 
 to make the chief subject of their conversation. At length they 
 parted, with the signs rather of respect than familiarity. Don 
 Diego returned homeward, and Gerald re-entered the boat. I 
 watched its progress over the waves with feelings of a dark 
 and almost unutterable nature. " My enemy ! my rival ! ruiner 
 of my hopes! my brother my twin brother!" I muttered 
 bitterly between my ground teeth. 
 
 The boat did not make to the open sea it skulked along 
 the shore, till distance and shadow scarcely allowed me to trace 
 the outline of Gerald's figure. It then touched the beach, and 
 I could just descry the dim shape of another man enter ; and 
 Gerald, instead of returning homewards, pushed out towards 
 the islet. I spent the greater part of the night in the open air. 
 Wearied and exhausted, by the furious indulgence of my pas- 
 sions, I gained my room, at length. There, however, as else- 
 where, thought succeeded to thought, and scheme to scheme. 
 Should I speak to Gerald ? Should I confide in Alvarez ? 
 Should I renew my suit to Isora ? If the first, what could I 
 hope to learn from mine enemy ? If the second, what could I 
 gain from the father, while the daughter remained averse to 
 me ? If the third there my heart pointed, and the third scheme 
 I resolved to adopt. 
 
 But was I sure that Gerald was this Barnard ? Might there 
 not be some hope that he was not ? No, I could perceive none. 
 Alvarez had never spoken to me of acquaintance with any other 
 Englishman than Barnard ; I had no reason to believe that he 
 ever held converse with any other. Would it not have been 
 natural too, unless some powerful cause, such as love to Isora, 
 induced silence would it not have been natural that Gerald 
 should have mentioned his acquaintance with the Spaniard ? 
 Unless some dark scheme, such as that which Barnard appeared 
 to have in common with Don Diego, commanded obscurity, 
 would it have been likely that Gerald should have met Alvarez 
 alone at night on an unfrequented spot? What that scheme 
 was, I guessed not I cared not. All my interest in the identity 
 of Barnard with Gerald Devereux was that derived from the 
 power he seemed to possess over Isora, Here, too, at once,
 
 58 DEVEREUX. 
 
 was explained the pretended Barnard's desire of concealment, 
 and the vigilance with which it had been effected. It was so 
 certain that Gerald, if my rival, would seek to avoid me it 
 was so easy for him, who could watch all my motions, to secure 
 the power of doing so. Then I remembered Gerald's character 
 through the country, as a gallant and a general lover and I 
 closed my eyes as if to shut out the vision when I recalled the 
 beauty of his form, contrasting with the comparative plainness 
 of my own. 
 
 " There is no hope," I repeated and an insensibility, rather 
 than sleep, crept over me. Dreadful and fierce dreams peopled 
 my slumbers ; and, when I started from them at a late hour 
 the next day, I was unable to rise from my bed my agitation 
 and my wanderings had terminated in a burning fever. In 
 four days, however, I recovered sufficiently to mount my horse 
 I rode to the Spaniard's house, I found there only the woman 
 who had been Don Diego's solitary domestic. The morning 
 before, Alvarez and his daughter had departed, none knew for 
 certain whither ; but it was supposed their destination was 
 London. The woman gave me a note it was from Isora it 
 contained only these lines : 
 
 "Forget me we are now parted for ever. As you value 
 my peace of mind of happiness I do not speak seek not to 
 discover our next retreat. I implore you to think no more of 
 what has been ; you are young, very young. Life has a 
 thousand paths for you ; any one of them will lead you from 
 the remembrance of me. Farewell, again and again ! 
 
 "ISORA D'ALVAREZ." 
 
 With this note was another, in French, from Don Diego ; it 
 was colder and more formal than I could have expected it 
 thanked me for my attentions towards him it regretted that 
 he could not take leave of me in person, and it enclosed 
 the sum by the loan of which our acquaintance had commenced. 
 
 "It is well!" said I, calmly, to myself, " it is well ; I will 
 forget her ;" and I rode instantly home. " But," I resumed in 
 my soliloquy, " I will yet strive to obtain confirmation to what 
 perhaps needs it not. I will yet strive to see if Gerald can deny 
 the depth of his injuries towards me there will be at least some 
 comfort in witnessing either his defiance or his confusion." 
 
 Agreeably to this thought, I hastened to seek Gerald. I 
 found him in his apartment I shut the door, and seating my- 
 self, with a smile, thus addressed him : 
 
 " Dear Gerald, I have a favor to ask of you,"
 
 DEVEREUX. 59 
 
 " What is it ? " 
 
 " How long have you known a certain Mr. Barnard ? " 
 Gerald changed color his voice faltered as he repeated the 
 name "Barnard ! " 
 
 " Yes," said I, with affected composure, " Barnard, a great 
 friend of Don Diego D'Alvarez." 
 
 " I perceive," said Gerald, collecting himself, " that you are 
 in some measure acquainted with my secret how far it is known 
 to you I cannot guess ; but I tell you, very fairly, that from me 
 you will not increase the sum of your knowledge." 
 
 When one is in a good sound rage, it is astonishing how 
 calm one can be ! I was certainly somewhat amazed by 
 Gerald's hardihood and assurance, but I continued, with a smile 
 
 "And Donna Isora, how long, if not very intrusive on your 
 confidence, have you known her?" 
 
 " I tell you," answered Gerald doggedly, " that I will answer 
 no questions." 
 
 " You remember the old story," returned I, " of the two 
 brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, whose very ashes refused to 
 mingle faith, Gerald, our love seems much of the same sort. 
 I know not if our ashes will exhibit so laudable an antipathy ; 
 but I think our hearts and hands will do so while a spark of life 
 animates them ; yes, though our blood," (I added, in a voice 
 quivering with furious emotion,) "prevents our contest by the 
 sword, it prevents not the hatred and the curses of the heart." 
 
 Gerald turned pale. " I do not understand you," he faltered 
 out " I know you abhor me ; but why, why this excess of 
 malice ?" 
 
 I cast on him a look of bitter scorn, and turned from the 
 room. 
 
 It is not pleasing to place before the reader these dark pas- 
 sages of fraternal hatred ; but in the record of all passions there 
 is a moral ; and it is wise to see to how vast a sum the units of 
 childish animosity swell, when they are once brought into a 
 heap, by some violent event, and told over by the nice accuracy 
 of Revenge. 
 
 But I long to pass from these scenes, and my history is about 
 to glide along others of more glittering and smiling aspect. 
 Thank Heaven, I write a tale, not only of love, but of a life ; 
 and that vrhich I cannot avoid I can at least condense.
 
 60 DEVEREUX. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A very short Chapter containing a Valet. 
 
 MY uncle for several weeks had flattered himself that I had 
 quite forgotten or foregone the desire of leaving Devereux 
 Court for London. Good, easy man ! he was not a little dis- 
 tressed when I renewed the subject with redoubled firmness, 
 and demanded an early period for that event. He managed, 
 however, still to protract the evil day. At one time it was im- 
 possible to part with me, because the house was so full ; at an- 
 other time it was cruel to leave him, when the house was so 
 empty. Meanwhile, a new change came over me. As the first 
 shock of Isora's departure passed away, I began to suspect the 
 purity of her feelings towards me. Might not Gerald, the beau- 
 tiful, the stately, the glittering Gerald, have been a successful 
 wooer under that disguised name of Barnard, and hence Isora's 
 confusion when that name was mentioned, and hence the power 
 which its possessor exercised over her? 
 
 This idea, once admitted, soon gained ground. It is true that 
 Isora had testified something of favorable feelings towards me ; 
 but this might spring from coquetry or compassion. My love 
 had been a boy's love, founded upon beauty and colored by 
 romance. I had not investigated the character of the object ; 
 and I had judged of the mind solely by the face. I might 
 easily have been deceived I persuaded myself that I was ! 
 Perhaps Gerald had provided their present retreat for sire and 
 daughter perhaps they at this moment laughed over my rivalry 
 and my folly. Methought Gerald's lip wore a contemptuous 
 curve when we met. " It shall have no cause," I said, stung 
 to the soul ; "I will indeed forget this woman, and yet, though 
 in other ways, eclipse this rival. Pleasure ambition the 
 brilliancy of a Court the resources of wealth invite me to a 
 thousand joys. I will not be deaf to the call. Meanwhile I 
 will not betray to Gerald to any one the scar of the wound 
 I have received ; and I will mortify Gerald, by showing him 
 that, handsome as he is, he shall be forgotten in my presence ! " 
 
 Agreeably to this exquisite resolution, I paid incessant court 
 to the numerous dames by whom my uncle's mansion was 
 thronged ; and I resolved to prepare, among them, the reputa- 
 tion for gallantry and for wit which I proposed to establish in 
 town. 
 
 " You are greatly altered since your love ! " said Aubrey, one
 
 DEVEREUX. 6t 
 
 day to me, " but not by your love. Own that I did right in dis- 
 suading you from its indulgence ! " 
 
 " Tell me ! " said I, sinking my voice to a whisper, " do you 
 think Gerald was my rival?" and I recounted the causes of my 
 suspicion. 
 
 Aubrey's countenance testified astonishment as he listened 
 " It is strange very strange," said he; "and the evidence of 
 the boat is almost conclusive; still I do not think it quite suffic- 
 ient to leave no loophole of doubt. But what matters it ? 
 you have conquered your love now." 
 
 " Ay," I said, with a laugh, " I have conquered it, and I am 
 now about to find some other empress of the heart. What think 
 you of the Lady Hasselton ? a fair dame and a sprightly. I 
 want nothing but her love to be the most enviable of men, and 
 a French valet-de-chambre to be the most irresistible." 
 
 " The former is easier to obtain than the latter, I fear," re- 
 turned Aubrey; "all places produce light dames, but the war 
 makes a scarcity of French valets." 
 
 " True," said I, " but I never thought of instituting a com- 
 parison between their relative value. The Lady Hasselton, no 
 disparagement to her merits, is but one woman but a French 
 valet who knows his mttier arms one for conquest over a thous- 
 and " and I turned to the saloon. 
 
 Fate, which had destined to me the valuable affections of the 
 Lady Hasselton, granted me also, at a yet earlier period, the 
 greater boon of a French valet. About two or three weeks after 
 this sapient communication with Aubrey, the most charming 
 person in the world presented himself a candidate pour le su- 
 prtme bonheur de soigner Monsieur le Comte. Intelligence 
 beamed in his eye ; a modest assurance reigned upon his brow ; 
 respect made his step vigilant as a zephyr's ; and his ruffles were 
 the envy of the world ! 
 
 I took him at a glance ; and I presented to the admiring in- 
 mates of the house a greater coxcomb than the Count Devereux 
 in the ethereal person of Jean Desmarais. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 The Hero acquits himself honorably as a Coxcomb a Fine Lady of the 
 Eighteenth Century, and a fashionable Dialogue the Substance of 
 fashionable Dialogue being in all Centuries the same. 
 
 " I AM thinking, Morton," said my uncle, "that if you are to 
 go to town, you should go in a style suitable to your rank. 
 What say you to flying along the road in my green and gold
 
 62 DEVEREUX. 
 
 chariot ? 'Sdeath, I'll make you a present of it. Nay no 
 thanks and you may have four of my black Flanders mares 
 to draw you." 
 
 " Now, my dear Sir William," cried Lady Hasselton, who, it 
 may be remembered, was the daughter of one of King Charles's 
 beauties, and who alone shared the breakfast room with my 
 uncle and myself "now, my dear Sir William, I think it would 
 be a better plan to suffer the Count to accompany us to town. 
 We go next week. He shall have a seat in our coach help 
 Lovell to pay our post-horses protect us at inns scold at the 
 drawers in the pretty oaths of the fashion, which are so inno- 
 cent that I will teach them to his Countship myself, and unless 
 I am much more frightful than my honored mother, whose 
 beauties you so gallantly laud, I think you will own, Sir Wil- 
 liam, that this is better for your nephew than doing solitary 
 penance in your chariot of green and gold, with a handkerchief 
 tied over his head to keep away cold, and with no more fanci- 
 ful occupation than composing sonnets to the four Flanders 
 mares." 
 
 " 'Sdeath, madam, you inherit your mother's wit as well as 
 beauty," cried my uncle, with an impassioned air. 
 
 " And his Countship," said I, " will accept your invitation 
 without asking his uncle's leave." 
 
 " Come, that is bold for a gentleman of let me see, thirteen 
 are you not?" 
 
 "Really," answered I, "one learns to forget time so terribly 
 in the presence of Lady Hasselton, that I do not remember 
 even how long it has existed for me." 
 
 " Bravo," cried the knight, with a moistening eye : " you see, 
 madam, the boy has not lived with his old uncle for nothing." 
 
 " I am lost in astonishment," said the lady, glancing toward 
 the glass ; " why, you will eclipse all our beaux at your first 
 appearance but but Sir William how green those glasses 
 have become! bless me, there is something so' contagious in 
 the effects of the country, that the very mirrors grow verdant. 
 But Count Count where are you, Count ? (I was exactly 
 opposite to the fair speaker.) Oh, there you are pray do you 
 carry a little pocket-glass of the true quality about you ? But, 
 of course you do lend it me." 
 
 " I have not the glass you want, but I carry with me a mirror 
 that reflects your features much more faithfully." 
 
 " How ! I protest I do not understand you ! " 
 
 "The mirror is here ! " said I, laying my hand to my heart 
 
 " 'Gad, I must kiss the boy ! " cried my uncle, starting up.
 
 DEVEREUX. 63 
 
 " I have sworn," said I, fixing my eyes upon the lady " I 
 have sworn never to be kissed even by women. You must 
 pardon me, uncle." 
 
 "I declare," cried the Lady Hasselton, flirting her fan, which 
 was somewhat smaller than the screen that one puts into a 
 .great hall, in order to take off the discomfort of too large a 
 room " I declare, Count, there is a vast deal of originality 
 about you. But tell me, Sir William, where did your nephew 
 acquire, at so early an age (eleven you say he is) such a 
 fund of agreeable assurance?" 
 
 " Nay, madam, let the boy answer for himself." 
 
 "Imprimis, then," said I, playing with the ribbon of my 
 cane " imprimis, early study of the best authors Congreve 
 and Farquhar, Etherege and Rochester. Secondly, the con- 
 stant intercourse of company which gives one the spleen so 
 over-poweringly that despair inspires one with boldness to 
 get rid of them. Thirdly, the personal example of Sir William 
 Devereux ; and, fourthly, the inspiration of hope." 
 
 "Hope, sir !" said the Lady Hasselton, covering her face 
 with her fan, so as only to leave me a glimpse of the farthest 
 patch upon her left cheek " hope, sir ?" 
 
 "Yes the hope of being pleasing to you. Suffer me to add 
 that the hope has now become certainty." 
 
 "Upon my .word, Count " 
 
 " Nay, you cannot deny it if one can once succeed in im- 
 pudence, one is irresistible." 
 
 " Sir William," cried Lady Hasselton, " you may give the 
 Count your chariot of green and gold, and your four Flanders 
 mares, and send his mother's maid with him. He shall not go 
 with me." 
 
 " Cruel ! and why ? " said I. 
 
 " You are too " the lady paused, and looked at me over her 
 fan. She was really very handsome " you are too old, Count. 
 You must be more than nine." 
 
 " Pardon me," said I, " I am nine a very mystical number 
 nine is too, and represents the muses, who, you know, were 
 always attendant upon Venus or you, which is the same thing ; 
 so you can no more dispense with my company than you can 
 with that of the Graces." 
 
 " Good-morning, Sir William ! " cried the Lady Hasselton, 
 rising. 
 
 I offered to hand her to the door with great difficulty, tor 
 her hoop was of the very newest enormity of circumference, I 
 effected this object. " Well, Count ! " said she, " I am glad to
 
 64 DEVEREUX. 
 
 see you have brought so much learning from school ; make the 
 best use of it, while it lasts, for your memory will not furnish 
 you with a single simile out of the mythology by the end of 
 next winter." 
 
 "That would be a pity !" said I, " for I intend Imping as 
 many goddesses as the Heathens had, and I should like to 
 worship them in a classical fashion." 
 
 " Oh ! the young reprobate ! " said the beauty, tapping me 
 with her fan. "And pray what other deities besides Venus do 
 I resemble ? " 
 
 " All ! " said I "at least all the celestial ones ! " 
 
 Though half way through the door, the beauty extricated 
 her hoop, and drew back. "Bless me, the gods as well as the 
 goddesses ?" 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " You jest tell me how." 
 
 " Nothing can be easier ; you resemble Mercury, because of 
 your thefts." 
 
 " Thefts ! " 
 
 "Ay ; stolen hearts, and" (added I, in a whisper) "glances 
 Jupiter, partly because of your lightning, which you lock up in 
 the said glances principally because all things are subservient 
 to you Neptune, because you are as changeable as the seas 
 Vulcan, because you live among the flames you excite and 
 Mars, because " 
 
 " You are so destructive," cried my uncle. 
 
 "Exactly so; and because," added I as I shut the door 
 upon the beauty "because, thanks to your hoop, you cover 
 nine acres of ground." 
 
 " Od'sfish, Morton," said my uncle, " you surprise me at 
 times one while you are so reserved, at another so assured ; 
 to-day so brisk, to-morrow so gloomy. Why now, Lady Has- 
 selton (she is very comely, eh ! faith, but not comparable to 
 her mother) told me, a week ago, that she gave you up in de- 
 spair, that you were dull, past hoping for ; and now, 'Gad, you 
 had a life in you that Sid himself could not have surpassed. 
 How comes it sir, eh ? " 
 
 " Why, uncle, you have explained the reason ; it was exactly 
 because she said I was dull that I was resolved to convict her 
 in an untruth." 
 
 "Well, now, there is some sense in that, boy ; always con- 
 tradict ill report, by personal merit. But what think you of her 
 ladyship ? 'Gad, you know what old Bellair said of Emilia. 
 'Make much of her she's one of the best of your acquaint-
 
 DEVEREUX. 65 
 
 ance. I like her countenance and behavior. Well, she has 
 a modesty not i' this age, a-dad she has.' Applicable enough 
 eh, boy ! " 
 
 " ' I know her value, sir, and esteem her accordingly,' " an- 
 swered I, out of the same play, which, by dint of long study, I 
 had got by heart. "But, to confess the truth," added I, " I 
 think you might have left out the passage about her modesty." 
 
 " There, now you young chaps are so censorious why 
 'sdeath, sir, you don't think the worse of her virtue, because of 
 her wit ?" 
 
 " Humph ! " 
 
 " Ah, boy when you are my age, you'll know that your 
 demure cats are not the best ; and that reminds me of a little 
 story shall I tell it you, child ? " 
 
 " If it so please you, sir." 
 
 " Zauns where's my snuff-box ? oh, here it is. Well, sir, 
 you shall have the whole thing, from beginning to end. Sed- 
 ley and I were one day conversing together about women. Sid 
 was a very deep fellow in that game no passion you know no 
 love on his own side nothing of the sort all done by rule and 
 compass knew women as well as dice, and calculated the 
 exact moment when his snares would catch them, according to 
 the principles of geometry. D d clever fellow, faith but a 
 confounded rascal : but let it go no farther mum's the 
 word ! must not slander the dead and 'tis only my suspicion, 
 you know, after all. Poor fellow I don't think he was such a 
 rascal ; he gave a beggar an angel once, well, boy, have a 
 pinch ? Well, so I said to Sir Charles, M think you will lose 
 the widow, after all 'Gad I do.' ' Upon what principle of 
 science, Sir William ? ' said he. ' Why, faith, man, she is so 
 modest, you see, and has such a pretty way of blushing.' 
 ' Harkye, friend Devereux,' said Sir Charles, smoothing his 
 collar, and mincing his words musically, as he was wont to do 
 ' harkye, friend Devereux, I will give you the whole experience 
 of my life in one maxim I can answer for its being new, and I 
 think it is profound and that maxim is ' No faith, Morton 
 no, I can't tell thee it is villainous, and then it's so desperately 
 against all the sex." 
 
 " My dear uncle, don't tantalize me so pray tell it me it 
 shall be a secret." 
 
 " No, boy, no it will corrupt thee besides, it will do poor 
 Sid's memory no good. But 'sdeath, it was a most wonderfully 
 shrewd saying i' faith, it was. But zounds Morton I forgot 
 to tell you that I had a letter from the Abbe" to-day."
 
 66 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " Ha ! and when does he return ? "- 
 
 " To-morrow, God willing ! " said the knight with a sigh. 
 
 " So soon, or rather after so long an absence ! Well, I arc 
 glad of it. I wish much to see him before I leave you." 
 
 " Indeed ! " quoth my uncle " you have an advantage over 
 me, then ! But, od'sfish, Morton, how is it that you grew so 
 friendly with the priest before his departure? He used to 
 speak very suspiciously of thee formerly ; and, when I last saw 
 him, he lauded thee to the skies." 
 
 " Why, the clergy of his faith have a habit of defending the 
 strong, and crushing the weak, I believe that's all. He once 
 thought I was dull enough to damn my fortune, and then he 
 had some strange doubts for my soul now he thinks me wise 
 enough to become prosperous, and it is astonishing what a re- 
 spect he has conceived for my principles." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! you have a spice of your uncle's humor in 
 you and, 'Gad, you have no small knowledge of the world, 
 considering you have seen so little of it." 
 
 A hit at the Popish clergy was, in my good uncle's eyes, the 
 exact acme of wit and wisdom. We are always clever with 
 those who imagine we think as they do. To be shallow you 
 must differ with people to be profound you must agree 
 with them. " Why, sir," answered the sage nephew, " you for- 
 get that I have seen more of the world than many of twice my age. 
 Your house has been full of company ever since I have been in 
 it, and you set me to making observations on what I saw before 
 I was thirteen. And then, too, if one is reading books about 
 real life, at the very time one is mixing in it, it is astonishing 
 how naturally one remarks, and how well one remembers." 
 
 " Especially if one has a genius for it, eh, boy ! And then, 
 too, you have read my play turned Horace's Satires into a 
 lampoon upon the boys at school been regularly to assizes 
 during the vacation attended the county-balls, and been a 
 most premature male coquette with the ladies. Od'sfish, boy ! 
 it is quite curious to see how the young sparks of the present 
 day get on with their love-making." 
 
 " Especially if one has a genius for it eh, sir ? " said I. 
 
 " Besides, too," said my uncle ironically, " you have had the 
 Abbess instructions." 
 
 " Ay, and if the priests would communicate to their pupils 
 their experience in frailty, as well as in virtue, how wise they 
 would make us ! " 
 
 " Od'sfish ! Morton, you are quite oracular. How got you 
 that fancy of priests ? by observation in life already ? "
 
 DEVEREUX. 67 
 
 " No, uncle by observation in plays, which you tell me are 
 the mirrors of life you remember what Lee says 
 
 ' ' 'Tis thought 
 
 That earth is more obliged to priests for bodies 
 Than Heaven for souls.' " 
 
 And my uncle laughed, and called me a smart fellow. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Abbe's return a Sword, and a Soliloquy. 
 
 THE next evening when I was sitting alone in my room, the 
 Abbe Montreuil suddenly entered. " Ah, is it you ? welcome ! " 
 cried I. The priest held out his arms, and embraced me in 
 the most paternal manner. 
 
 "It is your friend," said he, "returned at last to bless and 
 congratulate you. Behold my success in your service," and 
 the Abbe produced a long leather case, richly inlaid with gold. 
 
 " Faith, Abbey' said I, " am I to understand that this is a 
 present for your eldest pupil ?" 
 
 " You are," said Montreuil, opening the case, and producing 
 a sword ; the light fell upon the hilt, and I drew back, dazzled 
 with its lustre ; it was covered with stones, apparently of the 
 most costly value. Attached to the hilt was a label of purple 
 velvet, on which, in letters of gold, was inscribed, " To the son 
 of Marshal Devereux, the soldier of France, and the friend of 
 Louis XIV." 
 
 Before I recovered my surprise at this sight, the Abbe said 
 "It was from the King's own hand that I received this sword, 
 and I have authority to inform you, that if ever you wield it in 
 the service of France it will be accompanied by a post worthy 
 of your name." 
 
 " The service of France ! " I repeated ; " why at present, 
 that is the service of an enemy." 
 
 " An enemy only to a part of England ! " said the Abb 
 emphatically ; " perhaps I have overtures to you from other 
 monarchs, and the friendship of the court of France may 
 be synonymous with the friendship of the true sovereign of 
 England." 
 
 There was no mistaking the purport of this speech, and even 
 in the midst of my gratified vanity, I drew back alarmed. The 
 Abbe noted the changed expression of my countenance, and 
 artfully turned the subject to comments on the sword, on which 
 I still gazed with a lover's ardor. Thence he veered to a
 
 68 DEVEREUX. 
 
 description of the grace and greatness of the royal donor he 
 dwelt at length upon the flattering terms in which Louis had 
 spoken of my father, and had inquired concerning myself ; he 
 enumerated all the hopes that the illustrious house, into which 
 my father had first married, expressed for a speedy introduc- 
 tion to his son ; he lingered with an eloquence more savoring 
 of the court than of the cloister, on the dazzling circle which 
 surrounded the French throne ; and when my vanity, my 
 curiosity, my love of pleasure, my ambition, all that are most 
 susceptible, in young- minds, were fully aroused, he suddenly 
 ceased, and wished me a good-night. 
 
 " Stay," said I ; and looking at him more attentively than I 
 had hitherto done, I perceived a change in his external appear- 
 ance, which somewhat startled and surprised me. Montreuil 
 had always hitherto been remarkably plain in his dress ; but 
 he was now richly attired, and by his side hung a rapier, which 
 had never adorned it before. Something in his aspect seemed 
 to suit the alteration in his garb : and whether it was that long 
 absence had effaced enough of the familiarity of his features, to 
 allow me to be more alive than formerly to the real impression 
 they were calculated to produce, or whether a commune with 
 kings and nobles had of late dignified their old expression, as 
 power was said to have clothed the soldier-mien of Cromwell 
 with a monarch's bearing I do not affect to decide; but I 
 thought that, in his high brow and Roman features, the com- 
 pression of his lip, and his calm but haughty air, there was a 
 nobleness, which I acknowledged for the first time. " Stay, 
 my father," said I, surveying him, " arid tell me, if there be no 
 irreverence in the question, whether brocade and a sword are 
 compatible with the laws of the Order of Jesus ?" 
 
 "Policy, Morton," answered Montreuil, "often dispenses 
 with custom ; and the declarations of the Institute provide, 
 with their usual wisdom, for worldly and temporary occasions. 
 Even while the constitution ordains us to discard habits repug- 
 nant to our professions of poverty, the following exception is 
 made : 'Si in occurrenti aliqua occasione, vel necessitate, quis 
 vestibus melioribus, honestis tamen, indueretur.' " * 
 
 " There is now; then, some occasion for a more glittering 
 display than ordinary ?" said I. 
 
 "There is, my pupil," answered Montreuil ; "and whenever 
 you embrace the offer of my friendship made to you more than 
 two years ago, whenever, too, your ambition points to a lofty 
 
 "'But should there chance any occasion or necessity, one may wear better, though 
 *Hll decorous garments. '
 
 DEVEREUX. 69 
 
 and sublime career whenever, to make and unmake kings, 
 and, in the noblest sphere to execute the will of God, indem- 
 nifies you for a sacrifice of petty wishes and momentary 
 passions, I will confide to you a scheme worthy of your ances- 
 tors and yourself." 
 
 With this the priest departed. Left to myself, I revolved 
 his hints, and marvelled at the power he seemed to possess. 
 " Closeted with kings," said I, soliloquizing, " bearing their 
 presents through armed men and military espionage, speaking 
 of empires and their overthrow as of ordinary objects of 
 ambition and he himself a low-born and undignified priest, 
 of a poor though a wise order well, there is more in this than 
 I can fathom ; but I will hesitate before I embark in his dan- 
 gerous and concealed intrigues above all, I will look well ere 
 I hazard my safe heritage of these broad lands in the service of 
 that House which is reported to be ungrateful, and which is 
 certainly exiled." 
 
 After this prudent and notable resolution, I took up the 
 sword re-examined it kissed the hilt once and the blade 
 twice put it under my pillow sent for my valet undrest 
 went to bed fell asleep and dreamt that I was teaching the 
 Marechal de Villars the thrust en seconde. 
 
 But Fate, that arch-gossip, who, like her prototypes on earth, 
 settles all our affairs for us without our knowledge of the matter, 
 had decreed that my friendship with the Abbe" Montreuil 
 should be of very short continuance, and that my adventures 
 on earth should flow through a different channel than, in all 
 probability, they would have done under his spiritual direction. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A mysterious Letter a Duel The Departure of one of the Family. 
 
 THE next morning I communicated to the Abb my inten- 
 tion of proceeding to London. He received it with favor. " I 
 myself," said he, " shall soon meet you there ; my office in 
 your family has expired, and your mother, after so long an ab- 
 sence, will perhaps readily dispense with my spiritual advice to 
 her. But time presses since you depart so soon, give me an 
 audience to-night in your apartment. Perhaps our conversa- 
 tion may be of moment." 
 
 I agreed the hour was fixed, and I left the Abbe to join my 
 uncle and his guests. While I was employing, among them, my
 
 70 DEVEREUX. 
 
 time and genius with equal dignity and profit, one of the serv- 
 ants informed me that a man at the gate wished to see me 
 and alone. 
 
 Somewhat surprised, I followed the servant out of the room 
 into the great hall, and desired him to bid the stranger attend 
 me there. In a few minutes, a small, dark man, dressed between 
 gentility and meanness, made his appearance. He greeted me 
 with great respect, and presented a letter, which, he said, he 
 was charged to deliver into my own hands, " with," he added 
 in a low tone, " a special desire that none should, till I had care- 
 fully read it, be made acquainted with its contents." I was not 
 a little startled by this request ; and, withdrawing to one of the 
 windows, broke the seal. A letter, inclosed in the envelope, in 
 the Abbe's own handwriting, was the first thing that met my 
 eyes. At that instant the Abbe himself rushed into the hall. 
 He cast one hasty look at the messenger, whose countenance 
 evinced something of surprise and consternation at beholding 
 him ; and, hastening up to me, grasped my hand vehemently, 
 and, while his eye dwelt upon the letter I held, cried, " Do not 
 read it not a word not a word, there is poison in it ! " And, 
 so saying, he snatched desperately at the letter. I detained it 
 from him with one hand, and pushing him aside with the other, 
 said 
 
 " Pardon me, Father directly I have read it you shall have 
 that pleasure not till then;" and, as I said this, my eye fall- 
 ing upon the letter, discovered my own name written in two 
 places my suspicions were aroused. I raised my eyes to. the 
 spot where the messenger had stood, with the view of address- 
 ing some question to him respecting his employer, when, to my 
 surprise, I perceived he was already gone ; I had no time, how- 
 ever, to follow him. 
 
 "Boy," said the Abbe, gasping for breath, and still seizing 
 me with his lean, bony hand," boy, give me that letter in- 
 stantly. I charge you not to disobey me." 
 
 " You forget yourself, sir," said I, endeavoring to shake him 
 off, " you forget yourself : there is no longer between us the 
 distinction of pupil and teacher ; and if you have not yet 
 learnt the respect due to my station, suffer me to tell you that 
 it is time you should." 
 
 " Give me the letter, I beseech you," said Montreuil, chang- 
 ing his voice from anger to supplication ; " I ask your pardon 
 for my violence ; the letter does not concern you but me ; there 
 is a secret in those lines which you see are in my handwriting, 
 that implicates my personal safety. Give it me, my dear, dear
 
 DEVEfeEUK. 71 
 
 son your own honor, if not your affection for me, demands 
 that you should." 
 
 I was staggered. His violence had confirmed my suspicions, 
 but his gentleness weakened them. " Besides," thought I, " the 
 handwriting is Ms, and even if my life depended upon reading 
 the letter of another, I do not think my honor would suffer me 
 to do so against his consent-" A thought struck me 
 
 " Will you swear," said I, "that this letter does not concern 
 me?" 
 
 " Solemnly," answered the Abbe", raising his eyes. 
 
 " Will you swear that I am not mentioned in it ? " 
 
 " Upon peril of my soul, I will." 
 
 "Liar traitor perjured blasphemer ! " cried I, in an inex- 
 pressible rage, " look here, and here ! " and I pointed out to 
 the priest various lines in which my name legibly and frequently 
 occurred. A change came over Montreuil's face ; he released 
 my arm and staggered back against the wainscot ; but recover- 
 ing his composure instantaneously, he said, " I forgot, my son, 
 I forgot your name is mentioned, it is true, but with honor- 
 able eulogy, that is all." 
 
 " Bravo, honest Father ! " cried I, losing my fury in admiring 
 surprise at his address "bravo ! However, if that be all, you 
 can have no objection to allow me to read the lines in which 
 my name occurs ; your benevolence cannot refuse me such a 
 gratification as the sight of your written panegyric ! " 
 
 "Count Devereux," said the Abb6 sternly, while his dark 
 face worked with suppressed passion, "this is trifling with me, 
 and I warn you not to push my patience too far. I will have 
 that letter, or " he ceased abruptly, and touched the hilt of 
 his sword. 
 
 "Dare you threaten me?" I said, and the natural fierceness 
 of my own disposition, deepened by vague and strong suspi- 
 cions of some treachery designed against me, spoke in the tones 
 of my voice. 
 
 " Dare I ! " repeated Montreuil, sinking and sharpening his 
 voice into a sort of inward screech. " Dare I ! 'ay, were your 
 whole tribe arrayed against me. Give me the letter, or you 
 will find me now and for ever your most deadly foe ; deadly 
 ay deadly, deadly ! " and he shook his clenched hand at me, 
 with an expression of countenance so malignant and menacing 
 that I drew back involuntarily, and laid my hand on my sword. 
 
 The action seemed to give Montreuil a signal for which he 
 had hitherto waited. " Draw then," he said through his teeth, 
 and unsheathed his rapier.
 
 ^2 DEVEREUX. 
 
 Though surprised at his determination, I was not backward 
 in meeting it. Thrusting the letter in my bosom, I drew my 
 sword in time to parry a rapid and fierce thrust. I had expected 
 easily to master Montreuil, for I had some skill at my weapon; 
 I was deceived I found him far more adroit than myself in 
 the art of offence ; and perhaps it would have fared ill for the 
 hero of this narrative had Montreuil deemed it wise to direct 
 against my life all the science he possessed. But the moment 
 our swords crossed, the constitutional coolness of the man, which 
 rage or fear had for a brief time banished, returned at once, 
 and he probably saw that it would be as dangerous to him to 
 take away the life of his pupil, as to forfeit the paper for which 
 he fought. He, therefore, appeared to bend all his efforts 
 towards disarming me. Whether or not he would have effected 
 this it is hard to say, for my blood was up, and any neglect of 
 my antagonist, in attaining an object very dangerous, when en- 
 gaged with a skilful and quick swordsman, might have sent him 
 to the place from which the prayers of his brethren have (we 
 are bound to believe) released so many thousands of souls. 
 But, meanwhile, the servants, who at first thought the clashing 
 of swords was the wanton sport of some young gallants as yet 
 new to the honor of wearing them, grew alarmed by the con- 
 tinuance of the sound, and flocked hurriedly to the place of 
 contest. At their intrusion, we mutually drew back. Recov- 
 ering my presence of mind, (it was a possession I very easily 
 lost at that time,) I saw the unseemliness of fighting with my 
 preceptor, and a priest. I therefore burst, though awkwardly 
 enough, into a laugh, and, affecting to treat the affair as a 
 friendly trial of skill between the Abbe and myself, resheathed 
 my sword and dismissed the intruders, who, evidently disbe- 
 lieving my version of the story, retreated slowly, and exchang- 
 ing looks. Montreuil, who had scarcely seconded my attempt 
 to gloss over our rencontre, now approached me. 
 
 " Count," he said with a collected and cool voice, "suffer me 
 to request you to exchange three words with me, in a spot less 
 liable than this to interruption." 
 
 "Follow me then ! " said I and I led the way to a part of 
 the grounds which lay remote and sequestered from intrusion. 
 I then turned round, and perceived that the Abbe" had left his 
 sword behind. " How is this ? " I said, pointing to his un- 
 armed side " have you not come hither to renew our engage- 
 ment ? " 
 
 "No!" answered Montreuil,"! repent me of my sudden 
 haste, and I have resolved to deny myself all further possibility
 
 DEVEREUX. 73 
 
 of unseemly warfare. That letter, young man, I still demand 
 from you; I demand it from your own sense of honor and of 
 right it was written by me it was not intended for your eye 
 it contains secrets implicating the lives of others beside my- 
 self ; now read it if you will." 
 
 " You are right, sir," said I, after a short pause ; " there is 
 the letter ; never shall it be said of Morton Devereux that he 
 hazarded his honor to secure his safety. But the tie between 
 us is broken now and for ever ! " 
 
 So saying, I flung down the debated epistle, and strode away. 
 I re-entered the great hall. I saw by one of the windows a 
 sheet of paper I picked it up, and perceived that it was the 
 envelope in which the letter had been enclosed. It contained 
 only these lines, addressed to me in French: 
 
 "A friend of the late Marshal Devereux encloses to his son 
 a letter, the contents of which it is essential for his safety that 
 he should know. 
 
 "C. D. B." 
 
 " Umph ! " said I "a very satisfactory intimation, consider- 
 ing that the son of the late Marshal Devereux is so very well 
 assured that he shall not know one line of the contents of the 
 said letter. But let me see after this messenger ! " and I im- 
 mediately hastened to institute inquiry respecting him. I found 
 that he was already gone ; on leaving the hall he had remounted 
 his horse, and taken his departure. One servant, however, had 
 seen him, as he passed the front court, address a few words to 
 my valet, Desmarais, who happened to be loitering there. I 
 summoned Desmarais and questioned him. 
 
 " The dirty fellow," said the Frenchman, pointing to his 
 spattered stockings with a lachrymose air, "splashed me, by a 
 prance of his horse, from head to foot, and while I was scream- 
 ing for very anguish, he stopped and said, ' Tell the Count 
 Devereux that I was unable to tarry, but that the letter requires 
 no answer.'" 
 
 I consoled Desmarais for his misfortune, and hastened to my 
 uncle with a determination to reveal to him all that had oc- 
 curred. Sir William was in his dressing-room, and his gentle- 
 man was very busy in adorning his wig. I entreated him to 
 dismiss the coiffeur, and then, without much preliminary detail, 
 acquainted him with all that had passed between the Abbe and 
 myself. 
 
 The knight seemed startled when I came to the story of the 
 sword. "'Gad, Sir Count, what have you been doing?" said
 
 74 SEVERED*. 
 
 he ; " know you not that this may be a very ticklish matter ? 
 The king of France is a very great man, to be sure a very 
 great man and a very fine gentleman ; but you will please to 
 remember that we are at war with his Majesty, and I can- 
 not guess how far the accepting such presents may be held 
 treasonable." 
 
 And Sir William shook his head with a mournful significance. 
 "Ah," cried he, at last (when I had concluded my whole story), 
 with a complacent look, " I have not lived at court, and studied 
 human nature, for nothing : and I will wager my best full-bot- 
 tom to a night-cap, that the crafty old fox is as much a Jacob- 
 ite as he is a rogue ! The letter would have proved it, sir it 
 would have proved it ! " 
 
 " But what shall be done now ? " said I ; " will you suffer him 
 to remain any longer in the house ? " 
 
 " Why," replied the knight, suddenly recollecting his rever- 
 ence to the fair sex, " he is your mother's guest, not mine ; we 
 must refer the matter to her. But zauns, sir, with all deference 
 to her ladyship, we cannot suffer our house to be a conspiracy- 
 hatch as well as a popish chapel ; and to attempt your life too 
 the devil ! Od'sfish, boy, I will go to the countess myself, if 
 you will just let Nicholls finish my wig never attend the ladies 
 en deshabille always, with them, take care of your person most, 
 when you most want to display your mind ;" and my uncle 
 ringing a little silver bell on his dressing-table, the sound im- 
 mediately brought Nicholls to his toilet. 
 
 Trusting the cause to the zeal of my uncle, whose hatred to 
 the ecclesiastic would, I knew, be an efficacious adjunct to his 
 diplomatic address, and not unwilling to avoid being myself the 
 person to acquaint my mother with the suspected delinquency 
 of her favorite, I hastened from the knight's apartment in search 
 of Aubrey. He was not in the house. His attendants (for my 
 uncle, with old-fashioned grandeur of respect, suitable to his 
 great wealth and aristocratic temper, allotted to each of us a 
 separate suite of servants as well as of apartments) believed he 
 was in the park. Thither I repaired, and found him, at length, 
 seated by an old tree, with a large book of a religious cast be- 
 fore him, on which his eyes were intently bent. 
 
 " I rejoice to have found thee, my gentle brother," said I, 
 throwing myself on the green turf by his side : " in truth you 
 have chosen a fitting and fair place for study." 
 
 "I have chosen," said Aubrey, " a place meet for the peculiar 
 study I am engrossed in ; for where can we better read of the 
 power and benevolence of God than among the living testi-
 
 DEVEREUX. 75 
 
 monies of both ? Beautiful ! how very beautiful is this happy 
 world ; but I fear,' : added Aubrey, and the glow of his count- 
 enance died away, " I fear that we enjoy it too much." 
 
 " We hold different interpretations of our creed then," said 
 I, " for I esteem enjoyment the best proof of gratitude ; nor do 
 I think we can pay a more acceptable duty to the Father of all 
 Goodness than by showing ourselves sensible of the favors he 
 bestows upon us." 
 
 Aubrey shook his head gently, but replied not. 
 
 "Yes," resumed I, after a pause "yes, it is indeed a glo- 
 rious and fair world which we have for our inheritance. Look, 
 how the sunlight sleeps yonder upon fields covered with golden 
 corn, and seems, like the divine benevolence of which you 
 spoke, to smile upon the luxuriance which its power created. 
 This carpet at our feet, covered with flowers that breathe, 
 sweet as good deeds, to Heaven the stream that breaks 
 through that distant copse, laughing in the light of noon, and 
 sending its voice through the hill and woodland, like a messen- 
 ger of glad tidings the green boughs over our head, vocal 
 with a thousand songs, all inspirations of a joy too exquisite 
 for silence the very leaves, which seem to dance and quiver 
 with delight think you, Aubrey, that these are so sullen as 
 not to return thanks for the happiness they imbibe with being ; 
 what are those thanks but the incense of their joy ? The 
 flowers send it up to heaven in fragrance the air and the wave 
 in music. Shall the heart of man be the only part of His 
 creation that shall dishonor His worship with lamentation and 
 gloom? When the inspired writers call upon us to praise our 
 Creator, do they not say to us ' ^Q joyful in your God ?' " 
 
 " How can we be joyful with the Judgment-day ever before 
 us?" said Aubrey "how can we be joyful," (and here a dark 
 shade crossed his countenance, and his lip trembled with 
 emotion), while the deadly passions of this world plead and 
 rankle at the heart? Oh, none but they who have known the 
 full blessedness of a commune with heaven can dream of the 
 whole anguish and agony of the conscience, when it feels itself 
 sullied by the mire and crushed by the load of earth ! " Aubrey 
 paused, and his words his tone his look made upon me a 
 powerful impression. I was about to answer, when, interrupt- 
 ing me, he said, " Let us talk not of these matters speak to 
 me on more worldly topics." 
 
 *'I sought you," said I, "that I might do so!" and I pro- 
 ceeded to detail to Aubrey as much of my private intercourse 
 with the Abbe as I deemed necessary in order to warn him
 
 76 DEVEREUX. 
 
 from too close a confidence in the wily ecclesiastic. Aubrey 
 listened to me with earnest attention : the affair of the letter 
 the gross falsehood of the priest in denying the mention of my 
 name, in his epistle, evidently dismayed him. " But," said he, 
 after a long silence "but it is not for us, Morton weak, 
 ignorant, inexperienced as we are to judge prematurely of our 
 spiritual pastors. To them also is given a far greater license 
 of conduct than to us and ways enveloped in what to our 
 eyes are mystery and shade ; nay, I know not whether it be 
 much less impious to question the paths of God's chosen, than 
 to scrutinize those of the Deity himself." 
 
 "Aubrey, Aubrey, this is childish !" said I, somewhat moved 
 to anger. "Mystery is always the trick of imposture: God's 
 chosen should be distinguished from their flock only by superior 
 virtue, and not by a superior privilege in deceit." 
 
 "But," said Aubrey, pointing to a passage in the book before 
 him, "see what a preacher of the word has said!" and 
 Aubrey recited one of the most dangerous maxims in priest- 
 craft, as reverently as if he were quoting from the Scripture 
 itself. ' The nakedness of truth should never be too openly 
 exposed to the eyes of the vulgar. It was wisely feigned, by 
 the ancients, that Truth did lie concealed in a well ! " 
 
 "Yes," said I, with enthusiasm, "but that well is like the 
 holy stream at Dodona, which has the gift of enlightening 
 those who seek it, and the power of illumining every torch 
 which touches the surface of its water ! " 
 
 Whatever answer Aubrey might have made was interrupted 
 by my uncle, who appeared approaching towards us with 
 unusual satisfaction depicted on his comely countenance. 
 
 " Well, boys, well," said he, when he came within hearing 
 "a holyday for you ! Od'sfish and a holier day than my old 
 house has known since its former proprietor, Sir Hugo, of 
 valorous memory, demolished the nunnery, of which some re- 
 mains yet stand on yonder eminence. Morton, my man of 
 might, the thing is done the court is purified the wicked one 
 is departed. Look here, and be as happy as I am at our release ;" 
 and he threw me a note in Montreuil's writing : 
 "To SIR WILLIAM DEVEREUX, KT.: 
 
 "My Honored Friend : In consequence of a dispute between 
 your eldest nephew, Count Morton Devereux, and myself, in 
 which he desired me to remember, not only that our former 
 relationship of tutor and pupil was at an end, but that friend- 
 ship for his person was incompatible with the respect due to 
 his superior station, I can neither so far degrade the dignity of
 
 DEVEREUX. 77 
 
 letters, nor, above all, so meanly debase the sanctity of my divine 
 profession, as any longer to remain beneath your hospitable 
 roof, a guest not only unwelcome to, but insulted by, your 
 relation and apparent heir. Surfer me to offer you my gratitude 
 for the favors you have hitherto bestowed on me, and to bid 
 you farewell for ever. 
 
 " I have the honor to be, 
 
 With the most profound respect, etc., 
 
 "JULIAN MONTREUIL." 
 
 "Well, sir, what say you? "cried my uncle, stamping his 
 cane firmly on the ground, when I had finished reading the 
 letter, and had transmitted it to Aubrey. 
 
 "That the good Abbe- has displayed his usual skill in com- 
 position. And my mother? Is she imbued with our opinion 
 of his priestship?" 
 
 " Not exactly, I fear. However, Heaven bless her, she is 
 too soft to say ' nay.' But those Jesuits are so smooth-tongued 
 to women. 'Gad, they threaten damnation with such an irre- 
 sistible air, that they are as much like William the Conqueror 
 as Edward the Confessor. Ha! Master Aubrey, have you be- 
 come amorous of the old Jacobite, that you sigh over his 
 crabbed writing, as if it were a billet-doux ?" 
 
 " There seems a great deal of feeling in what he says, sir," 
 said Aubrey, returning the letter to my uncle. 
 
 " Feeling !" cried the knight; "ay, the reverend gentry al- 
 ways have a marvellously tender feeling for their own interest 
 eh, Morton ?" 
 
 " Right, dear sir," said I, wishing to change a subject which 
 I knew might hurt Aubrey ; "but should we not join yon party 
 of dames and damsels? I see they are about to make a water 
 excursion." 
 
 " 'Sdeath, sir, with all my heart," cried the good-natured 
 knight : "I love to see the dear creatures amuse themselves ; 
 for, to tell you the truth, Morton," said he, sinking his voice 
 into a knowing whisper, " the best thing to keep them from 
 playing the devil is to encourage them in playing the fool ! " 
 and, laughing heartily at the jest he had purloined from one 
 of his favorite writers, Sir William led the way to the water- 
 party.
 
 78 DEVEREUX. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Being a Chapter of Trifles. 
 
 THE Abbe disappeared ! It is astonishing how well every- 
 body bore his departure. My mother scarcely spoke on the 
 subject : but, along the irrefragable smoothness of her tempera- 
 ment, all things glided without resistance to their course, or 
 trace where they had been. Gerald, who, occupied solely in 
 rural sports or rustic loves, seldom mingled in the festivities of 
 the house, was equally silent on the subject. Aubrey looked 
 grieved for a day or two ; but his countenance soon settled into 
 its customary and grave softness ; and, in less than a week, so 
 little was the Abbe spoken of or missed that you would scarcely 
 have imagined Julian Montreuil had ever passed the threshold 
 of our gate. The oblivion of one buried is nothing to the ob- 
 livion of one disgraced. 
 
 Meanwhile, I pressed for my departure ; and, at length, the 
 day was finally fixed. Ever since that conversation with Lady 
 Hasselton, which has been set before the reader, that lady had 
 lingered and lingered though the house was growing empty, 
 and London, in all seasons, was, according to her, better than 
 the country in any until the Count Devereux, with that ami- 
 able modesty which so especially characterized him, began to 
 suspect that the Lady Hasselton lingered on his account. This 
 emboldened that bashful personage to press in earnest for the 
 fourth seat in the beauty's carriage, which, we have seen in the 
 conversation before mentioned, had been previously offered to 
 him in jest. After a great affectation of horror at the proposal, 
 the Lady Hasselton yielded. She had always, she said, been 
 dotingly fond of children, and it was certainly very shocking to 
 send such a chit as the little Count to London by himself. 
 
 My uncle was charmed with the arrangement. The beauty 
 was a peculiar favorite of his, and, in fact, he was sometimes 
 pleased to hint that he had private reasons for love towards her 
 mother's daughter. Of the truth of this insinuation I am, how- 
 ever, more than somewhat suspicious, and believe it was only a 
 little ruse of the good knight, in order to excuse the vent of 
 those kindly affections with which (while the heartless tone of 
 the company his youth had frequented made him ashamed to 
 own it) his breast overflowed. There was in Lady Hassclton's 
 familiarity her ease of manner a certain good-nature mingled 
 with her affectation, and a gaiety of spirit, which never flagged
 
 DEVEREUX. 79 
 
 something greatly calculated to win favor with a man of my 
 uncle's temper. 
 
 An old gentleman who filled in her family the office of " the 
 chevalier" in a French one ; viz., who told stories, riot too long, 
 and did not challenge you for interrupting them who had a 
 good air, and unexceptionable pedigree a turn for wit, litera- 
 ture, note-writing, and the management of lap-dogs who could 
 attend Madame to auctions, plays, court, and the puppet-show 
 who had a right to the best company, but would, on a signal, 
 give up his seat to any one the pretty capricieuse whom he 
 served might select from the worst in short a very useful, 
 charming personage, "vastly" liked by all, and "prodigiously" 
 respected by none ; this gentleman, I say, by name Mr. Lovell, 
 had attended her ladyship in her excursion to Devereux Court. 
 Besides him there came also a widow lady, a distant relation, 
 with one eye and a sharp tongue the Lady Needleham, whom 
 the beauty carried about with her as a sort of gouvcrnante or 
 duenna. These excellent persons made my cotnpagnons de voy- 
 age, and filled the remaining complements of the coach. To 
 say truth, and to say nothing of my tendressc for the Lady Has- 
 selton, I was very anxious to escape the ridicule of crawling up 
 to town, like a green beetle, in my uncle's verdant chariot, with 
 the four Flanders mares trained not to exceed two miles an 
 hour. And my Lady Hasselton's/V7vz/<? railleries for she was 
 really well bred, and made no jest of my uncle's antiquities of 
 taste, in his presence, at least had considerably heightened 
 my intuitive dislike to that mode of transporting myself to the 
 metropolis. The day before my departure, Gerald, for the first 
 time, spoke of it. 
 
 Glancing towards the mirror, which gave in full contrast the 
 magnificent beauty of his person, and the smaller proportions 
 and plainer features of my own, he said, with a sneer, " Your 
 appearance must create a wonderful sensation in town." 
 
 " No doubt of it," said I, taking his words literally, and ar- 
 raying my laced cravat with the air of a petit-maitre. 
 
 "What a wit the Count has!" whispered the Duchess of 
 Lackland who had not yet given up all hope of the elder 
 brother. 
 
 " Wit," said the Lady Hasselton : " poor child, he is a per- 
 fect simpleton ! "
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Mother and Son Virtue Should be the Sovereign~of the Feelings, not 
 their Destroyer. 
 
 I TOOK the first opportunity to escape from the good com- 
 pany who were so divided in opinion as to my mental accom- 
 plishments, and repaired to my mother ; for whom, despite of 
 her evenness of disposition, verging towards insensibility, I felt 
 a powerful and ineffaceable affection. Indeed, if purity -of 
 life, rectitude of intentions, and fervor of piety, can win love, 
 none ever deserved it more than she. It was a pity that, with 
 such admirable qualities, she had not more diligently cultivated 
 her affections. The seed was not wanting ; but it had been 
 neglected. Originally intended for the veil, she had been taught, 
 early in life, that much feeling was synonymous with much sin ; 
 and she had so long and so carefully repressed in her heart every 
 attempt of the forbidden fruit to put forth a single blossom, that 
 the soil seemed at last to have become incapable of bearing it. 
 If, in one corner of this barren, but sacred, spot, some green 
 and tender verdure of affection did exist, it was, with a partial 
 and petty reserve for my twin-brother, kept exclusive, and 
 consecrated to Aubrey. His congenial habits of pious silence 
 and rigid devotion his softness of temper his utter freedom 
 from all boyish excesses, joined to his almost angelic beauty 
 a quality which, in no female heart, is ever without its value 
 were exactly calculated to attract her sympathy, and worlf them- 
 selves into her love. Gerald was also regular in his habits, atten- 
 tive to devotion, and had, from an early period, been high in 
 the favor of her spiritual director. Gerald, too, if he had not 
 the delicate and dreamlike beauty of Aubrey, possessed attrac- 
 tions of more masculine and decided order ; and for Gerald, 
 therefore, the Countess gave the little of love that she could 
 spare from Aubrey. To me she manifested the most utter in- 
 difference. My difficult and fastidious temper my sarcastic 
 turn of mind my violent and headstrong passions my daring, 
 reckless, and, when roused, almost ferocious nature all, es- 
 pecially revolted the even and polished and quiescent charac- 
 ter of my maternal parent. The little extravagances of my 
 childhood seemed to her pure and inexperienced mind, the 
 crimes of a heart naturally distorted and evil ; my jesting vein, 
 which, though it never, even in the wantonness of youth, at- 
 tacked the substances of good, seldom respected its semblances 
 and its forms, she considered as the effusions of malignity ; and
 
 even the bursts of love, kindness, and benevolence, which were 
 by no means infrequent in my wild and motley character, were 
 so foreign to her stillness of temperament that they only revolted 
 her by their violence, instead of affecting her by their warmth. 
 
 Nor did she like me the better for the mutual understanding 
 between my uncle and myself. On the contrary, shocked by 
 the idle and gay turn of the knight's conversation, the frivol- 
 ities of his mind, and his heretical disregard for the forms of 
 the religious sect which she so zealously espoused, she was 
 utterly insensible to the points which redeemed and ennobled 
 his sterling and generous character utterly obtuse to his 
 warmth of heart his overflowing kindness of disposition his 
 charity his high honor his justice of principle, that nothing 
 save benevolence could warp and the shrewd, penetrating 
 sense, which, though often clouded by foibles and humorous 
 eccentricity, still made the stratum of his intellectual compo- 
 sition. Nevertheless, despite her prepossessions against us 
 both, there was in her temper something so gentle, meek, and 
 un-upbraiding, that even the sense of injustice lost its sling, 
 and one could not help loving the softness of her character, 
 while one was most chilled by its frigidity. Anger, hope, fear, 
 the faintest breath or sign of passion, never seemed to stir the 
 breezeless languor of her feelings ; and quiet was so inseparable 
 from her image that I have almost thought, like that people 
 described by Herodotus, her very sleep could never be dis- 
 turbed by dreams. 
 
 Yes ! how fondly, how tenderly I loved her ! What tears^- 
 secret, but deep bitter, but unreproaching have I retired to 
 shed, when I caught her cold and unaffectionate glance. How 
 (unnoticed and uncared for) have I watched, and prayed, and 
 wept, without her door, when a transitory sickness or suffering 
 detained her within ; and how, when stretched myself upon the 
 feverish bed, to which my early weakness of frame often con- 
 demned me, how have I counted the moments to her punctil- 
 ious and brief visit, and started as I caught her footstep, and 
 felt my heart leap within me as she approached ; and then, as 
 I heard her cold tone, and looked upon her unmoved face, 
 how bitterly have I turned away with all that repressed 
 and crushed affection which was construed into sullenness or 
 disrespect. O mighty and enduring force of early associations, 
 that almost seems, in its unconquerable strength, to partake of 
 an innate prepossession, that binds the son to the mother, who 
 concealed him in her womb, and purchased life for him with 
 the travail of death ! fountain of filial love, which coldness
 
 82 DEVEREUX. 
 
 cannot freeze, nor injustice embitter, nor pride divert into fresh 
 channels, nor time, and the hot suns of our toiling manhood, 
 exhaust even at this moment, how livingly do you gush upon 
 my heart, and water with your divine waves the memories 
 that yet flourish amidst the sterility of years ! 
 
 I approached the apartments appropriated to my mother I 
 knocked at her door ; one of her women admitted me ; the 
 Countess was sitting on a high-backed chair, curiously adorned 
 with tapestry. Her feet, which were remarkable for their 
 beauty, were upon a velvet cushion ; three handmaids stood 
 round her, and she herself was busily employed in a piece of 
 delicate embroidery, an art in which she eminently excelled. 
 
 " The Count madam ! " said the woman who had admitted 
 me, placing a chair beside my mother, and then retiring to 
 join her sister maidens. 
 
 " Good-day to you, my son," said the Countess, lifting her 
 eyes for a moment, and then dropping them again upon her 
 work. 
 
 "I have come to seek you, dearest mother, as I know not, if, 
 among the crowd of guests and amusements which surround 
 us, I shall enjoy another opportunity of having a private con- 
 versation with you will it please you to dismiss your women ? " 
 
 My mother again lifted up her eyes " And why, my son ? 
 surely there can be nothing between us which requires their 
 absence ; what is your reason ?" 
 
 " I leave you to-morrow, madam ; is it strange that a son 
 should wish to see his mother alone before his departure ? " 
 
 " By no means, Morton ; but your absence will not be very 
 long, will it ? " 
 
 "Forgive my importunity, dear mother but will you dismiss 
 your attendants ? " 
 
 "If you wish it, certainly; but I dislike feeling alone, 
 especially in these large rooms ; nor do I think our being un- 
 attended quite consistent with our rank ; however, I never con 
 tradict you, my son," and the Countess directed her women to 
 wait in the anteroom. 
 
 "Well, Morton, what is your wish? " 
 
 " Only to bid you farewell, and to ask if London con- 
 tains nothing which you will commission me to obtain for 
 
 you! 
 
 The Countess again raised her eyes from her work. " I am 
 greatly obliged to you, my dear son ; this is a very delicate 
 attention on your part. I am informed that stomachers are 
 worn a thought less pointed than they were. I care not, you
 
 DEVEREUX. 83 
 
 well know, for such vanities ; but respect for the memory of 
 your illustrious father renders me desirous to retain a seemly 
 appearance to the world, and my women shall give you written 
 instructions thereon to Madame Tourville she lives in St. 
 James's Street, and is the only person to be employed in these 
 matters. She is a woman who has known misfortune, and 
 appreciates the sorrowful and subdued tastes of those whom 
 an exalted station has not preserved from like afflictions. So, 
 you go to-morrow will you get me the scissors, they are on 
 the ivory table, yonder ? When do you return J " 
 
 " Perhaps never ! " said I abruptly. 
 
 " Never, Morton ; how singular why?" 
 
 " I may join the army and be killed." 
 
 " I hope not. Dear, how cold it is will you shut the win- 
 dow ? pray forgive my troubling you, but you would send 
 away the women. Join the army, you say? it is a very dan- 
 gerous profession your poor father might be alive now but for 
 having embraced it ; nevertheless, in a righteous cause, under 
 the Lord of Hosts, there is great glory to be obtained beneath 
 its banners. Alas, however, for its private evils ! alas, for the 
 orphan and the widow ! You will be sure, my dear son, to give 
 the note to Madame Tourville herself ? her assistants have not 
 her knowledge of my misfortunes, nor indeed of my exact pro- 
 portions ; and at my age, and in my desolate state, I would fain 
 be decorous in these things and that reminds me of dinner. 
 Have you aught else to say, Morton ? " 
 
 "Yes!" said I, suppressing my emotions "yes, mother! do 
 bestow on me one warm wish, one kind word, before we part 
 see I kneel for your blessing will you not give it me ?" 
 
 " Bless you, my child bless you ! look you now I have dropt 
 my needle ! " 
 
 I rose hastily bowed profoundly (my mother returned the 
 courtesy with the grace peculiar to herself) and withdrew. I 
 hurried into the great drawing-room found Lady Needleham 
 alone rushed out in despair encountered the Lady Hasselton, 
 and coquetted with her the rest of the evening. Vain hope ! to 
 forget one's real feelings by pretending those one never felt ! 
 
 The next morning, then, after suitable adieux to all (Gerald 
 excepted) whom I left behind after some tears too from my 
 uncle, which, had it not been for the presence of the Lady Has- 
 selton, I could have returned with interest and after a long 
 caress to his dog Ponto, which now, in parting with that dear 
 old man, seemed to me as dog never seemed before, I hurried 
 into the Beauty's carriage, bade farewell forever to the Rubicon
 
 84 
 
 of Life, and commenced my career of manhood and citizenship 
 by learning, under the tuition of the prettiest coquette of her 
 time, the dignified duties of a Court Gallant and a Town Beau. 
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Hero in London Pleasure is often the Shortest, as it is the Earliest 
 Road to Wisdom, and we may say of the World what Zeal-of-the-Land- 
 Busy says of the Pig-Booth, " We Escape so much of the Other Vanities 
 by our Early Entering." 
 
 IT had, when I first went to town, just become the fashion for 
 young men of fortune to keep house, and to give their bachelor 
 establishments the importance hitherto reserved for the house- 
 hold of a Benedict. 
 
 Let the reader figure to himself a suite of apartments mag- 
 nificently furnished, in the vicinity of the court. An anteroom 
 is crowded with divers persons, all messengers in the various ne- 
 gotiations of pleasure. There, a French valet that inestimable 
 valet, Jean Desmarais sitting over a small fire, was watching the 
 operations of a coffee-pot, and conversing, in a mutilated attempt 
 at the language of our nation, though with the enviable fluency 
 of his own, with the various loiterers who were beguiling the 
 hours they were obliged to wait for an audience of the master 
 himself, by laughing at the master's Gallic representative. There 
 stood a tailor with his books of patterns just imported from 
 Paris that modern Prometheus, who makes man what he is ! 
 Next to him a tall, gaunt fellow, in a coat covered with tarnished 
 lace, a night-cap wig, and a large whip in his hands, comes to 
 vouch for the pedigree and excellence of the three horses he in- 
 tends to dispose of, out of pure love and amity for the buyer. 
 By the window stood a thin, starveling poet, who, like the gram- 
 marian of Cos, might have put lead in his pockets to prevent 
 being blown away, had he not, with a more paternal precaution, 
 put so much in his works that he had left none to spare. Ex- 
 cellent trick of the times, when ten guineas can purchase every 
 virtue under the sun, and when an author thinks to vindicate 
 the sins of his book by proving the admirable qualities of the 
 paragon to whom it is dedicated.* There, with an air of su 
 
 * Thank Heaven, for the honor of literature, nous WOKS (hanftf tout ctlal ED,
 
 DfcVEREUX. 85 
 
 percilious contempt upon his smooth cheeks, a page, in purple 
 and silver, sat upon the table, swinging his legs to and fro, and 
 big with all the reflected importance of a billet-doux. There 
 stood the pert haberdasher, with his box of silver-fringed gloves, 
 and lace which Diana might have worn. At that time there was 
 indeed no enemy to female chastity like the former article of 
 man-millinery the delicate whiteness of the glove, the starry 
 splendor of the fringe, were irresistible, and the fair Adorna, 
 in poor Lee's tragedy of Caesar Borgia, is far from the only 
 lady who has been killed by a pair of gloves. 
 
 Next to the haberdasher, dingy and dull of aspect, a book- 
 hunter bent beneath the load of old works gathered from stall 
 and shed, and about to be re-sold according to the price ex- 
 acted from all literary gallants, who affect to unite the fine gentle- 
 man with the profound scholar. A little girl, whose brazen 
 face and voluble tongue betrayed the growth of her intellect- 
 ual faculties, leant against the wainscot, and repeated, in the 
 anteroom, the tart repartees which her mistress (the most cele- 
 brated actress of the day) uttered on the stage ; while a stout, 
 sturdy, bull-headed gentleman, in a gray surtout and a black 
 wig, mingled with the various voices of the motley group the 
 gentle phrases of Hockley in the Hole, from which place of 
 polite merriment he came charged with a message of invitation. 
 While such were the inmates of the anteroom, what picture shall 
 we draw of the salon and its occupant ? 
 
 A table was covered with books, a couple of fencing foils, a 
 woman's mask, and a profusion of letters; a scarlet cloak, richly 
 laced, hung over, trailing on the ground. Upon a slab of mar- 
 ble lay a hat, looped with diamonds, a sword, and a lady's lute. 
 Extended upon a sofa, loosely robed in a dressing gown of black 
 velvet, his shirt collar unbuttoned, his stockings ungarlered, 
 his own hair (undressed and released for a brief interval from 
 the false locks universally worn) waving from his forehead in 
 short yet dishevelled curls, his whole appearance stamped with 
 the morning negligence which usually follows midnight dissi- 
 pation, lay a young man of about nineteen years. His features 
 were neither handsome nor ill-favored, and his stature was small, 
 slight, and somewhat insignificant, but not, perhaps, ill-formed 
 either for active enterprise or for muscular effort. Such, reader, 
 is the picture of the young prodigal who occupied the apart- 
 ments I have described, and such (though somewhat flattered 
 by partiality) is a portrait of Morton Devereux, six months after 
 his arrival in town. 
 
 The door was suddenly thrown open with that unhesitating
 
 86 DEVEREUX. 
 
 rudeness by which our friends think it necessary to signify the 
 extent of their familiarity; and a young man of about eight-and- 
 tvventy, richly dressed, and of a countenance in which a dissipated 
 nonchalance and an aristocratic hauteur seemed to struggle for 
 mastery, abruptly entered. 
 
 " What! ho, my noble royster," cried he, flinging himself upon 
 a chair "still suffering from St. John's Burgundy ! Fie, fie 
 upon your apprenticeship ! why, before I had served half your 
 time, I could take my three bottles as easily as the sea took the 
 good ship ' Revolution,' swallow them down with a gulp, and 
 never show the least sign of them the next morning !" 
 
 "I readily believe you, most magnanimous Tarleton. Provi- 
 dence gives to each of its creatures different favors to one 
 wit to the other a capacity for drinking. A thousand pities 
 that they are never united ! " 
 
 " So bitter, Count ! ah, what will ever cure you of sarcasm ? " 
 
 " A wise man by conversion, or fools by satiety." 
 
 " Well, I dare say that is witty enough, but I never admire 
 fine things of a morning. I like letting my faculties live till 
 night in a deshabille let us talk easily and sillily of the affairs 
 of the day. Imprimis, will you stroll to the New Exchange ? 
 there is a black eye there that measures out ribbons, and my 
 green ones long to flirt with it." 
 
 "With all my heart and in return you shall accompany me 
 to Master. Powell's puppet show." 
 
 "You speak as wisely as Solomon himself in the puppet-show. 
 I own that I love that sight ; 'tis a pleasure to the littleness of 
 human nature to see great things abased by mimicry kings 
 moved by bobbins, and the pomps of the earth personated by 
 Punch." 
 
 "But how do you like sharing the mirth of the groundlings, 
 the filthy plebeians, and letting them see how petty are those 
 distinctions which you value so highly, by showing them how 
 heartily you can laugh at such distinctions yourself ? Allow, my 
 superb Coriolanus, that one purchases pride by the loss of con- 
 sistency." 
 
 " Ah, Devereux, you poison my enjoyment by the mere word 
 'plebeian ! ' Oh, what a beastly thing is a common person ! a 
 shape of the trodden clay without any alloy a compound of 
 dirty clothes bacon breaths, villainous smells, beggarly coward- 
 ice, and cattish ferocity. Pah, Devereux! rub civet on the very 
 thought ! " 
 
 "Yet they will laugh to-day at the same things you will, and 
 'consequently there would be a most flattering congeniality be
 
 DEVEREUX. 87 
 
 tween you. Emotion, whether of ridicule, anger, or sorrow 
 whether raised at a puppet-show, a funeral, or a battle is your 
 grandest of levellers. The man who would be always superior 
 should be always apathetic." 
 
 "Oracular, as usual, Count, but, hark! the clock gives 
 tongue. One, by the Lord ! will you not dress ? " 
 
 And I rose and dressed. We passed through the anteroom, 
 my attendant assistants in the art of wasting money drew up in 
 a row. 
 
 " Pardon me, gentlemen," said I, (' Gentlemen, indeed! ' cried 
 Tarleton,) "for keeping you so long. Mr. Snivelship, your 
 waistcoats are exquisite favor me by conversing with my valet 
 on the width of the lace for my liveries he has my instruc- 
 tions. Mr. Jockleton, your horses shall be tried to-morrow at 
 one. Ay, Mr. Rymer, I beg you a thousand pardons I beseech 
 you to forgive the ignorance of my rascals in suffering a gentle- 
 man of your merit to remain for a moment unattended to. I 
 have read your ode it is splendid the ease of Horace, with 
 the fire of Pindar your Pegasus never touches the earth, 
 and yet in his wildest excesses you curb him with equal grace 
 and facility I object, sir, only to your dedication it is too 
 flattering." 
 
 "By no means, my Lord Count, it fits you to a hair." 
 
 " Pardon me," interrupted I, "and allow me to transfer the 
 honor to Lord Halifax he loves men of merit he loves also 
 their dedications. I will mention it to him to-morrow every- 
 thing you say of me will suit him exactly. You will oblige me 
 with a copy of your poem directly it is printed, and suffer me 
 to pay your bookseller for it now, and through your friendly 
 mediation ; adieu ! " 
 
 "Oh, Count, this is too generous." 
 
 " A letter for me, my pretty page ? Ah ! tell her ladyship I 
 shall wait upon her commands at Powell's time will move with 
 a tortoise speed till I kiss her hands. Mr. Fribbleden, your 
 gloves would fit the giants at Guildhall my valet will furnish 
 you with my exact size you will see to the legitimate breadth of 
 the fringe. My little beauty, you are from Mrs. Bracegirdle 
 the play shall succeed I have taken seven boxes Mr. St. John 
 promises his influence. Say, therefore, my Hebe, that the thing 
 is certain, and let me kiss thee, thou hast dew on thy lip already. 
 Mr. Thumpem, you are a fine fellow, and deserve to be encour- 
 aged ; I will see that the next time your head is broken it shall 
 be broken fairly; but I will not patronize the bear consider 
 that peremptory. What, Mr, Bookworm again ! I hope you
 
 88 DEVEREUX. 
 
 have succeeded better this time the old songs had an autumn 
 fit upon them, and had lost the best part of their leaves and 
 Plato had mortgaged one-half his republic, to pay, I suppose, 
 the exorbitant sum you thought proper to set upon the other. 
 As for Diogenes Laertius, and his philosophers " 
 
 " Pish ! " interrupted Tarleton ; " are you going, by your 
 theoretical treatises on philosophy, to make me learn the practical 
 part of it, and prate upon learning while I am supporting myself 
 with patience ? " 
 
 " Pardon me ! Mr. Bookworm you will deposit your load, 
 and visit me to-morrow at an earlier hour. And now, Tarleton, 
 I am at your service." 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Gay Scenes and Conversations The New Exchange and the Puppet- 
 show The Actor, the Sexton, and the Beauty. 
 
 " WELL, Tarleton," said I, looking round that mart of millinery 
 and love-making, which, so celebrated in the reign of Charles II., 
 still preserved the shadow of its old renown in that of Anne 
 " well, here we are upon the classical ground so often com- 
 memorated in the comedies which our chaste grandmothers 
 thronged to see. Here we can make appointments, while we 
 profess to buy gloves, and should our mistress tarry too long, 
 beguile our impatience by a flirtation with her milliner. Is there 
 not a breathing air of gaiety about the place? does it not still 
 smack of the Ethereges and Sedleys ?" 
 
 " Right," said Tarleton, leaning over a counter and amorously 
 eyeing the pretty coquette to whom it belonged while, with the 
 coxcombry then in fashion, he sprinkled the long curls that 
 touched his shoulders with a fragrant shower from a bottle of 
 jessamine water upon the counter " right ; saw you ever such 
 an eye ? Have you snuff of the true scent, my beauty ? foh ! 
 this is for the nostril of a Welsh parson choleric and hot, my 
 beauty pulverized horseradish why, it would make a nose of 
 the coldest constitution imaginable sneeze like a washed school- 
 boy on a Saturday night. Ah, this is better, my princess there is 
 some courtesy in this snuff it flatters the brain like a poet's 
 dedication. Right, Devereux, right, there is something infectious 
 in the atmosphere ; one catches good-humor as easily as if it 
 were cold. Shall we stroll on ? my Clelia is on the other side 
 of the Exchange. You were speaking of the play writers what 
 a pity that our Ethereges and Wycherleys should be so frank in
 
 DEVEREUX. 89 
 
 their gallantry, that the prudish public already begins to look 
 shy on them. They have a world of wit ! " 
 
 " Ay," said I ; " and, as my good uncle would say, a world of 
 knowledge of human nature, viz., of the worst part of it. But 
 they are worse than merely licentious they are positively villain- 
 ous pregnant with the most redemptionless scoundrelism, 
 cheating, lying, thieving, and fraud ; their .humor debauches 
 the whole moral system they are like the Sardinian herb they 
 make you laugh, it is true but they poison you in the act. But 
 who comes here ?." 
 
 "Oh, honest Coll ! Ah, Gibber, how goes it with you?" 
 
 The person thus addressed was a man of about the middle 
 age very grotesquely attired and with a periwig preposter- 
 ously long. His countenance (which, in its features, was rather 
 comely) was stamped with an odd mixture of liveliness, im- 
 pudence, and a coarse,yet not unjoyous spirit of reckless debauch- 
 ery. He approached us with a saunter, and saluted Tarleton 
 with an air servile enough, in spite of an affected familiarity. 
 
 " What think you," resumed my companion, " we were con- 
 versing upon ?" 
 
 " Why, indeed, Mr. Tarleton," answered Gibber, bowing very 
 low, " unless it were the exquisite fashion of your waistcoat or 
 your success with my Lady Duchess, I know not what to guess." 
 
 " Pooh, man," said Tarleton haughtily, " none of your com- 
 pliments ;" and then added, in a milder tone, " No, Colley, 
 we were abusing immoralities that existed on the stage, until 
 thou, by the light of thy virtuous example, didst undertake to 
 reform it." 
 
 " Why," rejoined Gibber, with an air of mock sanctity, " Heaven 
 be praised, I have pulled out some of the weeds from our theatrical 
 parterre " 
 
 " Hear you that, Count ? Does he not look a pretty fellow for 
 a censor ?" 
 
 " Surely," said Gibber, " ever since Dicky Steele has set up 
 for a saint, and assumed the methodistical twang, some hopes 
 of conversion may be left even for such reprobates as myself. 
 Where, may I ask, will Mr. Tarleton drink to-night?" 
 
 " Not with thee, Coll. The Saturnalia don't happen every 
 day. Rid us now of thy company; but stop, I will do thee a 
 pleasure know you this gentleman?" 
 I have not that extreme honor." 
 
 " Know a Count, then ! Count Devereux, demean yourself 
 by sometimes acknowledging Colley Gibber, a rare fellow at a 
 Bong, a bottle, and a message to an actress ; a lively rascal enough,
 
 90 DEVEREUX. 
 
 but without the goodness to be loved or the independence to be 
 respected." 
 
 " Mr. Gibber," said I, rather hurt at Tarleton's speech, though 
 the object of it seemed to hear this description with the most 
 unruffled composure " Mr. Gibber, I am happy, and proud of an 
 introduction to the author of the 'Careless Husband.' Here is 
 my address ; oblige me with a visit at your leisure." 
 
 " How could you be so galling to the poor devil?" said I, 
 when Gibber, with a profusion of bows and compliments, had 
 left us to ourselves. 
 
 " Ah, hang him a low fellow, who pins all his happiness to 
 the skirts of the quality, is proud of being despised, and that 
 which would excruciate the vanity of others only flatters his. And 
 now for my Clelia." 
 
 After my companion had amused himself with a brief flirtation 
 with a young lady who affected a most edifying demureness, we 
 left the Exchange, and repaired to the Puppet-show. 
 
 On entering the Piazza, in which, as I am writing for the next 
 century, it may be necessary to say that Punch held his court, we 
 saw a tall, thin fellow loitering under the columns, and exhibit- 
 ing a countenance of the most ludicrous discontent. There 
 was an insolent arrogance about Tarleton's good-nature which 
 always led him to consult the whim of the moment at the expense 
 of every other consideration, especially if the whim, referred to a 
 member of the canaille ; whom my aristocratic friend esteemed 
 as a base part of the exclusive and despotic property of gentlemen. 
 
 "Egad, Devereux," said he, "do you see that fellow? he has 
 the audacity to affect spleen. Faith, I thought melancholy 
 was the distinguishing patent of nobility we will smoke him." 
 And, advancing towards the man of gloom, Tarleton touched 
 him with the end of his cane. The man started and turned 
 round. "Pray, sirrah," said Tarleton coldly, "pray who the 
 devil are you, that you presume to look discontented ? " 
 
 " Why, sir," said the man, good-humoredly enough, " I have 
 some right to be angry." 
 
 " I doubt it, my friend," said Tarleton. "What is your com- 
 plaint? a rise in the price of tripe, or a drinking wife ? those, 
 I take it, are the sole misfortunes incidental to your condition." 
 
 "If that be the case," said I, observing a cloud on our new 
 friend's brow, "shall we heal thy sufferings? Tell us thy com- 
 plaints, and we will prescribe thee a silver specific ; there is a 
 sample of our skill." 
 
 "Thank you humbly, gentlemen," said the man, pocketing 
 the money, and clearing his countenance; " and, seriously, mine
 
 DEVEREUX. 91 
 
 is an uncommonly hard case. I was, till within the last few 
 weeks, the under-sexton of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and my 
 duty was that of ringing the bells for daily prayers : but a man 
 of Belial came hitherwards, set up a puppet-show, and, 
 timing the hours of his exhibition with a wicked sagacity, made 
 the bell I rang for church serve as a summons to Punch, so, 
 gentlemen, that whenever your humble servant began to pull 
 for the Lord, his perverted congregation began to flock to the 
 devil ; and, instead of being an instrument for saving souls, I 
 was made the innocent means of destroying them. Oh, gen- 
 tlemen, it was a shocking thing to tug away at the rope till the 
 sweat ran down one, for four shillings a week ; and to see all 
 the time that one was thinning one's own congregation, and 
 emptying one's own pockets ! " 
 
 " It was indeed a lamentable dilemma ; and what did you, 
 Mr. Sexton?" 
 
 " Do, sir ? why, I could not stifle my conscience, and I left 
 my place. Ever since then, sir, I have stationed myself in the 
 Piazza, to warn my poor, deluded fellow-creatures of their error, 
 and to assure them that when the bell of St. Paul's rings, it 
 rings for prayers, and not for puppet-shows and, Lord help 
 us, there it goes at this very moment ; and look, look, gentle- 
 men, how the wigs and hoods are crowding to the motion * 
 instead of the minister." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " cried Tarleton, " Mr. Powell is not the first 
 man who has wrested things holy to serve a carnal purpose, 
 and made use of church bells in order to ring money to the 
 wide pouch of the church's enemies. Harkye, my friend, fol- 
 low my advice, and turn preacher yourself ; mount a cart oppo- 
 site to the motion, and I'll wager a trifle that the crowd forsake 
 the theatrical mountebank in favor of the religious one ; for the 
 more sacred the thing played upon, the more certain is the game." 
 
 "Body of me, gentlemen," cried the ex-sexton, " I'll follow 
 your advice." 
 
 " Do so, man, and never presume to look doleful again ; 
 leave dulness to your superiors."! 
 
 And with this advice, and an additional compensation for his 
 confidence, we left the innocent assistant of Mr. Powell, and 
 marched into the puppet-show, by the sound of the very bells 
 the perversion of which the good sexton had so pathetically 
 lamented. 
 
 The first person I saw at the show, and indeed the express 
 
 * An antiquated word in use for puppet-shows. 
 t See Spectator, No. 14, for a letter from this unfortunate under-sexton.
 
 92 DEVEREUX. 
 
 person I came to see, was the Lady Hasselton. Tarleton and 
 myself separated for the present, and I repaired to the coquette: 
 "Angels of grace ! " said I, approaching ; " and, by-the-by, be- 
 fore I proceed another word, observe. Lady Hasselton, how 
 appropriate the exclamation is to you! Angels of grace ! why, 
 you have moved all your patches ! one two three six 
 eight as I am a gentleman, from the left side of your cheek to 
 the right ! What is the reason of so sudden an emigration?" 
 
 " I have changed my politics,* Count, that is all, and have 
 resolved to lose no time in proclaiming the change. But is it 
 true that you are going to be married ? " 
 
 " Married ! Heaven forbid ! which of my enemies spread so 
 cruel a report ? " 
 
 " Oh, the report is universal ! " and the Lady Hasselton flirted 
 her fan with a most flattering violence. 
 
 " It is false, nevertheless ; I cannot afford to buy a wife at 
 present, for, thanks to jointures, and pin-money, these things 
 are all matter of commerce ; and (see how closely civilized life 
 resembles the savage !) the English, like the Tartar gentleman, 
 obtains his wife only by purchase ! But who is the bride ? " 
 
 " The Duke of Newcastle's rich daughter, Lady Henrietta 
 Pelham." 
 
 " What, Harley's object of ambition ! f Faith, madam, the 
 report is not so cruel as I thought for !" 
 
 " Oh, you fop ! but is it not true ? " 
 
 " By my honor, I fear not ; my rivals are too numerous and 
 too powerful. Look now, yonder ! how they already flock around 
 the illustrious heiress, note those smiles and simpers. Is it not 
 pretty to see those very fine gentlemen imitating bumpkins at 
 a fair, and grinning their best for a gold ring ! But you need 
 not fear me, Lady Hasselton, my love cannot wander, if it 
 would. In the quaint thought of Sidney,J love having once 
 flown to my heart, burnt its wings there, and cannot fly away." 
 
 " La, you now ! " said the beauty ; " I do not comprehend 
 you exactly your master of the graces does not teach you 
 your compliments properly." 
 
 " Yes, he does, but in your presence I forget them ; and 
 now," I added, lowering my voice into the lowest of whispers, 
 " now that you are assured of my fidelity, will you not learn at 
 last to discredit rumors and trust to me ?" 
 
 * Whig ladies patched on one side of the cheek, T cries on the other. 
 
 t Lord Bolingbroke tells us that it was the main end of Harley's administration to marry 
 his son to this lady. Thus is the fate of nations a bundle made up of a thousand little 
 private schemes. 
 
 In the Arcadia, that museum of oddities and beauties.
 
 DEVEREUX. 93 
 
 " I love you too well ! " answered the Lady Hasselton in the 
 same tone, and that answer gives an admirable idea of the af- 
 fection of every coquette ! love and confidence with them are 
 qualities that have a natural antipathy, andean never be united ! 
 Our tte-a-tete was at an end, the people round us became social, 
 and conversation general. 
 
 " Betterton acts to-morrow night," cried the Lady Patterly, 
 "we must go !" 
 
 " We must go," cried the Lady Hasselton. 
 
 " We must go ! " cried all. 
 
 And so passed the time till the puppet-show was over, and 
 my attendance dispensed with. 
 
 It is a charming thing to be the lover of a lady of the mode ! 
 One so honored does with his hours as a miser with his gui- 
 neas, viz., nothing but count them ! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 More Lions. 
 
 THE next night, afterthe theatre, Tarleton and I strolled into 
 Wills's. Half a dozen wits were assembled. Heavens ! how 
 they talked ! actors, actresses, poets, statesmen, philosophers, 
 critics, divines, were all pulled to pieces with the most grati- 
 fying malice imaginable. We sat ourselves down, and while 
 Tarleton amused himself with a dish of coffee and the " Flying 
 Post," I listened very attentively to the conversation. Certainly 
 if we would take every opportunity of getting a grain or two 
 of knowledge, we should soon have a chest-full ; a man earned 
 an excellent subsistence by asking every one who came out of 
 a tobacconist's shop for a pinch of snuff, and retailing the 
 mixture as soon as he had filled his box.* 
 
 While I was listening to a tall, lusty gentleman, who was 
 abusing Dogget, the actor, a well-dressed man entered, and 
 immediately attracted the general observation. He was of a 
 very flat, ill-favored countenance, but of a quick eye, and a 
 genteel air ; there was, however, something constrained and 
 artificial in his address, and he appeared to be endeavoring to 
 clothe a natural good-humor with a certain primness which 
 could never be made to fit it. 
 
 " Ha, Steele ! " cried a gentleman in an orange-colored coat, 
 who seemed, by a fashionable swagger of importance, desirous 
 
 * Taller.
 
 94 DEVEREUX. 
 
 of giving the tone to the company " Ha, Steele ! whence come 
 you ? from the chapel or the tavern ? " and the speaker winked 
 round the room as if he wished us to participate in the pleasure 
 of a good thing. 
 
 Mr. Steele drew up, seemingly a little affronted ; but his 
 good-nature conquered the affectation of personal sanctity, 
 which, at the time I refer to, that excellent writer was pleased 
 to assume ; he contented himself with nodding to the speaker, 
 and saying : 
 
 " All the world knows, Colonel Cleland, that you are a wit, 
 and therefore we take your fine sayings, as we take change 
 from an honest tradesman, rest perfectly satisfied with the 
 coin we get, without paying any attention to it." 
 
 " Zounds, Cleland, you got the worst of it there," cried a 
 gentleman in a flaxen wig. And Steele slid into a seat near 
 my own. 
 
 Tarleton. who was sufficiently well educated to pretend to 
 the character of a man of letters, hereupon thought it necessary 
 to lay aside the "Flying Post," and to introduce me to my liter- 
 ary neighbor. 
 
 "Pray," said Colonel Cleland, taking snuff and swinging 
 himself to and fro with an air of fashionable grace, "has any 
 one seen the new paper?" 
 
 " What ! " cried the gentleman in the flaxen wig, " what ! the 
 Tatler's successor,-H:he 'Spectator?'" 
 
 "The same," quoth the colonel. 
 
 " To be sure who has not ? " returned he of the flaxen orna- 
 ment. " People say Congreve writes it." 
 
 " They are very much mistaken, then," cried a little square 
 man with spectacles ; " to my certain knowledge Swift is the 
 author." 
 
 " Pooh ! " said Cleland imperiously " pooh ! it is neither 
 one nor the other ; I, gentlemen, am in the secret but you 
 take me, eh? One must not speak well of oneself mum is the 
 word." 
 
 " Then," asked Steele quietly, " we are to suppose that you, 
 Colonel, are the writer?" 
 
 "I never said so, Dicky; but the women will have it that I 
 am," and the colonel smoothed down his cravat. 
 
 " Pray, Mr. Addison, what say you ? " cried the gentleman 
 in the flaxen wig, " are you for Congreve, Swift, or Colonel 
 Cleland ?" This was addressed to a gentleman of a grave, but 
 rather prepossessing mien ; who, with eyes fixed upon the 
 ground, was very quietly, and to all appearance very inatten-
 
 DEVEREUX. 95 
 
 tively, solacing himself with a pipe ; without lifting his eyes, 
 this personage, then eminent, afterwards rendered immortal, re- 
 plied 
 
 "Colonel Cleland must produce other witnesses to prove his 
 claim to the authorship of the 'Spectator'; the women, we 
 well know, are prejudiced in his favor." 
 
 ."That's true enough, old friend," cried the colonel, looking 
 askant at his orange-colored coat, " but faith, Addison, I wish you 
 would set up a paper of the same sort, d'ye see ; you're a nice 
 judge of merit, and your sketches of character would do justice 
 to your friends." 
 
 " If ever I do, Colonel, I or my coadjutors will study at least 
 to do justice to you." * 
 
 " Prithee, Steele," cried the stranger in spectacles, " prithee 
 tell us thy thoughts on the subject : dost thou know the author 
 of this droll periodical?" 
 
 "I saw him this morning," replied Steele carelessly. 
 
 " Aha ! and what said you to him ? " 
 
 " I asked him his name ! " 
 
 "And what did he answer?" cried he of the flaxen wig, 
 \vhile all of us crowded round the speaker, with the curiosity 
 every one felt in the authorship of a work then exciting the 
 most universal and eager interest." 
 
 " He answered me solemnly," said Steele " in the following 
 words, 
 
 ' Grseci carent ablative Itali dativo Ego nominative.' "f 
 
 " Famous capital ! " cried the gentleman in spectacles ; and 
 then, touching Colonel Cleland, added, " what does it exactly 
 mean ? " 
 
 " Ignoramus !" said Cleland disdainfully, "every school-boy 
 knows Virgil f " 
 
 " Devereux," said Tarleton, yawning, " what a d d delight- 
 ful thing it is to hear so much wit pity that the atmosphere is 
 so fine that no lungs unaccustomed to it can endure it long. 
 Let us recover ourselves by a walk." 
 
 " Willingly," said I ; and we sauntered forth into the streets. 
 
 "Wills's is not what it was," said Tarleton; "'tis a pitiful 
 ghost of its former self, and if they had not introduced cards, 
 one would die of the vapors there." 
 
 " I know nothing so insipid," said I, "as that mock literary 
 air which it is so much the fashion to assume. 'Tis but a 
 
 * This seems to corroborate the suspicion entertained of the identity of Colonel Cleland 
 With the Will Honeycomb of the Spectator. 
 
 t " The Greeks want an ablative the Italians a dative I a nominative."
 
 g6 DEVEREUX. 
 
 wearisome relief to conversation to have interludes of songs 
 about Strephon and Sylvia recited with a lisp by a gentleman 
 with fringed gloves and a languishing look." 
 
 "Fie on it ! " cried Tarleton, "let us seek for a fresher topic. 
 Are you asked to Abigail Masham's to-night, or will you come 
 to Dame de la Riviere Manley's ? " 
 
 " Dame de la what ? in the name of long words who is 
 she?" 
 
 " Oh ! Learning made libidinous : one who reads Catullus 
 and profits by it." 
 
 " Bah, no, we will not leave the gentle Abigail for her. I 
 have promised to meet St. John, too, at the Mashams." 
 
 " As you like. We shall get some wine at Abigail's, which 
 we should never do at the house of her cousin of Maryborough." 
 
 And, comforting himself with this belief, Tarleton peaceably 
 accompanied me to that celebrated woman, who did the Tories 
 such notable service, at the expense of being termed by the 
 Whigs one great want divided into two parts, viz.; a great 
 want of every shilling belonging to other people, and a great 
 want of every virtue that should have belonged to herself. As 
 we mounted the staircase, a door to the left (a private apart- 
 ment) was opened, and I saw the favorite dismiss, with the 
 most flattering air of respect, my old preceptor, the Abbe Mon- 
 treuil. He received her attentions as his due, and, descending 
 the stairs, came full upon me. He drew back changed neither 
 hue nor muscle bowed civilly enough, and disappeared. I 
 had not much opportunity to muse over this circumstance, for 
 St. John and Mr. Domville excellent companions both 
 joined us ; and the party being small, we had the unwonted 
 felicity of talking, as well as bowing, to each other. It was im- 
 possible to think of any one else when St. John chose to exert 
 himself ; and so even the Abbe Montreuil glided out of my 
 brain as St. John's wit glided into it. We were all of the same 
 way of thinking on politics, and therefore were witty without 
 being quarrelsome a rare thing. The trusty Abigail told us 
 stories of the good Queen, and we added bons-mots by way of 
 corollary. Wine, too, wine that even Tarleton approved, lit 
 up our intellects, and we spent altogether an evening such as 
 gentlemen and Tories very seldom have the sense to enjoy. 
 
 O Apollo ! I wonder whether Tories of the next century 
 will be such clever, charming, well-informed fellows as we were!
 
 DEVEREUX. 97 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 An Intellectual Adventure. 
 
 A LITTLE affected by the vinous potations which had been 
 so much an object of anticipation with my companion, Tarleton 
 and I were strolling homeward when we perceived a remarkably 
 tall man engaged in a contest with a couple of watchmen. 
 Watchmen were in all cases the especial and natural enemies 
 of the gallants in my young days ; and no sooner did we see 
 the unequal contest than, drawing our swords with that true 
 English valor which makes all the quarrels of other people ifs 
 own, we hastened to the relief of the weaker party. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said the elder watchman, drawing back, "this 
 is no common brawl ; we have been shamefully beaten by this 
 here madman, and for no earthly cause." 
 
 " Who ever did beat a watchman for any earthly cause, you 
 rascal ? " cried the accused party, swinging his walking-cane 
 over the complainant's head with a menacing air. 
 
 "Very true," cried Tarleton coolly. "Seigneurs of the 
 watch, you are both made and paid to be beaten ; ergo you 
 have no right to complain. Release this worthy cavalier, and 
 depart elsewhere to make night hideous with your voices." 
 
 "Come, come," quoth the younger Dogberry, who perceived 
 a reinforcement approaching, "move on, good people, and let 
 us do our duty." 
 
 " Which," interrupted the elder watchman, " consists in tak- 
 ing this hulking swaggerer to the watchhouse." 
 
 "Thou speakest wisely, man of peace," said Tarleton ; "de- 
 fend thyself ;" and without adding another word, he ran the 
 watchman through not the body, but the coat, avoiding, with 
 great dexterity, the corporeal substance of the attacked party, 
 and yet approaching it so closely as to give the guardian of the 
 streets very reasonable ground for apprehension. No sboner 
 did the watchman find the hilt strike against his breast, than 
 he uttered a dismal cry, and fell upon the pavement like 
 a shot. 
 
 " Now for thee, varlet," cried Tarleton, brandishing his 
 rapier before the eyes of the other watchman, " tremble at the 
 sword of Gideon." 
 
 "O Lord, O Lord ! " ejaculated the terrified comrade of the 
 fallen man, dropping on his knees, "for Heaven's sake, sir, 
 have a care."
 
 98 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " What argument canst thou allege, thou screech-owl of the 
 metropolis, that thou shouldst not share the same fate as thy 
 brother owl ?" 
 
 " Oh, sir ! " cried the craven night-bird (a bit of a humorist 
 in its way), "because I have a nest and seven little owlets at 
 home, and t'other owl is only a bachelor." 
 
 " Thou art an impudent thing to jest at us," said Tarleton ; 
 " but thy wit has saved thee ; rise." 
 
 At this moment two other watchmen came up. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said the tall stranger whom we had rescued, 
 "we had better fly." 
 
 Tarleton cast at him a contemptuous look, and placed him- 
 self in a posture of offence. 
 
 " Hark ye," said I, "let us effect an honorable peace. Mes- 
 sieurs the watch, be it lawful for you to carry off the slain, and 
 for us to claim the prisoners." 
 
 But our new foes understood not a jest, and advanced upon 
 us with a ferocity which might really have terminated in a 
 serious engagement, had not the tall stranger thrust his bulky 
 form in front of the approaching battalion, and cried out, with 
 a loud voice, " Zounds, my good fellows, what's all this for ? 
 If you take us up, you will get broken heads to-night, and a 
 few shillings perhaps to-morrow. If you leave us alone, you 
 will have whole heads, and a guinea between you. Now, what 
 say you ?" . 
 
 Well spoke Phaedra against the dangers of eloquence (KU^QI 
 Tuav %6-yot). The watchmen looked at each other. " Why 
 really, sir," said one, "what you say alters the case very much; 
 and if Dick here is not much hurt, I don't know what we may 
 say to the offer." 
 
 So saying, they raised the fallen watchman, who, after three 
 or four grunts, began slowly to recover himself. 
 
 " Are you dead, Dick ? " said the owl with seven owlets. 
 
 " I think I am," answered the other, groaning. 
 
 "Are you able to drink a pot of ale, Dick ?" cried the tall 
 stranger. 
 
 " I think I am," reiterated the dead man, very lackadaisi- 
 cally. And this answer satisfying his comrades, the articles of 
 peace were subscribed to. 
 
 Now, then, the tall stranger began searching his pockets with 
 a most consequential air. 
 
 " 'Gad, so ! " said he at last ; "not in my breeches pocket ! 
 well, it must be in my waistcoat. No. Well, 'tis a strange 
 thing dsmme it is ! Gentlemen, I have had the misfortune
 
 DEVEREUX. 99 
 
 to leave my purse behind me; add to your other favors by lend- 
 ing me wherewithal to satisfy these honest men." 
 
 And Tarleton lent him the guinea. The watchmen now 
 retired, and we were left alone with our portly ally. 
 
 Placing his hand to his heart, he made us half a dozen pro- 
 found bows, returned us thanks for our assistance in some very 
 courtly phrases, and requested us to allow him to make our 
 acquaintance. We exchanged cards, and departed on our 
 several ways. 
 
 "I have met that gentleman before," said Tarleton. "Let 
 us see what name he pretends to. 'Fielding Fielding'; ah, 
 by the Lord, it is no less a person ! it is the great Fielding 
 himself." 
 
 "Is Mr. Fielding, then, as elevated in fame as in stature?" 
 
 "What, is it possible that you have not yet heard of Beau 
 Fielding, who bared his bosom at the theatre in order to attract 
 the admiring compassion of the female part of the audience ? " 
 
 "What!" I cried, "the Duchess of Cleveland's Fielding?" 
 
 " The same ; the best-looking fellow of his day ! A sketch 
 of his history is in the ' Tatler,' under the name of 'Orlando 
 the Fair.' He is terribly fallen as to fortune since the day when 
 he drove about in a car like a sea-shell, with a dozen tall fellows, 
 in the Austrian livery, black and yellow, running before and 
 behind him. You know he claims relationship to the house of 
 Hapsburg. As for the present, he writes poems, makes love, is 
 still good-natured, humorous, and odd ; is rather unhappily 
 addicted to wine and borrowing, and rigidly keeps that oath of 
 the Carthusians which never suffers them to carry any money 
 about them." 
 
 "An acquaintance more likely to yield amusement than 
 profit." 
 
 " Exactly so. He will favor you with a visit to-morrow, 
 perhaps, and you will remember his propensities." 
 
 "Ah ! who ever forgets a warning that relates to his purse !" 
 
 "True!" said Tarleton, sighing. "Alas! my guinea, thou 
 and I have parted company for ever ! vale, vale, inquit lolas ! " 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Beau in his Den, and a Philosopher Discovered. 
 
 MR. FIELDING having twice favored me with visits, which 
 found me from home, I thought it right to pay my respects to 
 him; accordingly one morning 1 repaired to his abode. It was
 
 100 DEVEREUX. 
 
 situated in a street which had been excessively the mode some 
 thirty years back ; and the house still exhibited a stately and 
 somewhat ostentatious exterior. I observed a considerable 
 cluster of infantine raggamuffins collected round the door, and 
 no sooner did the portal open to my summons than they pressed 
 forward in a manner infinitely more zealous than respectful. 
 A servant in the Austrian livery, with a broad belt round his 
 middle, officiated as porter. " Look, look ! " cried one of the 
 youthful gazers, "look at the Beau's keeper /" This imputation 
 on his own respectability, and that of his master, the domestic 
 seemed by no means to relish, for, muttering some maledictory 
 menace, which I at first took to be German, but which I after- 
 wards found to be Irish, he banged the door in the faces of the 
 intrusive impertinents, and said, in an accent which suited very 
 ill with his continental attire, 
 
 "And is it my master you're wanting, sir?" 
 
 "It is." 
 
 "And you would be after seeing him immadiately?" 
 
 "Rightly conjectured, my sagacious friend." 
 
 "Fait then, your honor, my master's in bed with a terrible 
 fit of the megrims." 
 
 "Then you will favor me by giving this card to your master, 
 and expressing my sorrow at his indisposition." 
 
 Upon this the orange-colored lacquey, very quietly reading 
 the address on the card, and spelling letter by letter in an audi- 
 ble mutter, rejoined : 
 
 "C o u (cou)n t (unt) Count, D e v. Och, by my 
 shoul, and it's Count Devereux after all, I'm thinking?" 
 
 "You think with equal profoundly and truth." 
 
 "You may well say that, your honor. Stip in a bit I'll till 
 my master it is himself that will see you in a twinkling ! " 
 
 "But you forget that your master is ill?" said I. 
 
 " Sorrow a bit for the matter o' that my master is never ill 
 to a jontleman." 
 
 And with this assurance "the Beau's keeper" ushered me up 
 a splendid staircase into a large, dreary, faded apartment, and 
 left me to amuse myself with the curiosities within, while he 
 went to perform a cure upon his master's " megrims." The 
 chamber, suiting with the house and the owner, looked like a 
 place in the other world, set apart for the reception of the ghosts 
 of departed furniture. The hangings were wan and colorless, 
 the chairs and sofas were most spiritually unsubstantial, the 
 mirrors reflected all things in a sepulchral sea-green ; even a 
 huge picture of Mr, Fielding himself, placed over the chimney-
 
 DEVEREUX. 101 
 
 piece, seemed like the apparition of a portrait, so dim, watery, 
 and indistinct had it been rendered by neglect and damp. On 
 a huge, tomb-like table, in the middle of the room, lay two pen- 
 cilled profiles of Mr. Fielding, a pawnbroker's ticket, a pair of 
 ruffles, a very little muff, an immense broadsword, aWycherley 
 comb, a jackboot, and an old plumed hat ; to these were added 
 a cracked pomatum-pot, containing ink, and a scrap of paper, 
 ornamented with sundry paintings of hearts and torches, on 
 which were scrawled several lines in a hand so large and round 
 that I could not avoid seeing the first verse, though I turned 
 away my eyes as quickly as possible that verse, to the best of 
 my memory, ran thus: "Say, lovely Lesbia, when thy swain." 
 Upon the ground lay a box of patches, a periwig, and two or 
 three well-thumbed books of songs. Such was the reception- 
 room of Beau Fielding, one indifferently well calculated to 
 exhibit the propensities of a man, half bully, half fribble ; a 
 poet, a fop, a fighter, a beauty, a walking museum of all odd 
 humors, and a living shadow of a past renown. " There are 
 changes in wit as in fashion," said Sir William Temple, and he 
 proceeds to instance a nobleman, who was the greatest wit of 
 the court of Charles I., and the greatest dullard in that of 
 Charles II.* But Heavens! how awful are the revolutions of 
 coxcombry ! what a change from Beau Fielding the Beauty to 
 Beau Fielding the Oddity ! 
 
 After I had remained in this apartment about ten minutes, 
 the great man made his appearance. He was attired in a 
 dressing-gown of the most gorgeous material and color, but so 
 old that it was difficult to conceive any period of past time 
 which it might not have been supposed to have witnessed ; a 
 little velvet cap, with a tarnished gold tassel, surmounted his 
 head, and his nether limbs were sheathed in a pair of military 
 boots. In person, he still retained the trace of that extra- 
 ordinary symmetry he had once possessed, and his features 
 were yet handsome, though the complexion had grown coarse 
 and florid, and the expression had settled into a broad, hard, 
 farcical mixture of effrontery, humor, and conceit. 
 
 But how different his costume from that of old ! Where was 
 the long wig with its myriad curls ? the coat stiff with golden 
 lace ? the diamond buttons " the pomp, pride, and circum- 
 stance of glorious war ?" the glorious war Beau Fielding had 
 carried on throughout the female world finding in every 
 saloon a Blenheim in every play-house a Ramilies? Alas! 
 to what abyss of fate will not the love of notoriety bring men ! 
 
 * Tb Earl of Norwich.
 
 102 DEVEREUX. 
 
 To what but the lust of show do we owe the misanthropy of 
 Timon, or the ruin of Beau Fielding ! 
 
 " By the Lord ! " cried Mr. Fielding, approaching, and shak- 
 ing me familiarly by the hand, " by the Lord, I am delighted 
 to see thee ! As I am a soldier, I thought thou wert a spirit, 
 invisible and incorporeal and as long as I was in that belief 
 I trembled for thy salvation, for I knew at least that thou wert 
 not a spirit of Heaven ; since thy door is the very reverse of 
 the doors above, which we are assured shall be opened unto 
 our knocking. But thou art early, Count ; like the ghost, in 
 Hamlet, thou snuff est the morning air. Wilt thou not keep out 
 the rank atmosphere by a pint of wine and a toast?" 
 
 " Many thanks to you, Mr. Fielding ; but I have at least one 
 property of a ghost, and don't drink after daybreak." 
 
 " Nay, now, 'tis a bad rule ! a villainous bad rule, only for 
 ghosts and graybeards. We youngters, Count, should have a 
 more generous policy. Come now, where didst thou drink 
 .last night? has the bottle bequeathed thee a qualm or a 
 headache, which preaches repentance and abstinence this 
 morning ?" 
 
 " No, but I visit my mistress this morning ; would you have 
 me smell of strong potations, and seem a worshipper of the 
 ' Glass of Fashion ' rather than of ' the Mould of Form ' ? 
 Confess, Mr. Fielding, that the women love not an early tippler, 
 and that they expect sober and sweet kisses from a pair of 
 'youngsters' like us." 
 
 " By the Lord," cried Mr. Fielding, stroking down his comely 
 stomach, " there is a great show of reason in thy excuses, 
 but only the show, not substance, my noble Count. You know 
 me, you know my experience with the women I would not 
 boast, as I'm a soldier but 'tis something ! nine hundred and 
 fifty locks of hair have I got in my strong box, under padlock 
 and key ; fifty within the last week true on my soul so 
 that I may pretend to know a little of the dear creatures; well, 
 I give thee my honor, Count, that they like a royster ; they 
 love a fellow who can carry his six bottles under a silken 
 doublet ; there's vigor and manhood in it and, then, too, what 
 a power of toasts can a six-bottle man drink to his mistress ! 
 Oh, 'tis your only chivalry now your modern substitute for 
 tilt and tournament ; true, Count, as I'm a soldier ! " 
 
 " I fear my Dulcinea differs from the herd, then ; for she 
 quarrelled with me for supping with St. John three nights ago, 
 and " 
 
 " St. John," interrupted Fielding, cutting me off in the be-
 
 . DEVEREUX. lO^ 
 
 ginning of a witticism, "St. John, famous fellow, is he -not? 
 By the Lord, we will drink to his administration, you in choco- 
 late, I in Madeira. O'Carroll, you dog O'Carroll rogue 
 rascal ass dolt ! " 
 
 "The same, your honor," said the orange colored lacquey, 
 thrusting in his lean visage. 
 
 "Ay, the same indeed thou anatomized son of St. Patrick ; 
 why dost thou not get fat? thou shamest my good living, and 
 thy belly is a rascally minister to thee, devouring all things for 
 itself, without fattening a single member of the body corporate. 
 Look at me, you dog, am / thin ? Go and get fat, or I will 
 discharge thee by the Lord I will ! the sun shines through 
 thee like an empty wineglass." 
 
 " And is it upon your honor's lavings you would have me 
 get fat ? " rejoined Mr. O'Carroll, with an air of deferential 
 inquiry. 
 
 '' Now, as I live, thou art the impudentest varlet ! " cried 
 Mr. Fielding, stamping his foot on the floor, with an angry 
 frown. 
 
 "And is it for talking of your honor's lavings? an' sure 
 that's iwt/iing at all, at all," said the valet, twirling his thumbs 
 with expostulating innocence. 
 
 " Begone, rascal !" said Mr. Fielding, "begone; go to the 
 Salop and bring us a pint of Madeira, a toast, and a dish of 
 chocolate." 
 
 " Yes, your honor, in a twinkling," said the valet, disap- 
 pearing. 
 
 " A sorry fellow," said Mr. Fielding, " but honest and faith- 
 ful, and loves me as well as a saint loves gold ; 'tis his love 
 makes him familiar." 
 
 Here the door was again opened, and the sharp face of Mr. 
 O'Carroll again intruded. 
 
 " How now, sirrah ! " exclaimed his master. 
 
 Mr. O'Carroll, without answering by voice, gave a grotesque 
 sort of signal between a wink and' a'beckon. Mr. Fielding 
 rose, muttering an oath, and underwent a whisper. " By the 
 Lord," cried he, seemingly in a furious passion, " and thou 
 hast not got the bill cashed yet, though 1 told thee twice to 
 have it done last evening ! Have I not my debts of honor to 
 discharge, and did I not give the last guinea I had about me 
 for a walking-cane yesterday? Go down to the city imme- 
 diately, sirrah, and bring me the change." 
 
 The valet again whispered. 
 
 " Ah," resumed Mr. Fielding, "ah so far, you say, 'tis true ;
 
 104 DEVEREUtf. 
 
 'tis a great way, and perhaps the Count can't wait till you 
 return. Prithee (turning to me), prithee now, is it not vexa- 
 tious no change about me, and my fool has not cashed a 
 trifling bill I have for a thousand or so on Messrs. Child ! and 
 the cursed Salop puts not its trust even in princes 'tis its 
 way 'Gad now you have not a guinea about you?" 
 
 What could I say? my guinea joined Tarleton's in a visit to 
 that bourne whence no such traveller e'er returned. 
 
 Mr. O'Carroll now vanished in earnest, the wine and the 
 chocolate soon appeared. Mr. Fielding brightened up, recited 
 his poetry, blessed his good fortune, promised to call on me in 
 a day or two ; and assured me, with a round oath, that the next 
 time he had the honor of seeing me, he would treat me with 
 another pint of Madeira, exactly of the same sort. 
 
 I remember well that it was the evening of the same day, in 
 which I had paid this visit to the redoubted Mr. Fielding, that, 
 on returning from a drum at Lady Hasselton's, I entered my 
 anteroom with so silent a step that I did not arouse even the 
 keen senses of Monsieur Desmarais. He was seated by the 
 fire, with his head supported by his hands, and intently poring 
 over a huge folio. I had often observed that he possessed a 
 literary turn, and all the hours in which he was unemployed by 
 me, he was wont to occupy with books. I felt now, as I stood 
 still and contemplated his absorbed attention in the contents 
 of the book before him, a strong curiosity to know the nature 
 of his studies ; and so little did my taste second the routine of 
 trifles in which I had been lately engaged, that in looking upon 
 the earnest features of the man, on which the solitary light 
 streamed calm and full; and impressed with the deep quiet 
 and solitude of the chamber, together with the undisturbed 
 sanctity of comfort presiding over the small, bright hearth, and 
 contrasting what I saw with the brilliant scene brilliant with 
 gaudy, wearing, wearisome frivolities which I had just quitted, 
 a sensation of envy at the enjoyments of my dependant en- 
 tered my breast, accompanied with a sentiment resembling 
 humiliation at the nature of my own pursuits. I am generally 
 thought a proud man, but I am never proud to my inferiors ; 
 nor can I imagine pride where there is not competition. I 
 approached Desmarais, and said, in French : 
 
 " How is this ? why did you not, like your fellows, take ad- 
 vantage of my absence, to pursue your own amusements? They 
 must be dull, indeed, if they do not hold out to you more tempt- 
 ing inducements than that colossal offspring of the press." 
 
 "Pardon me, sir," said Desmarais, very respectfully and clos-
 
 EEVEREtTX. 105 
 
 ing the book, "pardon me, I was not aware of your return. 
 Will Monsieur doff his cloak ? " 
 
 " No ; shut the door wheel round that chair, and favor me 
 with a sight of your book." 
 
 " Monsieur will be angry, I fear," said the valet (obeying the 
 first two orders, but hesitating about the third), "with my course 
 of reading; I confess it is not very compatible with my station." 
 
 " Ah, some long romance, the delta I suppose nay, bring 
 it hither that is to say, if it be movable by the strength of a 
 single man." 
 
 Thus urged, Desmarais modestly brought me the book. Judge 
 of my surprise when I found it was a volume of Leibnitz a 
 philosopher then very much the rage because one might talk 
 of him very safely, without having read him.* Despite of my 
 surprise, I could not help smiling when my eye turned from the 
 book to the student. It is impossible to conceive an appearance 
 less like a philosopher's than that of Jean Desmarais. His wig 
 was of a nicety that would not have brooked the irregularity of 
 a single hair ; his dress was not preposterous, for I do not re- 
 member, among gentles or valets, a more really exquisite taste 
 than that of Desmarais ; but it evinced, in every particular, the 
 arts of the toilet. A perpetual smile sat upon his lips some- 
 times it deepened into a sneer but that was the only change 
 it ever experienced; an irresistible air of self-conceit gave piqu- 
 ancy to his long, marked features, small, glittering eye, and 
 withered cheeks, on which a delicate and soft bloom excited sus- 
 picion of artificial embellishment. A very fit frame of body 
 this for a valet ; but, I humbly opine, a very unseemly one for a 
 student of Leibnitz. 
 
 "And what," said I, after a short pause, "is your opinion of 
 this philosopher ? I understand that he has just written a work,f 
 above all praise and all comprehension." 
 
 "It is true, Monsieur, that it is above his own understanding. 
 He knows not what sly conclusions may be drawn from his 
 premises but I beg Monsieur's pardon, I shall be tedious and 
 intrusive." 
 
 " Not a whit; speak out, and at length. So you conceive that 
 Leibnitz makes ropes which others will make into ladders?" 
 
 "Exactly so," said Desmarais; "all his arguments go to 
 swell the sails of the great philosophical truth ' Necessity ! ' We 
 are the things and toys of Fate, and its everlasting chain com- 
 pels even the Power that creates, as well as the things created." 
 
 * Which is possibly the reason why there are so many disciples of Kant at the present 
 moment. ED. 
 
 t The T. heodiccea.
 
 ic6 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " Ha ! " said I, who, though little versed at that time in these 
 metaphysical subtleties, had heard St John often speak of the 
 strange doctrine to which Desmarais referred, "you are, then, 
 a believer in the fatalism of Spinosa ? " 
 
 " No, Monsieur," said Desmarais, with a complacent smile, 
 "my system is my own it is composed of the thoughts of 
 others but my thoughts are the cords which bind the various 
 sticks into a faggot." 
 
 " Well," said I, smiling at the man's conceited air, "and what 
 is your main dogma ? " 
 
 "Our utter impotence." . 
 
 "Pleasing ! Mean you that we have no free will ?" 
 
 " None." 
 
 " Why, then, you take away the very existence of vice and 
 virtue ; and, according to you, we sin or act well, not from our 
 own accord, but because we are compelled and pre-ordained 
 to it." 
 
 Desmarais's smile withered into the grim sneer with which, as 
 I have said, it was sometimes varied. 
 
 " Monsieur's penetration is extreme but shall I not prepare 
 his nightly draught?" 
 
 " No ; answer me at length ; and tell me the difference be- 
 tween good and ill, if we are compelled by Necessity to either." 
 
 Desmarais hemmed, and began. Despite of his caution, the 
 coxcomb loved to hear himself talk, and he talked, therefore, 
 to the following purpose: 
 
 " Liberty is a thing impossible ! Can you will & single action, 
 however simple, independent of your organization independ- 
 ent of the organization of others independent of an order of 
 things past independent of the order of things to come ? You 
 cannot. But if not independent, you are dependent; if depend- 
 ent, where is your liberty ? where your freedom of will ? Edu- 
 cation disposes our characters can you control your own 
 education, begun at the hour of birth ? You cannot. Our char- 
 acter, joined to the conduct of others, disposes of our happi- 
 ness, our sorrow, our crime, our virtue. Can you control your 
 character ? We have already seen that you cannot. Can you 
 control the conduct of others others perhaps whom you have 
 never seen, but who may ruin you at a word a despot, for in- 
 stance, or a warrior? You cannot. What remains ? that if we 
 cannot choose our characters, nor our fates, we cannot be ac- 
 countable for either. If you are a good man, you are a lucky 
 man ; but you are not to be praised for what you could not 
 help. If you are a bad man, you are an unfortunate one;
 
 DEVEREUX. 107 
 
 but you are not to be execrated for what you could not pre- 
 vent."* 
 
 "Then, most wise Desmarais, if you steal this diamond loop 
 from my hat, you are only an unlucky man, not a guilty one, and 
 worthy of my sympathy, not anger? " 
 
 " Exactly so but you must hang me for it. You cannot con- 
 trol events, but you can modify man. Education, law, adver- 
 sity, prosperity, correction, praise, modify him without his 
 choice, and sometimes without his perception. But once ac- 
 knowledge Necessity, and evil passions cease; you may punish, 
 you may destroy others, if for the safety and good of the com- 
 monwealth; but motives for doing so cease to be private: you 
 can have no personal hatred to men for committing actions 
 which they were irresistibly compelled to commit." 
 
 I felt that, however I might listen to and dislike these senti- 
 ments, it would not do for the master to argue with the domes- 
 tic, especially when there was a chance that he might have the 
 worst of it. And so I was suddenly seized with a fit of sleepi- 
 ness, which broke off our conversation. Meanwhile I inly 
 resolved, in my own mind, to take the first opportunity of dis- 
 charging a valet who saw no difference between good and evil, 
 but tiiat of luck ; and who, by the irresistible compulsion of 
 Necessity, might some day or other have the involuntary mis- 
 fortune to cut the throat of his master ! 
 
 I did not, however, carry this unphilosophical resolution into 
 effect. Indeed the rogue, doubting, perhaps, the nature of the 
 impression he had made on me, redoubled so zealously his 
 efforts to please me in the science of his profession, that I could 
 not determine upon relinquishing such a treasure for a specula- 
 tive opinion, and I was too much accustomed to laugh at my 
 Sosia, to believe there could be any reason to fear him. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 An Universal Genius Pericles turned Barber Names of Beauties in 171 
 the Toasts of the Kit-Cat Club 
 
 As I was riding with Tarleton towards Chelsea one day, he 
 asked me if I had ever seen the celebrated Mr. Salter. "No," 
 said I, "but I heard Steele talk of him the other night at Wills's. 
 He is" an antiquarian and a barber, is he not?" 
 
 " Yes, a shaving virtuoso ; really a comical and strange charac- 
 
 * Whatever pretensions Monsieur Desmarais may have had to originality, this tissue of 
 opinions is as old as philosophy itself, Ep,
 
 IOS DEVEREUX. 
 
 ter, and has oddities enough to compensate one for the debase- 
 ment of talking with a man in his rank." 
 
 "Let us go to him forthwith," said I, spurring my horse into 
 a canter. 
 
 " Quod pctis hie est" cried Tarleton, "there is his house." 
 And my companion pointed to a coffee-house. 
 
 "What," said I, "does he draw wine as well as teeth?" 
 
 "To be sure: Don Saltero is an universal genius. Let us 
 dismount." 
 
 Consigning our horses to the care of our grooms, we marched 
 into the strangest-looking place I ever had the good fortune to 
 behold. A long, narrow coffee-room was furnished with all 
 manner of things that, belonging neither to heaven, earth, nor 
 the water under the earth, the redoubted Saltero might well 
 worship without incurring the crime of idolatry. The first thing 
 that greeted my eyes was a bull's head, with a most ferocious 
 pair of vulture's wings on its neck. While I was surveying 
 this, I felt something touch my hat. I looked up and discovered 
 an immense alligator swinging from the ceiling, and fixing a 
 monstrous pair of glass eyes upon me. A thing which seemed 
 tome like an immense shoe, upon a nearer approach, expanded 
 itself into an Indian canoe, and a most hideous spectre with 
 mummy skin, and glittering teeth, that made my blood run 
 cold, was labelled, " Beautiful Specimen of a Calmuc Tartar." 
 
 While, lost in wonder, I stood in the middle of the apartment, 
 up walks a liltle man, as lean as a miser, and says to me, rub- 
 bing his hands : 
 
 "Wonderful, sir, is it not?" 
 
 "Wonderful, indeed, Don !" said Tarleton ; "you look like 
 a Chinese Adam, surrounded by a Japanese creation." 
 
 "He, he, he ! sir, you have so pleasant a vein," said the little 
 Don, in a sharp, shrill voice. "But it has been all done, sir, 
 by one man ; all of it collected by me, simple as I stand." 
 
 "Simple, indeed," quoth Tarleton ; "and how gets on the 
 fiddle?" 
 
 "Bravely, sir, bravely ; shall I play you a tune?" 
 
 " No, no, my good Don ; another time." 
 
 "Nay, sir, nay," cried the antiquarian, "suffer me to welcome 
 your arrival properly." 
 
 And, forthwith disappearing, he returned in an instant with 
 a marvellously ill-favored old fiddle. Throwing a penseroso 
 air into his thin cheeks, our Don then began a few preliminary 
 thrummings, which set my teeth on edge, and made Tarleton 
 put both hands to his ears. Three sober-looking citizens, who
 
 DEVEREUX. 109 
 
 had just sat themselves down to pipes and the journal, started 
 to their feet like so many pieces of clockwork ; but no sooner 
 had Don Saltero, with a dega^e air of graceful melancholy, 
 actually launched into what he was pleased to term a tune, than 
 an universal irritation of nerves seized the whole company. 
 At the first overture, the three citizens swore and cursed, at the 
 second division of the tune they seized their hats, at the third 
 they vanished. As for me, I found all my limbs twitching as 
 if they were dancing to St. Vitus's music ; the very drawers 
 disappeared ; the alligator itself twirled round, as if revivified 
 by so harsh an experiment on the nervous system ; and I verily 
 believe the whole museum, bull, wings, Indian canoe, and Cal- 
 muc Tartar, would have been set into motion by this new 
 Orpheus, had not Tarleton, in a paroxysm of rage, seized him 
 by the tail of the coat, and whirled him round, fiddle and all, 
 with such velocity that the poor musician lost his equilibrium, 
 and falling against a row of Chinese monsters, brought the 
 whole set to the ground, where he lay covered by the wrecks 
 that accompanied his overthrow, screaming and struggling, and 
 grasping his fiddle, which every now and then, touched involun- 
 tarily by his fingers, uttered a dismal squeak, as if sympathizing 
 in the disaster it had caused, until the drawer ran in, and raising 
 the unhappy antiquarian, placed him on a great chair. 
 
 "OLord!" groaned Don Saltero, "O Lord my monsters 
 my monsters the pagoda the Mandarin, and the idol where 
 are they ? broken ruined annihilated ! " 
 
 "No, sir all safe, sir," said the drawer, a smart, small, smug, 
 pert man ; " put 'em down in the bill, nevertheless, sir. Is it 
 Alderman Atkins, sir, or Mr. Higgins?" 
 
 " Pooh," Said Tarleton, " bring me some lemonade send the 
 pagoda to the bricklayer the mandarin to the surgeon and 
 the idol to the Papist over the way ! There's a guinea to pay 
 for their carriage. How are you, Don ?" 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Tarleton, Mr. Tarleton ; how could you be so 
 cruel ? " 
 
 " The nature of things demanded it, my good Don. Did I 
 not call you a Chinese Adam ? and how could you bear that 
 name without undergoing the fall?" 
 
 " Oh, sir, this is no jesting matter broke the railing of my 
 pagoda bruised my arm cracked my fiddle and cut me off 
 in the middle of that beautiful air ! no jesting matter." 
 
 " Come, Mr. Salter," said I, "tis very true! but cheer up. 
 ' The gods,' says Seneca, ' look with pleasure on a great man 
 falling with the statesmen, temples, and the divinities of his
 
 110 DEVEREUX. 
 
 country'; all of which, Mandarin, pagoda, and idol, accompanied 
 your fall. Let us have a bottle of your best wine, and the honor 
 of your company to drink it." 
 
 " No, Count, no," said Tarleton haughtily ; " we can drink 
 not with the Don ; but we'll have the wine, and he shall drink it. 
 Meanwhile, Don, tell us what possible combination of circum- 
 stances made thee fiddler, barber, anatomist and virtuoso ! " 
 
 Don Saltero loved fiddling better than anything in the world, 
 but next to fiddling he loved talking. So being satisfied that he 
 should be reimbursed for his pagoda, and fortifying himself 
 with a glass or two of his own wine, he yielded to Tarleton * 
 desire, and told us his history. I believe it was very entertaih- 
 ing to the good barber, but Tarleton and I saw nothing extra- 
 ordinary in it ; and long before it was over, we wished him an 
 excellent good day, and a new race of Chinese monsters. 
 
 That evening we were engaged at the Kit-Cat Club, for though 
 I was opposed to the politics of its members, they admitted me 
 on account of my literary pretensions. Halifax was there, and 
 I commended the poet to his protection. We were very gay, 
 and Halifax favored us with three new toasts by himself. O 
 Venus, what beauties we made, and what characters we murdered ! 
 Never was there so important a synod to the female world, as the 
 gods of the Kit-Cat Club. Alas ! I am writing for the children 
 of an after-age, to whom the very names of those who made the 
 blood of their ancestors leap within their veins will be unknown. 
 What cheek will color at the name of Carlisle ? What hand will 
 tremble as it touches the paper inscribed by that of Brudenel ! 
 The graceful Godolphin, the sparkling enchantment of Harper, 
 the divine voice of Claverine, the gentle and bashful Bridge- 
 water, the damask cheek and ruby lips of the Hebe Manchester 
 what will these be to the race for whom alone these pages are 
 penned ! This history is a union of strange contrasts ! Like the 
 tree of the Sun, described by Marco Polo, which was green 
 when approached on one side, but white when perceived on the 
 other to me it is clothed in the verdure and spring of the exist- 
 ing time ; to the reader it comes covered with the hoariness 
 and wanness of the Past !
 
 DEVEREUX. Ill 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A Dialogue of Sentiment succeeded by the Sketch of a Character, in whose 
 eyes Sentiment was to Wise Men what Religion is to Fools, viz. a 
 subject of ridicule. 
 
 ST. JOHN was now in power, and in the full flush of his many 
 ambitious and restless schemes. I saw as much of him as the 
 high rank he held in the state, and the consequent business with 
 which he was oppressed, would suffer me me who was pre- 
 vented by religion from actively embracing any political party, 
 and who therefore, though inclined to Toryism, associated pretty 
 equally with all. St. John and myself formed a great friendship 
 for each other, a friendship which no after change or chance 
 could efface, but which exists, strengthened and mellowed by 
 time, at the very hour in which I now write. 
 
 One evening he sent to tell me he should be alone, if I would 
 sup with him ; accordingly I repaired to his house. He was walk- 
 ing up and down the room with uneven and rapid steps, and his 
 countenance was flushed with an expression of joy and triumph, 
 very rare to the thoughtful and earnest calm which it usually 
 wore. " Congratulate me, Devereux," said he, seizing me eagerly 
 by the hand, " congratulate rne ! " 
 
 " For what ? " 
 
 " Ay, true you are not yet a politician you cannot yet tell 
 how dear how inexpressibly dear, to a politician is a momen- 
 tary and petty victory but if I were Prime Minister of this 
 country, what would you say ?" 
 
 "That you could bear the duty better than any man living 
 but remember, Harley is in the way." 
 
 "Ah, there's the rub," said St. John slowly, and the expres- 
 sion of his face again changed from triumph to thoughtfulness ; 
 " but this is a subject not to your taste let us choose another." 
 And flinging himself into a chair, this singular man, who prided 
 himself on suiting his conversation to every one, began convers- 
 ing with me upon the lighter topics of the day ; these we soon 
 exhausted, and at last we settled upon that of love and women. 
 
 " I own," said I, " that in this respect pleasure has disap- 
 pointed as well as wearied me. I have longed for some better 
 object of worship than the trifler of fashion, or the yet more 
 ignoble minion of the senses. I aska ventfor enthusiasm for 
 devotion for romance for a thousand subtle and secret streams 
 of unuttered and unutterable feeling. I often think that I bear 
 within me the desire and the sentiment of poetry, though I enjoy 
 not its faculty of expression ; and that that desire and that senti-
 
 ment, denied legitimate egress, centre and shrink into one absorb- 
 ing passion which is the want of love. Where am I to satisfy this 
 want ? I look round these great circles of gayety which we term 
 the world I send forth my heart as a wanderer over their regions 
 and recesses, and it returns sated, and palled, and languid, to 
 myself again." 
 
 " You express a common want in every less worldly or more 
 morbid nature," said St. John, "a want which I myself have 
 experienced, and if I had never felt it, I should never, perhaps, 
 have turned to ambition to console or to engross me. But do 
 not flatter yourself that the want will ever be fulfilled. Nature 
 places us alone in this inhospitable world, and no heart is cast 
 in a similar mould to that which we bear within us. We pine for 
 sympathy ; we make to ourselves a creation of ideal beauties, in 
 which we expect to find it but the creation has no reality it is 
 the mind's phantasma which the mind adores and it is because 
 the phantasma can have no actual being that the mind despairs. 
 Throughout life, from the cradle to the grave it is no real or 
 living thing which we demand ; it is the realization of the ideal 
 we have formed within us, and which, as we are not gods we can 
 never call into existence. We are enamoured of the statue our- 
 selves have graven ; but, unlike the statue of the Cyprian, it kin- 
 dles not to our homage, nor melts to our embraces." 
 
 "I believe you," said I ; "but it is hard to undeceive our- 
 selves. The heart is the most credulous of all fanatics, and its 
 ruling passion the most enduring of all superstitions. Oh ! what 
 can tear from us, to the last, the hope, the desire the yearning 
 for some bosom which, while it mirrors our own, parts not with 
 the reflection. I have read that, in the very hour and instant 
 of our birth, one exactly similar to ourselves, in spirit and form, 
 is born also, and that a secret and unintelligible sympathy pre- 
 serves that likeness, even through the vicissitudes of fortune and 
 circumstance, until, in the same point of time, the two beings 
 are resolved once more into the elements of earth confess that 
 there is something welcome, though unfounded in the fancy, and 
 that there are few of the substances of worldly honor which one 
 would not renounce, to possess in the closest and fondest of all 
 relations this shadow of ourselves!" 
 
 "Alas !" said St. John, "the possession, like all earthly bless- 
 ings, carries within it its own principle of corruption. The 
 deadliest foe to love is not change, nor misfortune, nor jealousy, 
 nor wrath, nor anything that flows from passion, or emanates 
 from fortune; the deadliest foe to it is custom! With custom 
 die away the delusions and the mysteries which encircle it; leaf
 
 DEVEREtJJt. I lj 
 
 after leaf, in the green poetry on which its beauty depends, 
 droops and withers, till nothing but the bare and rude trunk is 
 Jeft. With all passion the soul demands something unexpressed, 
 some vague recess to explore or to marvel upon some veil upon 
 the mental as well as the corporeal deity. Custom leaves noth- 
 ing to romance, and often but little to respect. The whole char- 
 acter is bared before us like a plain, and the heart's eye grows 
 wearied with the sameness of the survey. And to weariness 
 succeeds distaste, and to distaste one of the myriad shapes of 
 the Proteus Aversion so that the passion we would make the 
 rarest of treasures fritters down to a very instance of the com- 
 monest of proverbs and out of familiarity cometh indeed con- 
 tempt ! " 
 
 "And are we, then," said I, "forever to forego the most 
 delicious of our dreams? Are we to consider love as an entire 
 delusion, and to reconcile ourselves to an eternal solitude of 
 heart ? What then shall fill the crying and unappeasable void 
 of our souls ? What shall become of those mighty sources of 
 tenderness which, refused all channel in the rocky soil of 
 the world, must have an outlet elsewhere, or stagnate into 
 torpor?" 
 
 "Our passions," said St. John, "are restless, and will make 
 each experiment in their power, though vanity be the result of 
 all. Disappointed in love, they yearn towards ambition; and 
 the object of ambition, unlike that of love, never being wholly pos- 
 sessed,ambition is the more durable passion of the two. But sooner 
 or later even that, and all passions, are sated at last ; and when 
 wearied of too wide a flight, we limit our excursions, and look- 
 ing round us, discover the narrow bounds of our proper end, we 
 grow satisfied with the loss of rapture, if we can partake of en- 
 joyment : and the experience which seemed at first so bitterly 
 to betray us becomes our most real benefactor, and ultimately 
 leads us to content. For it is the excess and not the nature of 
 our passions which is perishable. Like the trees which grew 
 by the tomb of Protesilaus, the passions flourish till they reach 
 a certain height, but no sooner is that height attained than they 
 wither away." 
 
 Before I could reply, our conversation received an abrupt and 
 .complete interruption for the night. The door was thrown 
 open, and a man, pushing aside the servant with a rude and yet 
 .a dignified air, entered the room unannounced, and with the 
 most perfect disregard to ceremony 
 
 "How d'ye do, Mr. St. John," said he "how d'ye do? 
 Pretty sort of a day we've had. Lucky to find you at home
 
 114 DEVEREUtf. 
 
 that is to say, if you will give me some broiled oysters and cham- 
 pagne for supper." 
 
 " With all my heart, Doctor," said St. John, changing his man- 
 ner at once from the pensive to an easy and somewhat brusque 
 familiarity " with all my heart ; but I am glad to hear you are 
 a convert to champagne : you spent a whole evening last week 
 in endeavoring to dissuade me from the sparkling sin." 
 
 " Pish ! I had suffered the day before from it, so, like a true 
 Old Bailey penitent, I preached up conversion to others, not 
 from a desire of their welfare, but a plaguy sore feeling for my 
 own misfortune. Where did you dine to-day ? At home ! Oh ! 
 the devil! I starved on three courses at the Duke ofOrmond's." 
 
 "Aha! Honest Matt was there?" 
 
 "Yes, to my cost. He borrowed a shilling of me for a chair. 
 Hang this weather, it costs me seven shillings a day for coach- 
 fare, besides my paying the fares of all my poor brother parsons, 
 who come over from Ireland to solicit my patronage for a bishop- 
 ric, and end by borrowing half-a-crown in the mean while. 
 But Matt Prior will pay me again, I suppose, out of the public 
 money ? " 
 
 "To be sure, if Chloe does not ruin him first." 
 
 "Hang the slut: don't talk of her. How Prior rails against 
 his place.* He says the exercise spoils his wit, and that the 
 only rhymes he ever dreams of nowadays are ' docket and 
 cocket. ' ' 
 
 " Ha, ha ! we must do something better for Matt make him 
 a bishop or an ambassador. But, pardon me, Count, I have 
 not yet made known to you the most courted, authoritative, im- 
 pertinent, clever, independent, haughty, delightful, troublesome 
 parson of the age: do homage to Dr. Swift. Doctor, be merci- 
 ful to my particular friend, Count Devereux." 
 
 Drawing himself up, with a manner which contrasted his pre- 
 vious one strongly enough, Dr. Swift saluted me with a dignity 
 which might even be called polished, and which certainly 
 showed that however he might prefer, as his usual demeanor, 
 an air of negligence, and semi-rudeness, he had profited suf- 
 ficiently by his acquaintance with the great to equal them in the 
 external graces, supposed to be peculiar to their order, when- 
 ever it suited his inclination. In person, Swift is much above 
 the middle height, strongly built and with a remarkably fine 
 outline of throat and chest; his front face is certainly displeas- 
 ing, though far from uncomely; but the clear chiselling of the 
 nose, the curved upper lip, the full, round Roman chin, the 
 
 * In the Customs.
 
 DEVEREUX. 115 
 
 hanging brow, and the resolute decision stamped upon the 
 whole expression of the large forehead, and the clear blue eye, 
 make his profile one of the most striking I ever saw. He hon- 
 ored me, to my great surprise, with a fine speech and a com- 
 pliment; and then, with a look, which menaced to St. John the 
 retort that ensued, he added: "And I shall always be glad to 
 think that I owe your acquaintance to Mr. Secretary St. John, 
 who, if he talked less about operas, and singers thought less 
 about Alcibiades and Pericles if he never complained of the 
 load of business not being suited to his temper, at the very mo- 
 ment he had been working, like Gumdragon, to get the said load 
 upon his shoulders ; and if he persuaded one of his sincerity 
 being as great as his genius, would appear to all time as 
 adorned with the choicest gifts that Heaven has yet thought fit 
 to bestow on the children of men. Prithee now, Mr. Sec. when 
 shall we have the oysters ! Will you be merry to-night, Count ? " 
 
 "Certainly ; if one may find absolution for the champagne." 
 
 "I'll absolve you, with a vengeance, on condition that you'll 
 walk home with me, and protect the poor parson from the Mo- 
 hawks. Faith, they ran young Davenant's chair through with a 
 sword, t'other night. I hear they have sworn to make daylight 
 through my Tory cassock all Whigs you know, Count Dever- 
 eux, nasty, dangerous animals, how I hate them ; they cost me 
 five-and-sixpence a week in chairs to avoid them." 
 
 " Never mind, Doctor, I'll send my servants home with you," 
 said St. John. 
 
 " Ay, a nice way of mending the matter that's curing the 
 itch by scratching the skin off. I could not give your tall fel- 
 lows less than a crown a-piece, and I could buy off the blood- 
 iest Mohawk in the kingdom, if he's a Whig, for half that sum. 
 But, thank Heaven, the supper is ready." 
 
 And to supper we went. " The oysters and champagne seemed 
 to exhilarate, if they did not refine, the Doctor's wit. St. John 
 was unusually brilliant. I myself caught the infection of their 
 humor, and contributed my quota to the common stock of jest 
 and repartee ; and that evening, spent with the two most ex- 
 traordinary men of the age, had in it more of broad and famil- 
 iar mirth than I have ever wasted in the company of the youngest 
 and noisiest disciples of the bowl and its concomitants. Even 
 amidst all the coarse ore of Swift's conversation, the diamond 
 perpetually broke out ; his vulgarity was never that of a vulgar 
 mind. Pity that, while he condemned St. J'ohn's over-affecta- 
 tion of the grace of life, he never perceived that his affectation 
 of coarseness and brutality was to the full as unworthy of the
 
 simplicity of intellect;* and that the aversion to cant, which 
 was the strongest characteristic of his mind, led him into the 
 very faults he despised, only through a more displeasing and 
 offensive road. That same aversion to cant is, by the way, the 
 greatest and most prevalent enemy to the reputation of high 
 and of strong minds ; and in judging Swift's character in espe- 
 cial, we should always bear it in recollection. This aversion 
 the very antipodes to hypocrisy leads men not only to disclaim 
 the virtues they have, but pretend to the vices they have not. 
 Foolish trick of disguised vanity ! the world, alas, readily be- 
 lieves them ! Like Justice Overdo in the garb of poor Arthur 
 of Bradley, they may deem it a virtue to have assumed the dis- 
 guise ; but they must not wonder if the sham Arthur is taken 
 for the real, beaten as a vagabond, and set in the stocks as a 
 rogue ! 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Lightly won lightly lost. A Dialogue of equal Instruction and Amusement. 
 A Visit to Sir Godfrey Kneller. 
 
 ONE morning Tarleton breakfasted with me. " I don't see 
 the little page," said he, "who was. always in attendance in your 
 anteroom, what the deuce has become of him?" 
 
 "You must ask his mistress ; she has quarrelled with me, and 
 withdrawn both her favor and her messenger." 
 
 "What, the Lady Hasselton quarrelled with you ! Diable ! 
 Wherefore ?" 
 
 "Because I am not enough of the 'pretty fellow'; am tired 
 of carrying hood and scarf, and sitting behind her chair 
 through five long acts of a dull play ; because I disappointed 
 her in not searching for her at every drum and quadrille party ; 
 
 * It has been said that Swift was only coarse in his later years, and, with a curious igno- 
 rance both of fact and of character, that Pope was the cause of the Dean's grossness of taste 
 There is no doubt that he grew coarser with age ; but there is also no doubt that, grace- 
 ful and dignified as that great genius could be when he pleased, he affected at a period 
 earlier than the one in which he is now introduced, to be coarse in both spirit and manner. 
 I seize upon this opportunity, mat apropos as it is, to observe that Swift's preference of 
 Harley to St. John is by no means so certain as writers have been pleased generally to as- 
 sert. Warton has already noted a passage in one of Swift's letters to Bolingbroke, to 
 which I will beg to call the reader's attention ; 
 
 " It is you were my hero, but the other (I.ord Oxford) nei>er was; yet if he werCj it 
 was your own fault, who taught me to love him, and often vindicated him, in the begin- 
 ning of your ministry, from my accusations. But 1 granted he had the greatest inequali- 
 ties of any man alive ; and his whole scene was fifty times more a what-d'ye-call-it than 
 yours ; for I declare yours was unie. and I wish you would so order it that the world 
 may be as wise as I uponthat article." 
 
 I have to apologize for introducing this quotation, which I have done because (and I en- 
 treat the reader to remember this) 1 observe that Count Devereux always speaks of Lord 
 Bolingbroke as he was spoken of by the eminent men of that day not as he is now rated 
 by the judgment of posterity. ED.
 
 DEVEfcEUX, 117 
 
 because I admired not her monkey ; and because I broke a tea- 
 pot with a toad for a cover." 
 
 "And is not that enough ?" cried Tarleton. "Heavens! 
 what a black bead-roll of offences ; Mrs. Merton would have 
 discarded me for one of them. However, thy account has re- 
 moved my surprise ; and I heard her praise thee the other 
 day ; now, as long as she loved thee, she always abused thee 
 like a pickpocket." 
 
 "Ha ! ha ! ha ! and what said she in my favor?" 
 
 "Why, that you were certainly very handsome, though you 
 were small ; that you were certainly a great genius, though every 
 one would not discover it ; and that you certainly had quite the 
 air of high birth, though you were not nearly so well dressed as 
 Beau Tippetly. But entre nous, Devereux, I think she hates 
 you, and would play you a trick of spite revenge is too strong 
 a word if she could find an opportunity." 
 
 "Likely enough, Tarleton ; but a coquette's lover is always 
 on his guard ; so she will not take me unawares." 
 
 "So be it. But tell me, Devereux, who is to be your next 
 mistress, Mrs. Denton or Lady Clancathcart ? the world gives 
 them both to you." 
 
 " The world is always as generous with what is worthless as 
 the bishop in the fable was with his blessing. However, I 
 promise thee, Tarleton, that I will not interfere with thy claims, 
 either upon Mrs. Denton or Lady Clancathcart." 
 
 " Nay," said Tarleton, "I will own that you area very Scipio ; 
 but it must be confessed, even by you, satirist as you are, that 
 Lady Clancathcart has a beautiful set of features." 
 
 "A handsome face, but so vilely made. She would make a 
 splendid picture if, like the goddess Laverna, she could be 
 painted as a head without a body." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! you have a bitter tongue, Count ; but Mrs. 
 Denton, what have you to say against her?" 
 
 " Nothing ; she has no pretensions for me to contradict. She 
 has a green eye and a sharp voice ; a mincing gait and a broad 
 foot. What friend of Mrs. Denton's would not, therefore, coun- 
 sel her to a prudent obscurity ?" 
 
 " She never had but one lover in the world," said Tarleton, 
 "who was old, blind, lame and poor ; she accepted him, and 
 became Mrs. Denton." 
 
 "Yes," said I, "she was like the magnet, and received her name 
 from the very first person* sensible of her attraction." 
 
 "Well, you have a shrewd way of saying sweet things/' said 
 
 * Magnes.
 
 Il8 fcEVEREUX. 
 
 Tarleton ; "but I must own that you rarely or never direct it 
 towards women individually. What makes you break through 
 your ordinary custom ?" 
 
 " Because I am angry with women collectively ; and must 
 pour my spleen through whatever channel presents itself." 
 
 " Astonishing," said Tarleton ; " I despise women myself. I 
 always did : but you were their most enthusiastic and chival- 
 rous defender a month or two ago. What makes thee change, 
 my Sir Amadis?" 
 
 " Disappointment ! they weary, vex, disgust me ; selfish, friv- 
 olous, mean, heartless out on them 'tis a disgrace to have 
 their love ! " 
 
 " O del ! What a sensation the news of thy misogyny will 
 cause ; the young, gay, rich Count Devereux, whose wit, vivac- 
 ity, splendor of appearance, in equipage and dress, in the 
 course of one season have thrown all the most established 
 beaux and pretty fellows into the shade ; to whom dedications, 
 and odes, and billet-doux, are so much waste paper ; who has 
 carried off the most general envy and dislike that any man 
 ever was blessed with, since St. John turned politician ; what ! 
 thou all of a sudden to become a railer against the divine sex 
 that made thee what thou art ! Fly fly unhappy apostate, or 
 expect the fate of Orpheus, at least ! " 
 
 " None of your railleries, Tarleton, or I shall speak to thee 
 of plebeians, and the canaille ! " 
 
 " Sacre ! my teeth are on edge already ! Oh, the base base 
 canaille, how I loathe them ! Nay, Devereux, joking apart, I 
 love you twice as well for your humor. I despise the sex heart- 
 ily. Indeed, sub rosa be it spoken, there are few things that 
 breathe which I do not despise. Human nature seems to me a 
 most pitiful bundle of rags and scraps, which the gods threw 
 out of Heaven, as the dust and rubbish there." 
 
 "A pleasant view of thy species," said I. 
 
 " By my soul it is. Contempt is to me a luxury. I would 
 not lose the privilege of loathing for all the objects which fools 
 ever admired. What does old Persius say on the subject ? 
 ' Hoc ridere meum tarn nil, nulla tibi vendo Iliade.' " * 
 
 " And yet, Tarleton," said I, " the littlest feeling of all is a de- 
 light in contemplating the littleness of other people. Nothing 
 is more contemptible than habitual contempt." 
 
 "Prithee, now," answered the haughty aristocrat, "let us not 
 talk of these matters so subtly leave me my enjoyment with- 
 
 * "This privilege of mine, to laugh, such a nothing as it seems, I would not barter to 
 Uiee for an Iliad.
 
 DEVEREUX. 119 
 
 out refining upon it. What is your first pursuit for the morn- 
 ing?" 
 
 " Why, I have promised my uncle a picture of that invalua- 
 ble countenance which Lady Hasselton finds so handsome ; 
 and I am going to give Kneller my last sitting." 
 
 " So, so, I will accompany you ; I like the vain old dog ; 'tis 
 a pleasure to hear him admire himself so wittily." 
 
 " Come, then," said I, taking up my hat and sword ; and en- 
 tering Tarleton's carriage, we drove to the painter's abode. 
 
 We found him employed in finishing a portrait of Lady Go- 
 dolphin. 
 
 " He, he ! " cried he when he beheld me approach. " By 
 Got, I am glad to see you, Count Tevereux ; dis painting is 
 tamned poor work by oneself, widout any one to make des 
 grands yeux, and cry, ' O, Sir Godfrey Kneller, how fine dis is ! ' ' 
 
 "Very true, indeed," said I, "no great man can be expected 
 to waste his talents without his proper reward of praise. But, 
 Heavens, Tarleton, did you ever see anything so wonder- 
 ful ? that hand that arm how exquisite ! If Apollo turned 
 painter, and borrowed colors from the rainbow, and models 
 from the goddesses, he would not be fit to hold the pallet to 
 Sir Godfrey Kneller." 
 
 " By Got, Count Tevereux, you are von grand judge of paint- 
 ing," cried the artist, with sparkling eyes, "and I vill paint you 
 as von tamned handsome man ! " 
 
 " Nay, my Apelles, you might as well preserve some like- 
 ness." 
 
 " Likeness, by Got ! I vill make you like and handsome both. 
 By my shoul, you make me von Apelles, I will make you von 
 Alexander ! " 
 
 "People in general," said Tarleton, gravely, " believe that 
 Alexander had a wry neck, and was a very plain fellow ; but 
 no one can know about Alexander like Sir Godfrey Kneller, 
 who has studied military tactics so accurately, and who, if he 
 had taken up the sword instead of the pencil, would have been 
 at least an Alexander himself." 
 
 " By Got, Meester Tarleton, you are as goot a judge of de 
 talents for de war as Count Tevereux of de genie for de paint- 
 ing ! Meester Tarleton, I vill paint your picture, and I vill 
 make your eyes von goot inch bigger than dey are !" 
 
 " Large or small," said I (for Tarleton, who had a haughty 
 custom of contracting his orbs till they were scarce perceptible, 
 was so much offended, that I thought it prudent to cut off his 
 reply), "large or small, Sir Godfrey, Mr. Tarleton's eyes an
 
 120 DEVEREUX. 
 
 capable of admiring your genius ; why, your painting is like 
 lightning, and one flash of your brush would be sufficient to 
 restore even a blind man to sight." 
 
 " It is tamned true," said Sir Godfrey earnestly ; " and it 
 did restore von man to sight once ! By my shoul, it did ! but 
 sit yourself town, Count Tevereux, and look over your left 
 shoulder ah, dat is it and now praise on, Count Tevereux ; 
 de thought of my genius gives you vat you call it von ani- 
 mation von fire, look you by my shoul, it does ! " 
 
 And by dint of such moderate panegyric, the worthy Sir 
 Godfrey completed my picture, with equal satisfaction to him- 
 self and the original. See what a beautifier is flattery a few 
 sweet words will send the Count Devereux down to posterity, 
 with at least three times as much beauty as he could justly lay 
 claim to.* 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A Development of Character, and a long Letter a Chapter, on the whole, 
 more important than it seems. 
 
 THE scenes through which, of late, I have conducted my reader, 
 are by no means episodical ; they illustrate far more than mere 
 narration the career to which I was so honorably devoted. 
 Dissipation women wine Tarleton for a friend, Lady Has- 
 selton for a mistress. Let me now throw aside the mask. 
 
 To people who have naturally very intense and very acute 
 feelings, nothing is so fretting, so wearing to the heart, as the 
 commonplace affections, which are the properties and offspring 
 of the world. We have seen the birds which, with wings un- 
 clipt, children fasten to a stake. The birds seek to fly, and are 
 
 * This picture represents the Count in an undress. The face is decidedly, though by no 
 means remarkably, handsome ; the nose is aquiline the upper lip is short and chiselled 
 the eyes grey, and the forehead, which is by far the finest feature in the countenance, _ is 
 peculiarly high, broad, and massive. The mouth has but little beauty ; it is severe, caustic, 
 and rather displeasing, from the extreme compression of the lips. The great and prevalent 
 expression of the face is energy. The eye the brow the turn of the head the erect, 
 penetrating aspect are all strikingly bold, animated, and even daring. And this expres- 
 sion makes a singular contrast to that in another likeness of the Count, which was taken at 
 a much later period of life. The latter portrait represents him in a foreign uniform, decor- 
 ated with orders. The peculiar sarcasm of the mouth is hidden beneath a very long and 
 thick mustachio, of a much darker color than the hair (for in both portraits, as in Tervas's 
 picture of Lord Bolingbroke the hair is left undisguised by the odious fashion of the day) 
 Across one cheek there is a slight scar, as of a sabre cut. The whole character of this 
 portrait is widely different from that in the earlier one. Not a trace of the fire the anima- 
 tion which were so striking in the physiognomy of the youth of twenty, is discoverable 
 in the calm, sedate, stately, yet somewhat stern expression, which seems immovably 
 spread over the paler hue and the more prominent features of the man of about four or 
 five and thirty. Yet, upon the whole, the face in the latter portrait is handsomer ; and, 
 from its air of dignity and reflection, even more impressive than that in the one I have first 
 cl. Ep.
 
 DEVEREUX. 121 
 
 pulled back before their wings are well spread ; till, at last, 
 they either perpetually strain at the end of their short tether, 
 exciting only ridicule by their anguish and their impotent 
 impatience ; or, sullen and despondent, they remain on 
 the ground, without an attempt to fly, nor creep, even to the 
 full limit which their fetters would allow. Thus is it with 
 feelings of the keen, wild nature I speak of ; they are either 
 striving forever to pass the little circle of slavery to which 
 they are condemned, and so move laughter by an excess of 
 action, and a want of adequate power ; or they rest motionless 
 and moody, disdaining the petty indulgence they might en- 
 joy, till sullenness is construed into resignation, and despair 
 seems the apathy of content. Time, however, cures what it 
 does not kill : and both bird and beast, if they pine not to the 
 death at first, grow tame and acquiescent at last. 
 
 What to me was the companionship of Tarleton, or the at- 
 tachment of Lady Hasselton ? I had yielded to the one, and 
 I had half eagerly, half scornfully, sought the other. These, 
 and the avocations they brought with them, consumed my time, 
 and of Time murdered, there is a ghost, which we term Ennui. 
 The hauntings of this spectre are the especial curse of the 
 higher orders ; and hence springs a certain consequence to the 
 passions. Persons in those ranks of society, so exposed to 
 Ennui, are either rendered totally incapable of real love, or 
 they love far more intensely than those in a lower station ; 
 for the affections in them are either utterly frittered away on a 
 thousand petty objects (poor shifts to escape the persecuting 
 spectre), or else, early disgusted with the worthlessness of these 
 objects, the heart turns within and languishes for something not 
 found in the daily routine of life. When this is the case, and 
 when the pining of the heart is once satisfied, and the object 
 of love is found, there are two mighty reasons why the love 
 should be most passionately cherished. The first is, the utter 
 indolence in which aristocratic life oozes away, and which al- 
 lows full food for that meditation which can nurse by sure de- 
 grees the weakest desire into the strongest passion ; and the 
 second reason is, that the insipidity and hollowness of all patric- 
 ian pursuits and pleasures render the excitement of love more 
 delicious and more necessary to the " ignavi terrarum domini" 
 than it is to those orders of society more usefully, more con- 
 stantly, and more engrossingly engaged. 
 
 Wearied and sated with the pursuit of what was worthless, my 
 heart at last exhausted itself in pining for what was pure. I 
 recurred with a tenderness which I struggled with at first, and
 
 122 DEVEREUX. 
 
 which, in yielding to, I blushed to acknowledge, to the memory 
 of Isora. And in the world, surrounded by all which might be 
 supposed to cause me to forget her, my heart clung to her far 
 more endearingly than it had done in the rural solitudes in 
 which she had first allured it. The truth was this : at the time 
 I first loved her, other passions passions almost equally power- 
 ful shared her empire. Ambition and pleasure vast whirl- 
 pools of thought had just opened themselves a channel in 
 my mind, and thither the tides of my desires were hurried and 
 lost. Now those whirlpools had lost their power, and the 
 channels, being dammed up, flowed back upon my breast. 
 Pleasure had disgusted me, and the only ambition I had yet 
 courted and pursued had palled upon me still more. I say, 
 the only ambition for as yet that which is of the loftier and 
 more lasting kind had not afforded me a temptation ; and the 
 hope which had borne the name and rank of ambition had been 
 the hope rather to glitter than to rise. 
 
 These passions, not yet experienced when I lost Isora, had 
 afforded me at that period a ready comfort and a sure engross- 
 ment. And in satisfying the hasty jealousies of my temper, in 
 deeming Isora unworthy, and Gerald my rival, I naturally 
 aroused in my pride a dexterous orator as well as a firm ally. 
 Pride not only strengthened my passions, it also persuaded 
 them by its voice ; and it was not till the languid, yet deep, 
 stillness of sated wishes and palled desires fell upon me, that 
 the low accent of a love still surviving at my heart made itself 
 heard in answer. 
 
 I now began to take a different view of Isora's conduct. I 
 now began to doubt where I had formerly believed ; and the 
 doubt, first allied to fear, gradually brightened into hope. Of 
 Gerald's rivalry, at least of his identity with Barnard, and, 
 consequently, of his power over Isora, there was, and there 
 could be, no feeling short of certainty. But of what nature 
 was that power? Had not Isora assured me that it was not 
 love ? Why should I disbelieve her ? Nay, did she not love 
 myself ? had not her cheek blushed and her hand trembled 
 when I addressed her ? Were these signs the counterfeits of 
 love ? Were they not rather of that heart's dye which no skill 
 can counterfeit ? She had declared that she could not, that 
 she could never, be mine : she had declared so with a fearful 
 earnestness which seemed to annihilate hope ; but had she 
 not also, in the same meeting, confessed that I was dear to her? 
 Had not her lip given me a sweeter and a more eloquent as- 
 surance of that confession than words ? and could hope perish
 
 DEVEREUX. 123 
 
 while love existed ? She had left me she had bid me fare- 
 well for ever ; but that was no proof of a want of love, or of 
 her unvvorthiness. Gerald, or Barnard, evidently possessed an 
 influence over father as well as child. , Their departure from 
 
 might have been occasioned by him, and she might 
 
 have deplored, while she could not resist it : or she might not 
 even have deplored : nay, she might have desired, she might 
 have advised it, for my sake as well as hers, were she thoroughly 
 convinced that the union of our loves was impossible 
 
 But, then, of what nature could be this mysterious authority 
 which Gerald possessed over her? That which he possessed 
 over the sire, political schemes might account for ; but these, 
 surely, could not have much weight for the daughter. This, 
 indeed, must still remain doubtful and unaccounted for. One 
 presumption, that Gerald was either no favored lover, or that 
 he was unacquainted with her retreat, might be drawn from 
 his continued residence at Devereux Court. If he loved Isora, 
 and knew her present abode, would he not have sought her? 
 Could he, I thought, live away from that bright face, if once 
 allowed to behold it? unless, indeed (terrible thought!), 
 there hung over it the dimness of guilty familiarity, and in- 
 difference had been the offspring of possession. But was that 
 delicate and virgin face, where changes, with every moment, 
 coursed each other, harmonious to the changes of the mind, as 
 shadows in a valley reflect the clouds of heaven ! was that 
 face, so ingenuous, so girlishly revelant of all, even of the 
 slightest, the most transitory emotion, the face of one hardened 
 in deceit and inured to shame? The countenance is, it is true, 
 but a faithless mirror : but what man that has studied woman 
 will not own that there is, at least while the down of first youth 
 is not brushed away, in the eye and cheek of a zoned and un- 
 tainted Innocence, that which survives not even the fruition 
 of a lawful love, and has no (nay, not even a shadowed and im- 
 perfect) likeness in the face of Guilt? Then, too, had any 
 worldlier or mercenary sentiment entered her breast respecting 
 me, would Isora have flown from the suit of the eldest scion of 
 the rich house of Devereux ? and would she, poor and desti- 
 tute, the daughter of an alien and an exile, would she have 
 spontaneously relinquished any hope of obtaining that alliance 
 that maidens of the loftiest houses of England had not dis- 
 dained to desire? Thus confused and incoherent, but thus 
 yearning fondly towards her image and its imagined piirity, 
 did my thoughts daily and hourly array themselves ; and, in 
 proportion as I suffered common ties to drop from me
 
 S24 DEVEREUX. 
 
 one by one, those thoughts clung the more tenderly to" that 
 which, though severed from the rich argosy of former love, 
 was still indissolubly attached to the anchor of its hope. 
 
 It was during this period of revived affection that I received 
 the following letter from my uncle : 
 
 " I thank thee for thy long letter, my dear boy ; I read it 
 over three times with great delight. Od'sfish, Morton, you are 
 a sad Pickle, I fear, and seem to know all the ways of the town 
 as well as your old uncle did some thirty years ago ! 'Tis a 
 very pretty acquaintance with human nature that your letters 
 display. You put me in mind of little Sid, who was just about 
 your height, and who had just such a pretty, shrewd way of 
 expressing himself in simile and point. Ah, it is easy to see 
 that you have profited by your old uncle's conversation, and 
 that Farquhar and Etherege were not studied for nothing. 
 
 "But 1 have sad news for thee, my child, or rather it is sad 
 for me to tell thee my tidings. It is sad for the old birds to 
 linger in their nest when the young ones take wing and leave 
 them ; but it is merry for the young birds to get away from the 
 dull old tree, and frisk it in the sunshine merry for them to 
 get mates, and have young themselves. Now, do not think, 
 Morton, that by speaking of mates and young, I am going to 
 tell thee thy brothers are already married ; nay, there is time 
 enough for those things, and I am not friendly to early wed- 
 dings, nor, to speak truly, a marvellous great admirer of that 
 holy ceremony at any age ; for the which there may be private 
 reasons, too long to relate to thee now. Moreover, I fear my 
 young day was a wicked time a heinous wicked time, and we 
 were wont to laugh at the wedded state, until, body of me, 
 some of us found it no laughing matter. 
 
 "But to return, Morton to return to thy brothers they 
 have both left me ; and the house seems to me not the good 
 old house it did when ye were all about me ; and, somehow or 
 other, I look now oftener at the church-yard than I was wont to 
 do. You are all gone now all shot up, and become men ; 
 and when your old uncle sees you no more, and recollects that 
 all his own contemporaries are out of the world, he cannot 
 help saying, as William Temple, poor fellow, once prettily 
 enough said, 'Methinks it seems an impertinence in me to be 
 still alive.' You went first, Morton ; and I missed you more 
 than I cared to say ; but you were always a kind boy to those 
 you loved, and you wrote the old knight merry letters, that 
 made him laugh, and think he was grown young again (faith, 
 boy, that was a jolly story of the three Squires at Button's !)
 
 DEVEREUX. 125 
 
 and once a week comes your packet, well filled, as if you did 
 not think it a task to make me happy, which your handwriting 
 always does ; nor a shame to my grey hairs that I take pleasure 
 in the same things that please thee ! So, thou seest, my child, 
 that I have got through thy absence pretty well, save that I 
 have had no one to read thy letters to ; for Gerald and thou 
 are still jealous of each other a great sin in thee, Morton, 
 which I prithee to reform. And Aubrey, poor lad, is a little 
 too rigid, considering his years, and it looks not well in the 
 dear boy to shake his head at the follies of his uncle. And as 
 to thy mother, Morton, I read her one of thy letters, and she 
 said thou wert a graceless reprobate to think so much of this 
 wicked world, and to write so familiarly to thine aged relative. 
 Now, I am not a young man, Morton, but the word aged has a 
 sharp sound with it when it comes from a lady's mouth. 
 
 " Well, after thou hadst been gone a month, Aubrey and 
 Gerald, as I wrote thee word long since, in the last letter I 
 wrote thee with my own hand, made a tour together for a little 
 while, and that was a hard stroke on me. But after a week or 
 two Gerald returned ; and I went out in my chair to see the 
 dear boy shoot 'sdeath, Morton, he handles the gun well. 
 And then Aubrey returned alone; but he looked pined, and 
 moping, and shut himself up, and as thou dost love him so, I 
 did not like to tell thee, till now, when he is quite well, that he 
 alarmed me much for him ; he is too much addicted to his 
 devotions, poor child, and seems to forget that the hope of the 
 next world ought to make us happy in this. Well, Morton, at 
 last, two months ago, Aubrey left us again, and Gerald last 
 week set off on a tour through the sister kingdom, as it is 
 called ; Faith, boy, if Scotland and England are sister king- 
 doms, 'tis a thousand pities for Scotland that they are not 
 co-heiresses ! 
 
 " I should have told thee of this news before, but I have 
 had, as thou knowest, the gout so villainously in my hand, that, 
 till t'other day, I have not held a pen, and old Nicholls, my 
 amanuensis, is but a poor scribe ; and I did not love to let the 
 dog write to thee on all our family affairs especially as 1 have 
 a secret to tell thee which makes me plaguy uneasy. Thou 
 must know, Morton, that after thy departure Gerald asked me 
 for thy rooms ; and though I did not like that any one else 
 should have what belonged to thee, yet I have always had a 
 foolish antipathy to say ' No ! ' so thy brother had them, on 
 condition to leave them exactly as they were, and to yield them 
 to thee whenever thou shouldst return to claim them. Well
 
 126 DEVEREUX. 
 
 Morton, when Gerald went on his tour with thy youngest 
 brother, old Nicholls you know 'tis a garrulous fellow told 
 me one night that his son Hugh you remember Hugh, a thin 
 youth, and a tall lingering by the beach one evening, saw a 
 man, wrapped in a cloak, come out of the castle cave, unmoor 
 one of the boats, and push off to the little island opposite. 
 Hugh swears by more than yea and nay, that the man was 
 Father Montreuil. Now, Morton, this made me very tineas)', 
 and I saw why thy brother Gerald wanted thy rooms, which 
 communicate so snugly with the sea. So I told Nicholls, slily, 
 to have the great iron gate at the mouth of the passage care- 
 fully locked ; and when it was locked, I had an iron plate put 
 over the whole lock, that the lean Jesuit might not creep even 
 through the keyhole. Thy brother returned, and I told him a 
 tale of the smugglers, who have really been too daring of late, 
 and insisted on the door being left as I had ordered ; and I 
 told him, moreover, though not as if I had suspected his com- 
 munication with the priest, that I interdicted all further con- 
 verse with that limb of the church. Thy brother heard me 
 with an indifferently bad grace ; but I was peremptory, and the 
 thing was agreed on. 
 
 " Well, child, the day before Gerald last left us, I went to 
 take leave of him in his own room to tell thee the truth, I had 
 forgotten his travelling expenses when I was on the stairs of 
 the tower, I heard by the Lord I did Montreuil's voice in 
 the outer-room, as plainly as ever I heard it at prayers. Od'sfish, 
 Morton, I was an angered, and I made so much haste to the 
 door, that my foot slipped by the way ; thy brother heard me 
 fall, and came out ; but I looked at him as I never looked at 
 thee, Morton, and entered the room. Lo, the priest was not 
 there ; I searched both chambers in vain ; so I made thy 
 brother lift up the trap-door, and kindle a lamp, and I searched 
 the room below and the passage. The priest was invisible. 
 Thou knowest, Morton, that there is only one egress in the 
 passage, and that was locked, as I said before, so where the 
 devil the devil indeed could thy tutor have escaped ? He 
 could not have passed me on the stairs without my seeing him ; 
 he could not have leaped the window without breaking his 
 neck ; he could not have got out of the passage without making 
 himself a current of air. Od'sfish, Morton, this thing might 
 puzzle a wiser man than thine uncle. Gerald affected to be 
 mighty indignant at my suspicions ; but, God forgive him, I 
 saw he was playing a part. A man does not write plays, my 
 child, without being keen-lighted in these little intrigues ; and.
 
 DEVEREUX. 127 
 
 moreover, it is impossible I could have mistaken thy tutor's 
 voice, which, to do it justice, is musical enough, and is the 
 most singular voice I ever heard unless little Sid's be ex- 
 cepted. 
 
 "Apropos of little Sid. I remember that in the Mall, when 
 I was walking there alone, three weeks after my marriage, 
 De Grammont and Sid joined me. I was in a melancholic 
 mood 'sdeath, Morton, marriage tames a man as water tames 
 mice ! 'Aha, Sir William,' cried Sedley, ' thou hast a cloud on 
 thee prithee now brighten it away : see, thy wife shines on 
 thee from the other end of the Mall.' ' Ah, talk not to a dying 
 man of his physic ! ' said Grammont (that Grammont was a 
 shocking rogue, Morton !) ' Prithee, Sir William, what is the 
 chief characteristic of wedlock ? is it a state of war or of 
 peace?' 'Oh, peace to be sure!' cried Sedley, 'and Sir 
 William and his lady carry with them the emblem.' ' How ! ' 
 cried I ; for I do assure thee, Morton, I was of a different turn 
 of mind. ' How ! ' said Sid, gravely, ' why, the emblem of 
 peace is the cornucopia, which your lady and you equitably 
 divide she carries the copia, and you the cor .' Nay, Mor- 
 ton, nay, I cannot finish the jest ; for, after all, it was a sorry 
 thing in little Sid, whom I had befriended like a brother, with, 
 heart and purse, to wound me so cuttingly ; but 'tis the way 
 with your jesters. 
 
 " Od'sfish, now how I have got out of my story ! Well, I 
 did not go back to my room, Morton, till I had looked to the 
 outside of the iron door, and seen that the plate was as firm 
 as ever : so now you have the whole of the matter. Gerald 
 went the next day, and I fear me much lest he should already 
 be caught in some Jacobite trap. Write me thy advice on the 
 subject. Meanwhile, I have taken the precaution to have the 
 trapdoor removed, and the aperture strongly boarded over. 
 
 " But 'tis time for me to give over. I have been four days 
 on this letter, for the gout comes now to me oftener than it 
 did, and I do not know when I may again write to thee with 
 my own hand ; so I resolved I would e'en empty my whole 
 budget at once. Thy mother is well and blooming ; she is, at 
 the present, abstractedly employed in a prodigious piece of 
 tapestry, which old Nicholls informs me is the wonder of all 
 the women. 
 
 " Heaven bless thee, my child ! Take care of thyself, and 
 drink moderately. It is hurtful at thy age to drink above a 
 gallon or so at a sitting. Heaven bless thee again, and when 
 the weather gets warmer, thou must come with thy kind looks,
 
 128 DEVEREUX. 
 
 to make me feel at home again. At present the country wears 
 a cheerless face, and everything about us is harsh and frosty, 
 except the blunt, good-for-nothing heart of thine uncle, and 
 that, winter or summer, is always warm to thee. 
 
 "WILLIAM DEVEREUX." 
 
 " P.S. I thank thee heartily for the little spaniel of the new 
 breed thou gottest me from the Duchess of Marlborough. It 
 has the prettiest red and white, and the blackest eyes possible. 
 But poor Ponto is as jealous as a wife three years married, and 
 I cannot bear the old hound to be vexed, so I shall transfer 
 the little creature, its rival, to thy mother." 
 
 This letter, tolerably characteristic of the blended simplicity, 
 penetration, and overflowing kindness of the writer, occasioned 
 me much anxious thought. There was no doubt in my mind 
 but that Gerald and Montreuil were engaged in some intrigue 
 for the exiled family. The disguised name which the former 
 assumed, the state reasons which D' Alvarez confessed that 
 Barnard, or rather Gerald, had for concealment, and which 
 proved, at least, that some state plot in which Gerald was 
 engaged was known to the Spaniard, joined to those expressions 
 of Montreuil, which did all but own a design for the restora- 
 tion of the deposed Line, and the power which I knew he 
 possessed over Gerald, whose mind, at once bold and facile, 
 would love the adventure of the intrigue, and yield to Mon- 
 treuil's suggestions on its nature, these combined circumstances 
 left me in no doubt upon a subject deeply interesting to the 
 honor of our house, and the very life of one of its members. 
 Nothing, however, for me to do, calculated to prevent or 
 impede the designs of Montreuil and the danger of Gerald, 
 occurred to me. Eager alike in my hatred and my love, I said, 
 inly, "What matters it whether one whom the ties of blood 
 never softened towards me, with whom, from my childhood 
 upwards, I have wrestled as with an enemy, what matters it 
 whether he win fame or death in the perilous game he has 
 engaged in?" And turning from this most generous and most 
 brotherly view of the subject, I began only to think whether 
 the search or the society of Isora also influenced Gerald in his 
 absence from home. After a fruitless and inconclusive medita- 
 tion on that head, my thoughts took a less selfish turn, and 
 dwelt with all the softness of pity, and the anxiety of love, 
 upon the morbid temperament and ascetic devotions of Aubrey. 
 What, for one so already abstracted from the enjoyments of 
 earth, so darkened by superstitious misconceptions of the
 
 DEVEREUX. 129 
 
 true nature of God, and the true objects of his creatures what 
 could be anticipated but wasted powers and a perverted life ? 
 Alas ! when will men perceive the difference between religion 
 and priestcraft ! When will they perceive that reason, so far 
 from extinguishing religion by a more gaudy light, sheds on it 
 all its lustre ? It is fabled that the first legislator of the Peru- 
 vians received from the Deity a golden rod, with which in his 
 wanderings he was to strike the earth until in some destined 
 spot the earth entirely absorbed it, and there and there alone 
 was he to erect a temple to the Divinity. What is this fable 
 but the cloak of an inestimable moral ? Our reason is the rod 
 of gold ; the vast world of truth gives the soil, which it is 
 perpetually to sound ; and only where without resistance the 
 soil receives the rod which guided and supported us, will our 
 Altar be sacred and our worship be accepted. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Being a short Chapter, containing a most Important Event. 
 
 SIR WILLIAM'S letter was still fresh in my mind, when, for 
 want of some less noble quarter wherein to bestow my tedious- 
 ness, I repaired to St. John. As I crossed the hall to his 
 apartment, two men, just dismissed from his presence, passed 
 me rapidly ; one was unknown to me, but there was no mis- 
 taking the other it was Montreuil. I was greatly startled ; 
 the priest not appearing to notice me, and conversing in a 
 whispered, yet seemingly vehement tone, with his companion, 
 hurried on, and vanished through the street door. I entered 
 St. John's room : he was alone, and received me with his usual 
 gayety. 
 
 " Pardon me, Mr. Secretary," said I ; " but if not a question 
 of state, do inform me what you know respecting the taller one 
 of those two gentlemen who have just quitted you?" 
 
 " It is a question of state, my dear Devereux, so my answer 
 must be brief ; very little." 
 
 " You know who he is ? " 
 
 " Yes, a Jesuit, and a marvellously shrewd one : the Abbe" 
 Montreuil." 
 
 " He was my tutor." 
 
 "Ah, so I have heard." 
 
 "And your acquaintance with him is positively and bond fide 
 of a state nature?"
 
 130 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " Positively and bond fide." 
 
 11 1 could tell you something of him ; he is certainly in the 
 service of the Court at St. Germains, and a terrible plotter on 
 this side the channel." 
 
 " Possibly ; but I wish to receive no information respecting 
 him." 
 
 One great virtue of business did St. John possess, and I have 
 never known any statesman who possessed it so eminently : it 
 was the discreet distinction between friends of the statesman 
 and friends of the man. Much and intimately as I knew St. 
 John, I could never glean from him a single secret of a state 
 nature, until, indeed, at a later period, I leagued myself to a 
 portion of his public schemes. Accordingly I found him, at 
 the present moment, perfectly impregnable to my inquiries ; 
 and it was not till I knew Montreuil's companion was the 
 celebrated intriguant, the Abbe Gaultier, that I ascertained the 
 exact nature of the priest's business with St. John, and the 
 exact motives of the civilities he had received from Abigail 
 Masham.* Being at last forced, despairingly, to give over the 
 attempt on his discretion, I suffered St. John to turn the con- 
 versation upon other topics, and as these were not much to the 
 existent humor of my mind, I soon rose to depart. 
 
 " Stay, Count," said St. John ; "shall you ride to-day?" 
 
 "If you will bear me company." 
 
 " Volontiers to say the truth, I was about to ask you to 
 canter your bay horse with me first to Spring Gardens, f where 
 I have a promise to make to the director ; and secondly, on a 
 mission of charity to a poor foreigner of rank and birth, who, 
 in his profound ignorance of this country, thought it right to 
 enter into a plot with some wise heads, and to reveal it to some 
 foolish tongues, who brought it to us with as much clatter as if 
 it were a second gunpowder project. I easily brought him off 
 that scrape, and I am now going to give him a caution for the 
 future. Poor gentleman, I hear that he is grievously distressed 
 in pecuniary matters, and I always had a kindness for exiles. 
 Who knows but that a state of exile may be our own fate ! and 
 this alien is sprung from a race as haughty as that of St. John, 
 or of Devereux. The res angusta domi must gall him sorely ! " 
 
 "True," said I slowly. "What may be the name of the 
 foreigner?" 
 
 *Viz. That Count Devereux ascertained the priest's communications and overtures from 
 the Chevalier. The precise extent of Bolingbroke's secret negotiations with the exiled 
 Prince is still one of the darkest portions of the history of that time. That negotiations 
 were carried on, both by Harley and St. John,' very largely, and very closely, I ned not say 
 that there is no doubt. ED. 
 
 t Vauxhall.
 
 DEVEREUX. 131 
 
 " Why complain not hereafter that I do not trust you in 
 state matters I will divulge D'Alvarez Don Diego an 
 hidalgo of the best blood of Andalusia ; and not unworthy of 
 it, I fancy, in the virtues of fighting, though he may be in those 
 of counsel. But Heavens ! Devereux you seem ill ! " 
 
 " No, no ! Have you ever seen this man ? " 
 
 "Never." 
 
 At this word a thrill of joy shot across me, for I knew St. 
 John's fame for gallantry, and I was suspicious of the motives 
 of his visit. 
 
 " St. John, I know this Spaniard I know him well, and inti- 
 mately. Could you not commission me to do your errand, and 
 deliver your caution ? Relief from me he might accept ; from 
 you, as a stranger, pride might forbid it ; and you would really 
 confer on me a personal and an essential kindness, if you would 
 give me so fair an opportunity to confer kindness upon him." 
 
 "Very well, I am delighted to oblige you in any way. Take 
 his direction ; you see his abode is in a very pitiful suburb. 
 Tell him from me that he is quite safe at present ; but tell him 
 also to avoid, henceforward, all imprudence, all connection with 
 priests, plotters, et tons ces gens-la, as he values his personal 
 safety, or at least his continuance in this most hospitable country. 
 It is not from every wood that we make a Mercury, nor from 
 every brain that we can carve a Mercury's genius of intrigue." 
 
 " Nobody ought to be better skilled in the materials requisite 
 for such productions than Mr. Secretary St. John ! " said I ; 
 "and now, adieu." 
 
 "Adieu, if you will not ride with me. We meet at Sir William 
 Wyndham's to-morrow." 
 
 Masking my agitation till I was alone, I rejoiced when I 
 found myself in the open streets. I summoned a hackney 
 coach, and drove as rapidly as the vehicle would permit, to the 
 petty and obscure suburb to which St. John had directed me. 
 The coach stopped at the door of a very humble, but not abso- 
 lutely wretched, abode. I knocked at the door. A woman 
 opened it, and, in answer to my inquiries, told me that the poor 
 foreign gentleman was very ill very ill indeed had suffered 
 a paralytic stroke not expected to live. His daughter was 
 with him now would see no one even Mr. Barnard had been 
 denied admission. 
 
 At that name my feelings, shocked and stunned at first by 
 the unexpected intelligence of the poor Spaniard's danger, felt 
 a sudden and fierce revulsion I combated it. This is no time, 
 I thought, for any jealous, for any selfish, emotion. If I can
 
 132 DEVEREUX. 
 
 serve her, if I can relieve her father, let me be contented. 
 "She will see me," I said aloud, and I slipped some money in 
 the woman's hand. "I am an old friend of the family, and I 
 shall not be an unwelcome intruder on the sick-room of the 
 sufferer." 
 
 "Intruder, sir bless you, the poor gentleman is quite speech- 
 less and insensible." 
 
 At hearing this, I could refrain no longer. Isora's discon- 
 solate, solitary, destitute condition, broke irresistibly upon me, 
 and all scruple of more delicate and formal nature vanished at 
 once. I ascended the stairs, followed by the old woman she 
 stopped me by the threshold of a room on the second floor, and 
 whispered " There!" I paused an instant collected breath 
 and courage, and entered. The room was partially darkened. 
 The curtains were drawn closely around the bed. By a table, 
 on which stood two or three phials of medicine, I beheld Isora, 
 listening with an eager, a most eager and intent face, to a man 
 whose garb betrayed his healing profession, and who, laying a 
 finger on the outstretched palm of his other hand, appeared 
 giving his precise instructions, and uttering that oracular breath 
 which mere human words to him was a message of fate 
 itself a fiat on which hung all that makes life, life, to his 
 trembling and devout listener. Monarchs of earth, ye have 
 not so supreme a power over woe and happiness, as one village 
 leech ! As he turned to leave her, she drew from a most slender 
 purse a few petty coins, and I saw that she muttered some words 
 indicative of the shame of poverty, as she tremblingly tendered 
 them to the outstretched palm. Twice did that palm close and 
 open on the paltry sum ; and the third time the native instinct 
 of the heart overcame the later impulse of the profession. The 
 limb of Galen drew back, and shaking with a gentle oscillation 
 hiscapitalian honors, he laid the money softly on the table, and 
 buttoning up the pouch of his nether garment, as if to resist 
 temptation, he pressed the poor hand still extended towards 
 him, and bowing over it with a kind respect for which I did 
 long to approach and kiss his most withered and undainty 
 cheek, he turned quickly round, and almost fell against me in 
 the abstracted hurry of his exit. 
 
 " Hush ! " said I softly. " What hope of your patient ?" 
 
 The leech glanced at me meaningly, and I whispered to him 
 to wait for me below. Isora had not yet seen me. It is a 
 notable distinction in the feelings, that all but the solitary one 
 of grief sharpen into exquisite edge the keenness of the senses, 
 but grief blunts them to a most dull obtuseness. I hesitated
 
 DEVEREUX. 133 
 
 now to come forward ; and so I stood, hat in hand, by the door, 
 and not knowing that the tears streamed down my cheeks as I 
 fixed my gaze upon Isora. She too stood still, just where the 
 leech had left her, with her eyes fixed upon the ground, and 
 her head drooping. The right hand which the man had pressed, 
 had sunk slowly and heavily by her side, with the small snowy 
 fingers half closed over the palm. There is no describing the 
 despondency which the listless position of that hand spoke, and 
 the left hand lay with a like indolence of sorrow on the table, 
 with one finger outstretched and pointing towards the phials, 
 just as it had, some moments before, seconded the injunctions 
 of the prim physician. Well, for my part, if I were a painter 
 I would come now and then to a sick chamber for a study ! 
 
 At last Isora, with a very quiet gesture of self- recovery, moved 
 towards the bed, and the next moment I was by her side. If 
 my life depended on it, I could not write one, no, not one sylla- 
 ble more of this scene. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Containing more than any other Chapter in the Second Book of this History. 
 
 MY first proposal was to remove the patient, with all due care 
 and gentleness, to a better lodging, and a district more conven- 
 ient for the visits of the most eminent physicians. When I ex- 
 pressed this wish to Isora, she looked at me long and wistfully, 
 and then burst into tears. " You will not deceive us," said she, 
 " and I accept your kindness at once from him I rejected the 
 same offer." 
 
 " Him ? of whom speak you ? this Barnard, or rather but 
 I know him ! " A startling expression passed over Isora's speak- 
 ing face. 
 
 " Know him ! " she cried, interrupting me, "You do not you 
 cannot ! " 
 
 " Take courage, dearest Isora^if I may so dare to call you 
 take courage ; it is fearful to have a rival in that quarter but 
 I am prepared for it. This Barnard, tell me again, do you love 
 him?" 
 
 "Love Oh, God, no!" 
 
 "What then: do you still fear him ? fear him, too, protected 
 by the unsleeping eye and the vigilant hand of a love like mine? " 
 
 "Yes!" she said falteringly, "I fear tor you!" 
 
 "Me ! " I cried, laughing scornfully, "me ! nay, dearest, there
 
 134 DEVEREUX. 
 
 breathes not that man whom you need fear on my account. But, 
 answer me is not " 
 
 " For Heaven's sake for mercy's sake ! " cried Isora eagerly, 
 "do not question me I am bound, by a most solemn oath, 
 never to divulge that secret." 
 
 " I care not," said I, calmly, "I want no confirmation of my 
 knowledge this masked rival is my own brother ! " 
 
 I fixed my eyes full on Isora while I said this, and she quailed, 
 beneath my gaze: her cheek her lips were utterly without 
 color, and an expression of sickening and keen anguish was 
 graven upon her face. She made no answer. 
 
 " Yes! " resumed I, bitterly, " it is my brother be it so I am 
 prepared but if you can, Isora, say one word to deny it?" 
 
 Isora's tongue seemed literally to cleave to her mouth; at last, 
 with a violent effort, she muttered, " I have told you, Morton, 
 that I am bound by oath not to divulge this secret; nor may I 
 breathe a single syllable calculated to do so if I deny one 
 name, you may question me on more and, therefore, to deny 
 one is a breach of my oath. But beware ! " she added, vehe- 
 mently, " oh ! beware how your suspicions mere vague, baseless 
 suspicions criminate a brother : and, above all, whomsoever 
 you believe to be the real being under this disguised name, as 
 you value your life, and therefore mine breathe not to him a 
 syllable of your belief." 
 
 I was so struck with the energy with which this was said, that, 
 after a short pause, I rejoined in an altered tone : 
 
 " I cannot believe that I have aught against life to fear from 
 a brother's hand but I will promise you to guard against latent 
 danger. But is your oath so peremptory that you cannot deny 
 even one name ? if not, and you can deny this, I swear to you 
 that I will never question you upon another." 
 
 Again a fierce convulsion wrung the lip and distorted the per- 
 fect features of Isora. She remained silent for some moments, 
 and then murmured, " My oath forbids me even that single an- 
 swer tempt me no more now and forever, I am mute upon 
 this subject." 
 
 Perhaps some slight and momentary anger, or doubt, or sus- 
 picion, betrayed itself upon my countenance, for Isora, after 
 looking upon me long and mournfully, said in a quiet but mel- 
 ancholy tone : " I see your thoughts, and I do not reproach you 
 for them it is natural that you should 'think ill of one whom 
 this mystery surrounds one too placed under such circumstan- 
 ces of humiliation and distrust. I have lived long in your coun- 
 try I have seen, for the last few months, much of its inhabi-
 
 DEVEREUX. 135 
 
 tants ; I have studied too the works which profess to unfold its 
 national and peculiar character ; I know that you have a dis= 
 trust of the people of other climates; I know that you are cau- 
 tious and full of suspicious vigilance, even in your commerce 
 with each other ; I know, too (and Isora's heart swelled visibly 
 as she spoke), that poverty itself, in the eyes of your commer- 
 cial countrymen, is a crime, and that they rarely feel confidence 
 or place faith in those who are unhappy ; why, Count Dever- 
 eux, why should I require more of you than of the rest of your 
 nation ? Why should you think better of the penniless and 
 friendless girl the degraded exile the victim of doubt, which 
 is so often the disguise of guilt, than any other any one even 
 among my own people would think of one so mercilessly de- 
 prived of all the decent and appropriate barriers by which a 
 maiden should be surrounded? No no leave me as you 
 found me leave my poor father where you see him any place 
 will do for us to die in." 
 
 " Isora ! " I said, clasping her in my arms, "you do not know 
 me yet ; had I found you in prosperity, and in the world's honor 
 had I wooed you in your father's halls, and girt around with 
 the friends and kinsmen of your race I might have pressed for 
 more than you will now tell me I might have indulged sus- 
 picion where I perceived mystery, and I might not have loved 
 as I love you now ! Now, Isora, in misfortune, in destitution, I 
 place without reserve my whole heart its trust, its zeal its de- 
 votion in your keeping; come evil or good, storm or sunshine, 
 I am yours, wholly, and forever. Reject me if you will, I will 
 return to you again ; and never never save from my own eyes 
 or your own lips will I receive a single evidence detracting from 
 your purity, or, Isora mine own, own Isora may I not add 
 also from your love ? " 
 
 " Too, too generous ! " murmured Isora, struggling passion- 
 ately with her tears, "may Heaven forsake me if ever I am un- 
 grateful to thee ; and believe believe that if love, more fond, 
 more true, more devoted than woman ever felt before, can re- 
 pay you, you shall be repaid ! " 
 
 Why, at that moment, did my heart leap so joyously within 
 me ? why did I say inly " The treasure I have so long yearned 
 for, is found at last : we have met, and through the waste of 
 years, we will walk together, and never part again"? Why, at 
 that moment of bliss, did I not rather feel a foretaste of the 
 coming woe! Oh, blind and capricious Fate, that gives us a 
 presentiment at one while, and withholds it at another ! Knowl- 
 edge, and Prudence, and calculating Foresight, what are ye?*
 
 136 DEVEREUX. 
 
 warnings unto others, not ourselves. Reason is a lamp which 
 sheddeth afar a glorious and general light, but leaveth all that 
 is around it in darkness and in gloom. We foresee and foretell 
 the destiny of others we march credulous and benighted to 
 our own ; and, like Laocoon, from the very altars by which we 
 stand as the soothsayer and the priest, creep forth, unsuspected 
 and undreamt of, the serpents which are fated to destroy us ! 
 
 That very day then, Alvarez was removed to a lodging more 
 worthy of his birth, and more calculated to afford hope of his 
 recovery. He bore the removal without any evident sign of 
 fatigue ; but his dreadful malady had taken away both speech 
 and sense, and he was already more than half the property of 
 the grave. I sent, however, for the best medical advice which 
 London could afford. They met prescribed and left the 
 patient just as they found him. I know not, in the progress of 
 science, what physicians may be to posterity, but in my time they 
 are false witnesses subpoenaed against Death, whose testimony al- 
 ways tells less in favor of the plaintiff than the defendant. 
 
 Before we left the poor Spaniard's former lodging, and when I 
 was on the point of giving some instructions to the landlady 
 respecting the place to which the few articles of property be- 
 longing to Don Diego and Isora were to be moved, Isora made 
 me a sign to be silent, which I obeyed. " Pardon me," said 
 she afterwards, "but I confess that I am anxious our next resi- 
 dence should not be known should not be subject to the intru- 
 sion of of this " 
 
 "Barnard, as you call him. I understand you; be it so !" and 
 accordingly I enjoined the goods to be sent to my own house, 
 whence they were removed to Don Diego's new abode ; and I 
 took especial care to leave with the good lady no clue to discover 
 Alvarez and his daughter, otherwise than through me. The 
 pleasure afforded me of directing Gerald's attention to myself, 
 I could not resist. " Tell Mr. Barnard, when he call," said I, 
 " that only through Count Morton Devereux, will he hear of 
 Don Diego D'Alvarez, and the lady his daughter." 
 
 '' twill, your honor," said the landlady ; and then, looking at 
 me more attentively, she added: "Bless me! now when you 
 speak, there is a very strong likeness between yourself and Mr. 
 Barnard." 
 
 I recoiled as if an adder had stung me, and hurried into the 
 coach to support the patient, who was already placed there. 
 
 Now then my daily post was by the bed of disease and suffer- 
 ing ; in the chamber of death was my vow of love ratified ; and 
 in sadness and in sorrow was it returned. But it is in such
 
 DEVEREUX. i37 
 
 scenes that the deepest, the most endearing, and the most holy, 
 species of the passion is engendered. As I heard Isora's low 
 voice tremble with the suspense of one who watches over the 
 hourly severing of the affection of Nature and of early years : as I 
 saw her light step flit by the pillow which she smoothed, and her 
 cheek alternately flush and fade, in watching the wants which 
 she relieved; as I marked her mute, her unwearying, tenderness, 
 breaking into a thousand nameless but mighty, cares and per- 
 vading like an angel's vigilance every yea, the minutest course 
 into which it flowed did I not behold her in that sphere in 
 which woman is most lovely, and in which love itself consecrates 
 its admiration, and purifies its most ardent desires ? That was 
 not a time for our hearts to speak audibly to each other ; but we 
 felt that they grew closer and closer, and we asked not for the 
 poor eloquence of words. But over this scene let me not 
 linger. 
 
 One morning, as I was proceeding on foot to Isora's, I perceived 
 on the opposite side of the way Montreuil and Gerald ; they 
 were conversing eagerly : they both saw me. Montreuil made 
 a slight, quiet, and dignified inclination of the head : Gerald 
 colored, and hesitated. I thought he was about to leave his 
 companion and address me ; but, with a haughty and severe air, 
 I passed on, and Gerald, as if stung by my demeanor, bit his lip 
 vehemently, and followed my example. A few minutes after- 
 wards I felt an inclination to regret that I had not afforded him 
 him an opportunity of addressing me. " I might," thought 
 I, " have then taunted him with his persecution of Isora, and 
 defied him to execute those threats against me, 'in which it is 
 evident, from her apprehensions for my safety, that he indulged." 
 
 I had not, however, much leisure for these thoughts. When 
 I arrived at the lodgings of Alvarez, I found that a great change 
 had taken place in his condition ; he had recovered speech, 
 though imperfectly, and testified a return to sense. I flew up 
 stairs with a light step to congratulate Isora ; she met me at the 
 door. "Hush!" she whispered : "my father sleeps!" But 
 she did not speak with the animation I had anticipated. 
 
 "What is the matter, dearest ?" said I, following her into an- 
 other apartment : " you seem sad, and your eyes are red with 
 tears, which are not, methinks, entirely the tears of joy at this 
 happy change in your father?" 
 
 "I am marked out for suffering," returnd Isora, more keenly 
 than she was wont to speak. I pressed her to explain her mean- 
 ing ; she hesitated at first, but at length confessed that her father 
 had always been anxious for her marriage with this soi-disant
 
 138 DEVEREUX.' 
 
 Barnard, and that his first words on his recovery had been to 
 press her to consent to his wishes. 
 
 " My poor father," said she \veepingly, "speaks and thinks 
 only for my fancied good : but his senses as yet are only recovered 
 in part, and he cannot even understand me when I speak of you. 
 ' I shall die,' he said, ' I shall die, and you will be left on the 
 wide world ! ' I in vain endeavored to explain to him that I 
 should have a protector he fell asleep muttering those words, 
 and with tears in his eyes." 
 
 " Does he know as much of this Barnard as you do ?" said I. 
 
 " Heavens, no ! or he would never have pressed me to marry 
 one so wicked." 
 
 " Does he know even who he is ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " said Isora, after a pause, "but he has not known it 
 long." 
 
 Here the physician joined us, and taking me aside, informed 
 me that, as he had foreboded, sleep had been the harbinger of 
 death, and that Don Diego was no more. I broke the news as 
 gently as I could to Isora : but her grief was far more violent 
 than I could have anticipated ; and nothing seemed to cut her 
 so deeply to the heart as the thought that his last wish had been 
 one with which she had not complied, and could never comply. 
 
 I pass over the first days of mourning I come to the one after 
 Don Diego's funeral. 1 had been with Isora in the morning ; I 
 left her for a few hours, and returned at the first dusk of even- 
 ing with some books and music, which I vainly hoped she might 
 recur to for a momentary abstraction from her grief. I dismissed 
 my carriage, with the intention of walking home, and addressing 
 the woman-servant who admitted me, inquired, as was my wont, 
 after Isora. "She has been very ill," replied the woman, "ever 
 since the strange gentleman left her." 
 
 " The strange gentleman?" 
 
 Yes, he had forced his way upstairs, despite the denial the 
 servant had been ordered to give to all strangers. He had 
 entered Isora's room ; and the woman, in answer to my urgent 
 inquiries, added that she had heard his voice raised to a loud 
 and harsh key in the apartment ; he had stayed there about a 
 quarter of an hour, and had then hurried out, seemingly in great 
 disorder and agitation. 
 
 " What description of man was he?" I asked. 
 
 The woman answered that he was mantled from head to foot 
 in his cloak, which was richly laced, and his hat was looped 
 with diamonds, but slouched over that part of his face which the 
 collar of his cloak did not hide, so that she could not further
 
 DEVEREUX. 139 
 
 describe him than as one of a haughty and abrupt bearing, and 
 evidently belonging to the higher ranks. 
 
 Convinced that Gerald had been the intruder, I hastened 
 up the stairs to Isora. She received me with a sickly and 
 faint smile, and endeavored to conceal the traces of her 
 tears. 
 
 "So ! " said I," this insolent persecutor of yours has discovered 
 your abode, and again insulted or intimidated you. He shall 
 do so no more ! 1 will seek him to-morrow and no affinity of 
 blood shall prevent " 
 
 " Morton, dear Morton ! " cried Isora, in great alarm, and yet 
 with a certain determination stamped upon her features, "hear 
 me ! it is true this man has been here it is true that, fearful 
 and terrible as he is, he has agitated and alarmed me ; but it was 
 only for you, Morton by the Holy Virgin, it was only for you! 
 ' The moment,' said he, and his voice ran shiveringly through 
 my heart like a dagger, ' the moment Morton Devereux discovers 
 who is his rival, that moment his death warrant is irrevocably 
 sealed ! " 
 
 " Arrogant boaster ! " I cried, and my blood burnt with the 
 intense rage which a much slighter cause would have kindled 
 from the natural fierceness of my temper. "Does he think my 
 life is at his bidding, to allow or to withhold ? Unhand me, Isora, 
 unhand me ! I tell you I will seek him this moment, and dare 
 him to do his worst ! " 
 
 " Do so," said Isora, calmly, and releasing her hold ; " do so ; 
 but hear me first : the moment you breathe to him your suspicions 
 you place an eternal barrier betwixt yourself and me! Pledge 
 me your faith that you will never, while I live at least, reveal to 
 him to any one whom you suspect your reproach, your de- 
 fiance, your knowledge nay, not even your lightest suspicion of 
 his identity with my persecutor promise me this, Morton Deve- 
 reux, or I, in my turn, before that crucifix whose sanctity we both 
 acknowledge and adore that crucifix which has descended to 
 my race for three unbroken centuries which, for my departed 
 Father, in the solemn vow, and in the death agony, has still been 
 a witness, a consolation, and a pledge, between the soul and its 
 Creator by that crucifix which my dying mother clasped to her 
 bosom, when she committed me, an infant, to the care of that 
 Heaven which hears and records forever our lightest word I 
 swear that I will never be yours ! '' 
 
 " Isora ! " said I, awed and startled, yet struggling against the 
 impression her energy made upon me, " you know not to what 
 you pledge yourself, nor what you require of me. If I do not
 
 140 DEVEREUX. 
 
 seek out this man if I do not expose to him my knowledge of 
 his pursuit and unhallowed persecution of you if I do not 
 effectually prohibit and prevent their continuance think well, 
 what security have I for your future peace of mind nay, even 
 for the safety of your honor or your life ? A man thus bold, 
 daring, and unbaffled in his pursuit, thus vigilant and skilful in 
 his selection of time and occasion so that, despite my constant 
 and anxious endeavor to meet him in your presence, I have 
 never been able to do so from a man, I say, thus pertinacious 
 in resolution, thus crafty in disguise, what may you not dread 
 when you leave him utterly fearless by the license of impunity ? 
 Think too, again, Isora, that the mystery dishonors as much as 
 the danger menaces. Is it meet that my betrothed and my future 
 bride should be subjected to these secret and terrible visitations 
 visitations of a man professing himself her lover, and evincing 
 the vehemence of his passion by that of his pursuit ? Isora 
 Isora you have weighed not these things you know not what 
 you demand of me." 
 
 " I do ! " answered Isora, " I do know all that I demand of 
 you I demand of you only to preserve your life." 
 
 "How," said I, impatiently, "cannot my hand preserve my 
 life ? and is it for you, the daughter of a line of warriors, to ask 
 your lover and your husband to shrink from a single foe ? " 
 
 " No, Morton," answered Isora. "Were you going to battle, 
 I would gird on your sword myself were, too, this man other 
 than he is, and you were about to meet him in open contest, I 
 would not wrong you, nor degrade your betrothed, by a fear. 
 But I know my persecutor well fierce, unrelenting dreadful 
 in his dark and ungovernable passions as he is, he has not the 
 courage to confront you: I fear not the open foe, but the lurk- 
 ing and sure assassin. His very earnestness to avoid you ; the 
 precautions he has taken are alone sufficient to convince you 
 that he dreads personally to oppose your claim, or to vindicate 
 himself." 
 
 " Then what have I to fear ? " 
 
 " Everything ! Do you not know that from men, at once 
 fierce, crafty, and shrinking from bold violence, the stuff for 
 assassins is always made? And if I wanted surer proof of his 
 designs than inference, his oath it rings in my ears now is 
 sufficient : ' The moment Morton Devereux discovers who is 
 his rival, that moment his death-warrant is irrevocably sealed.' 
 Morton, I demand your promise ; or, though my heart break, I 
 will record my own vow." 
 
 " Stay stay," I said, in anger, and in sorrow ; " were I to
 
 DEVEREUX. 141 
 
 promise this, and for my own safety hazard yours, what could 
 you deem me ? " 
 
 " Fear not for me, Morton," answered Isora ; "you have no 
 cause. I tell you that this man, villain as he is, ever leaves me 
 humbled and abased. Do not think that in all times, and all 
 scenes, I am the foolish and weak creature you behold me now. 
 Remember, that you said rightly I was the daughter of a line of 
 warriors ; and I have that within me which will not shame my 
 descent." 
 
 " But, dearest, your resolution may avail you for a time ; but 
 it cannot forever baffle the hardened nature of a man. I know 
 my own sex, and I know my own ferocity, were it once aroused." 
 
 " But, Morton, you do not know me" said Isora proudly, 
 and her face, as she spoke, was set, and even stern, " I am only 
 the coward when I think of you ; a word a look of mine can 
 abash this man; or, if it could not, I am never without a weapon 
 to defend myself, or or " Isora's voice, before firm and col- 
 lected, now faltered, and a deep blush flowed over the marble 
 paleness of her face. 
 
 " Or what ? " said I anxiously. 
 
 " Or thee, Morton ? " murmured Isora tenderly, and with- 
 drawing her eyes from mine. 
 
 The tone, the look that accompanied these words, melted me 
 at once. I rose I clasped Isora to my heart. 
 
 " You are a strange compound, my own fairy queen ; but these 
 lips this cheek those eyes are not fit features for a heroine." 
 
 " Morton, if I had less determination in my heart, I could 
 not love you so well." 
 
 "But tell me," I whispered, with a smile, "where is thiswea 
 pon on which you rely so strongly?" 
 
 " Here ! " answered Isora, blushingly ; and, extricating her- 
 self from me, she showed me a small two-edged dagger, which 
 she wore carefully concealed within the folds of her dress. I 
 looked over the bright, keen blade, with surprise, and yet with 
 pleasure, at the latent resolution of a character seemingly so 
 soft. I say, with pleasure, for it suited well with my own fierce 
 and wild temper. I returned the weapon to her, with a smile 
 and a jest. 
 
 "Ah!" said Isora, shrinking from my kiss,"! should not 
 have been so bold, if I only feared danger for myself." 
 
 But if for a moment we forgot, in the gushings of our affec- 
 tion, the object of our converse and dispute, we soon returned 
 to it again. Isora was the first to recur to it. She reminded 
 me. of the promise she required ; and she spoke with a serious-
 
 142 DEVEREUX. 
 
 ness and a solemnity which I found myself scarcely able to 
 resist. 
 
 "But," I said, " if he ever molest you hereafter: if again I 
 find that bright cheek blanched, and those dear eyes dimmed 
 with tears, and I know that, in my own house, some one has 
 dared thus to insult its queen, am I to be still torpid and inac- 
 tive, lest a dastard and craven hand should avenge my assertion 
 of your honor and mine ? " 
 
 " No, Morton ; after our marriage, whenever that be, you 
 will have nothing to apprehend from him on the same ground 
 as before ; my fear for you, too, will not be what it is now ; 
 your honor will be bound in mine, and nothing shall induce 
 me to hazard it no, not even your safety. I have every reason 
 to believe that, after that event, he will subject me no longer 
 to his insults how, indeed, can he, under your perpetual pro- 
 tection ? or for what cause should he attempt it, if he could ? 
 I shall be then yours only and ever yours what hope could, 
 therefore, then nerve his hardihood or instigate his intrusions? 
 Trust to me at that time, and suffer me to nay, I repeat, pro- 
 mise me that I may trust in you now ! " 
 
 What could I do? I still combated her wish and her request ; 
 but her steadiness and rigidity of purpose made me, though 
 reluctantly, yield to them at last. So sincere, and so stern, 
 indeed, appeared her resolution, that I feared, by refusal, that 
 she would take the rash oath that would separate us for ever. 
 Added to this, I felt, in her that confidence which, I am apt to 
 believe, is far more akin to the latter stages of real love, than 
 jealousy and mistrust ; and I could not believe that either now, 
 or, still less after our nuptials, she would risk aught of honor, 
 or the seemings of honor, from a visionary and superstitious 
 fear. In spite, therefore, of my keen and deep interest in the 
 thorough discovery of this mysterious persecutor; and, still 
 more, in the prevention of all future designs from his audacity, 
 I constrained myself to promise her that I would on no account 
 seek out the person I suspected, or wilfully betray to him, by 
 word or deed, my belief of his identity with Barnard. 
 
 Though greatly dissatisfied with my self-compulsion, I strove 
 to reconcile myself to its idea. Indeed, there was much in the 
 peculiar circumstances of Isora much in the freshness of her 
 present affliction much in the unfriended and utter destitution 
 of her situation that while, on the one hand, it called forth 
 her pride, and made stubborn that temper which was naturally 
 so gentle and so soft, on the other hand made me yield even 
 to wishes that I thought unreasonable,, and consider rather the
 
 DEVEkEUX. 1.43 
 
 delicacy and deference due to her condition, than insist upon 
 the sacrifices which, in more fortunate circumstances, I might 
 have imagined due to myself. Still more indisposed to resist 
 her wish and expose myself to its penalty was I, when I con- 
 sidered her desire was the mere excess and caution of her love, 
 and when I felt that she spoke sincerely when she declared 
 that it was only for me that she was the coward. Nevertheless, 
 and despite all these considerations, it was with a secret dis- 
 content that I took my leave of her, and departed homeward. 
 
 I had just reached the end of the street where the house 
 was situated, when I saw there, very imperfectly, for the night 
 was extremely dark, the figure of a man entirely enveloped in 
 a long cloak, such as was commonly worn by gallants, in affairs 
 of secrecy or intrigue ; and, in the pale light of a single lamp 
 near which he stood, something like the brilliance of gems 
 glittered on the large Spanish hat which overhung his brow. 
 I immediately recalled the description the woman had given 
 me of Barnard's dress, and the thought flashed across me that 
 it was he whom I beheld. "At all events," thought I, "I may 
 confirm my doubts, if I may not communicate them, and I may 
 watch over her safety if I may not avenge her injuries?" I 
 therefore took advantage of my knowledge of the neighborhood, 
 passed the stranger with a quick step, and then, running rapidly, 
 returned by a circuitous route to the mouth of a narrow and 
 dark street, which was exactly opposite to Isora's house. Here 
 I concealed myself by a projecting porch, and I had not waited 
 long before I saw the dim form of the stranger walk slowly by 
 the house. He passed it three or four times, and each time I 
 thought though the darkness might well deceive me that he 
 looked up to the windows. He made, however, no attempt at 
 admission, and appeared as if he had no other object than that 
 of watching by the house. Wearied and impatient at last, I 
 came from my concealment. "I may confirm my suspicions," 
 I repeated, recurring to my oath, and I walked straight towards 
 the stranger. 
 
 "Sir!" I said, very calmly, "I am the last person in 
 the world to interfere with the amusements of any other 
 gentleman ; but I humbly opine that no man can parade 
 by this house upon so very cold a night, without giving just 
 ground for suspicion to the friends of its inhabitants. I happen 
 to be among that happy number ; and I therefore, with all due 
 humility and respect, venture to request you to seek some other 
 spot for your nocturnal perambulations." 
 
 J made this speech purposely prolix, in order to have time
 
 144 DEVEREUX. 
 
 fully to reconnoitre the person of the one I addressed. The 
 dusk of the night, and the loose garb of the stranger, certainly 
 forbade any decided success to this scrutiny ; but methought 
 the figure seemed, despite of my prepossessions, to want the 
 stately height and grand proportions of Gerald Devereux. I 
 must own, however, that the necessary inexactitude of my 
 survey rendered this idea without just foundation, and did not 
 by any means diminish my firm impression that it was Gerald 
 whom I beheld. While I spoke, he retreated with a quick 
 step, but made no answer ; I pressed upon him he backed 
 with a still quicker step; and when I had ended, he fairly turned 
 round, and made at full speed along the dark street in which I 
 had fixed my previous post of watch. I fled after him, with a 
 step as fleet as his own his cloak encumbered his flight I 
 gained upon him sensibly he turned a sharp corner threw 
 me out, and entered into a broad thoroughfare. As I sped after 
 him, Bacchanalian voices burst upon my ear, and presently a 
 large band of those young men who, under the name of Mohawks, 
 were wont to scour the town nightly, and, sword in hand, to 
 exercise their love of riot under the disguise of party zeal, 
 became visible in the middle of the street. Through them my 
 fugitive dashed headlong, and, profiting by their surprise, escaped 
 unmolested. I attempted to follow with equal speed, but was 
 less successful. " Hallo ! " cried the foremost of the group, 
 placing himself in my way. 
 
 " No such haste ! Art Whig or Tory ? Under which king 
 Bezonian, speak or die?" 
 
 " Have a care, sir," said I fiercely, drawing my sword. 
 
 "Treason, treason !" cried the speaker, confronting me with 
 equal readiness. "Have a care, indeed have at t/iee." 
 
 " Ha ! " cried another, " 'tis a Tory : 'tis the Secretary's popish 
 friend, Devereux pike him, pike him." 
 
 I had already run my opponent through the sword arm, and 
 was in hopes that this act would intimidate the rest, and allow 
 my escape ; but at the sound of my name and political bias, 
 coupled with the drawn blood of their confederate, the patriots 
 rushed upon me with that amiable fury generally characteristic 
 of all true lovers of their country. Two swords passed through 
 my body simultaneously, and I fell bleeding and insensible to 
 the ground. When I recovered I was in my own apartments, 
 whither two of the gentler Mohawks had conveyed me; the 
 surgeons were by my bedside ; I groaned audibly when I saw 
 them. If there is a thing in the world I hate, it is in any shape 
 the disciples of Hermes; they always remind me of that Indian
 
 SEVERED*. 145 
 
 people (the Padaei, I think) mentioned by Herodotus, who 
 sustained themselves by devouring the sick. "All is well," 
 said one, when my groan was heard. " He will not die," said 
 another. "At least not till we have had more fees," said a 
 third, more candid than the rest. And thereupon they seized 
 me and began torturing my wounds anew, till I fainted away 
 with the pain. However, the next day I was declared out of 
 immediate danger ; and the first proof I gave of my convales- 
 cence was to make Desmarais discharge four surgeons out of 
 five : the remaining one I thought my youth and constitution 
 might enable me to endure. 
 
 That very evening, as I was turning restlessly in my bed, and 
 muttering, with parched lips, the name of "Isora," I saw by my 
 side a figure covered from head to foot in a long veil, and a 
 voice, low, soft, but thrilling through my heart like a new exist- 
 ence, murmured, " She is here ! " 
 
 I forgot my wounds, I forgot my pain and my debility I 
 sprung upwards the stranger drew aside the veil from her 
 countenance, and I beheld Isora ! 
 
 "Yes!" said she, in her own liquid and honied accents, 
 which fell like balm upon my wound, and my spirit, "yes, she 
 whom j0tf have hitherto tended is come, in her turn, to render 
 some slight, but woman's services to you. She has come to 
 nurse, and to soothe, and to pray for you, and to be, till you 
 yourself discard her, your handmaid and your slave ! " 
 
 I would have answered, but raising her finger to her lips, 
 she arose and vanished ; but from that hour my wound healed, 
 my fever slaked, and whenever I beheld her flitting round my 
 bed, or watching over me, or felt her cool fingers wiping the 
 dew from my brow, or took from her hand my medicine or my 
 food, in those moments the blood seemed to make a new 
 struggle through my veins, and I felt palpably within me a fresh 
 and delicious life a life full of youth, and passion, and hope, 
 replace the vaguer and duller being which I had hitherto borne. 
 
 There are some extraordinary incongruities in that very 
 mysterious thing sympathy. One would imagine that, in a 
 description of things most generally interesting to all men, the 
 most general interest would be found ; nevertheless, I believe 
 few persons would hang breathless over the progressive history 
 of a sick-bed. Yet those gradual stages from danger to recovery, 
 how delightfully interesting they are to all who have crawled 
 from one to the other ! and who, at some time or other in his 
 journey through that land of diseases civilized life has not 
 taken that gentle excursion ? "I would be ill any day for the
 
 146 DEVEREUX. 
 
 pleasure of getting well," said Fontenelle to me one morning 
 with his usual naivete ; but who would not be ill for the mere 
 pleasure of being ill, if he could be tended by her whom he 
 most loves? 
 
 I shall not therefore dwell upon that most delicious period 
 of my life my sick-bed, and my recovery from it. I pass on 
 to a certain evening in which I heard from Isora's lips the whole 
 of her history, save what related to her knowledge of the real 
 name of one whose persecution constituted the little of romance 
 which had yet mingled with her innocent and pure life. That 
 evening how well I remember it ! we were alone still weak 
 and reduced, I lay upon the sofa beside the window, which 
 was partially open, and the still air of an evening in the first 
 infancy of spring came fresh, and fraught, as it were, with a 
 prediction of the glowing woods, and the reviving verdure, to 
 my cheek. The stars, one by one, kindled, as if born of Heaven 
 and Twilight, into their nightly being ; and, through the vapor 
 and thick ether of the dense city, streamed their most silent 
 light, holy and pure, and resembling that which the Divine 
 Mercy sheds upon the gross nature of mankind. But, shadowy 
 and calm, their rays fell full upon the face of Isora, as she lay 
 on the ground beside my couch, and with one hand surrendered 
 to my clasp, looked upward till, as she felt my gaze, she turned 
 her cheek blushingly away. There was quiet around and above 
 us ; but beneath the window we heard at times the sounds of 
 the common earth, and then insensibly our hands knit into a 
 closer clasp, and we felt them thrill more palpably to our hearts ; 
 for those sounds reminded us both of our existence and of our 
 separation from the great herd of our race ! 
 
 What is love but a division from the world, and a blending 
 of two souls, two immortalities divested of clay and ashes, into 
 one? it is a severing of a thousand ties from whatever is harsh 
 and selfish, in order to knit them into a single and sacred bond ! 
 Who loves, hath attained the anchorite's secret ; and the her- 
 mitage has become dearer than the world. O respite from the 
 toil and the curse of our social and banded state, a little interval 
 art thou, suspended between two eternities the Past and the 
 Future a star that hovers between the morning and the night, 
 sending through the vast abyss one solitary ray from heaven, 
 but too far and faint to illumine, while it hallows the earth ! 
 
 There was nothing in Isora's tale which the reader has not 
 already learnt, or conjectured. She had left her Andalusian 
 home in her early childhood, but she remembered it well, and 
 Ungeringly dwelt over it in description. It was evident that
 
 DEVEREUX. 147 
 
 dttle in our colder and less genial isle had attracted her sym- 
 pathy, or wound itself into her affection. Nevertheless, I 
 conceive that her naturally dreamy and abstracted character 
 had received from her residence and her trials here much of 
 the vigor and the heroism which it now possessed. Brought 
 up alone, music, and books few, though not ill-chosen, for 
 Shakspeare was one, and the one which had made upon her the 
 most permanent impression, and perhaps had colored her tem- 
 perament with its latent, but rich hues of poetry constituted 
 her amusement and her studies. 
 
 But who knows not that a woman's heart finds its fullest 
 occupation within itself ? There lies its real study, and within 
 that narrow orbit the mirror of enchanted thought reflects the 
 whole range of earth. Loneliness and meditation nursed the 
 mood, which afterward, with Isora, became love itself. But I 
 do not wish now so much to describe her character, as to 
 abridge her brief history. The first English stranger, of the 
 male sex, whom her father admitted to her acquaintance, was 
 Barnard. This man was, as I had surmised, connected with 
 him in certain political intrigues, the exact nature of which she 
 did not know. I continue to call him by a name which Isora 
 acknowledged was fictitious. He had not, at first, by actual 
 declaration, betrayed to her his affections ; though, accom- 
 panied by a sort of fierceness which early revolted her, they 
 soon became visible. On the evening in which I found her 
 stretched insensible in the garden, and had myself made my 
 first confession of love, I learned that he had divulged to her 
 his passion and real name : that her rejection had thrown him 
 into a fierce despair that he had accompanied his disclosure 
 with the most terrible threats against me, for whom he supposed 
 himself rejected, and against the safety of her father, whom he 
 said a word of his could betray ; that her knowledge of his 
 power to injure us ! us yes, Isora then loved me, and then 
 trembled for my safety ! had terrified and overcome her and 
 that in the very moment in which my horse's hoofs were heard, 
 and as the alternative of her non-compliance, the rude suitor 
 swore deadly and sore vengeance against Alvarez and myself, 
 she yielded to the oath he prescribed to her an oath that she 
 would never revealed the secret he had betrayed to her, or suf- 
 fer me to know who was my real rival. 
 
 This was all that I could gather from her guarded confi- 
 dence ! he heard the oath, and vanished, and she felt no more 
 till she was in my arms ; then it was that she saw in the love 
 and vengeance of my rival a barrier against our union ; and
 
 148 
 
 then it was that her generous fear for me conquered her attach- 
 ment, and she renounced me. Their departure from the cot- 
 tage, so shortly afterwards, was at her father's choice and at 
 the instigation of Barnard, for the furtherance of their political 
 projects ; and it was from Barnard that the money came which 
 repaid my loan to Alvarez. The same person, no doubt, pois- 
 oned her father against me, for henceforth Alvarez never spoke 
 of me with that partiality he had previously felt. They repaired 
 to London ; her father was often absent, and often engaged 
 with men whom she had never seen before ! he was absorbed 
 and uncommunicative, and she was still ignorant of the nature 
 of his schemings and designs. 
 
 At length, after an absence of several weeks, Barnard reap- 
 peared, and his visits became constant ; he renewed his suit to 
 her father as well as herself. Then commenced that domestic 
 persecution, so common in this very tyrannical world, which 
 makes us sicken to bear, and which, had Isora been wholly a 
 Spanish girl, she, in all probability, would never have resisted: 
 so much of custom is there in the very air of a climate. But 
 she did resist it, partly because she loved me and loved me 
 more and more for our separation and partly because she 
 dreaded and abhorred the ferocious and malignant passions of 
 my rival, far beyond any other misery with which fortune could 
 threaten her. " Your father then shall hang or starve ! " said 
 Barnard, one day in uncontrollable frenzy, and left her. He 
 did not appear again at the house. The Spaniard's resources, 
 fed, probably, alone by Barnard, failed. From house to house 
 they removed, till they were reduced to that humble one m 
 which I had found them. There, Barnard again sought them ; 
 there, backed by the powerful advocate of want, he again 
 pressed his suit, and at that exact moment her father was struck 
 with the numbing curse of his disease. " There and then," 
 said Isora candidly, "I might have yielded at last, for my poor 
 father's sake, if you had not saved me." 
 
 Once only (I have before recorded the time), did Barnard 
 visit her in the new abode I had provided for her, and the day 
 after our conversation on that event Isora watched and watched 
 for me, and I did not come. From the woman of the house 
 she at last learned the cause. " I forgot," she said timidly 
 and in conclusion, " I forgot womanhood, and modesty, and re- 
 serve ; I forgot the customs of your country, the decencies of 
 my own ; I forgot everything in this world, but you you suf- 
 fering and in danger ; my very sense of existence seemed to 
 pass from me, and to be supplied by a breathless, confused, and
 
 DEVEREtiX. 149 
 
 overwhelming sense of impatient agony, which ceased not till 
 I was in your chamber, and by your side ! And and now, 
 Morton, do not despise me for not having considered more, and 
 loved you less." 
 
 " Despise you ! " I murmured, and I threw my arms around 
 her, and drew her to my breast. I felt her heart beat against 
 my own ; those hearts spoke, though our lips were silent, and in 
 their language seemed to say : " We are united now, and we 
 will not part." 
 
 The starlight, shining with a mellow and deep stillness, was 
 the only light by which we beheld each other it shone, the 
 witness and the sanction of that internal voice, which we owned, 
 but heard not. Our lips drew closer and closer together, till 
 they met ! and in that kiss was the type and promise of the 
 after ritual which knit two spirits into one. Silence fell 
 around us like a curtain, and the eternal Night, with her fresh 
 dews and unclouded stars, looked alone upon the compact of 
 our hearts an emblem of the eternity, the freshness, and the 
 unearthly, though awful brightness of the love which it hal- 
 lowed and beheld ! 
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Wherein the History makes great Progress, and is marked by one important 
 Event in Human Life. 
 
 SPINOSA is said to have loved, above all other amusements, 
 to put flies into a spider's web ; and the struggles of the im- 
 prisoned insects were wont to bear, in the eyes of this grave 
 philosopher, so facetious and hilarious an appearance, that he 
 would stand and laugh thereat until the tears " coursed one 
 another down his innocent nose." Now it so happeneth that 
 Spinosa, despite the general (and, in my most meek opinion, 
 the just) condemnation of his theoretical tenets,* was, in char- 
 acter and in nature, according to the voices of all who knew 
 
 * One ought, however, to be very cautious before one condemns a philosopher. The 
 master's opinions are generally pure it is the conclusions and corollaries of his disciples 
 that " draw the honey forth that drives men mad." Schlegel seems to have studied 
 Spinosa de fonte, and vindicates him very earnestly from the charges brought against 
 him atheism, etc. ED.
 
 156 DEVEREtrX. 
 
 him, an exceedingly kind, humane, and benevolent biped ; and 
 it doth, therefore, seem a little strange unto us grave, sober 
 members of the unphilosophical Many, that the struggles and 
 terrors of these little, winged creatures should strike the good 
 subtleist in a point of view so irresistibly ludicrous and delight- 
 ful. But, for my part, I believe that the most imaginative and wild 
 speculator beheld in the entangled flies nothing more than a liv- 
 ing simile an animated illustration of his own beloved vision 
 of Necessity ; and that he is no more to be considered cruel 
 for the complacency with which he gazed upon those agonized 
 types of his system than is Lucan for dwelling, with a poet's 
 pleasure, upon the many ingenious ways with which that Grand 
 Inquisitor of Verse has contrived to vary the simple operation 
 of dying. To the bard, the butchered soldier was only an 
 epic ornament ; to the philosopher, the murdered fly was only 
 a metaphysical illustration. For, without being a Fatalist, or a 
 disciple of Baruch de Spinosa, I must confess that I cannot 
 conceive a greater resemblance to our human and earthly state 
 than the penal predicament of the devoted flies. Suddenly do 
 we find ourselves plunged into that Vast Web the World ; and 
 even as the insect, when he first undergoeth a similar accident 
 of necessity, standeth amazed and still, and only, by little and 
 little, awakeneth to a full sense of his situation ; so also at the 
 first abashed and confounded, we remain on the mesh we are 
 urged upon, ignorant, as yet, of the toils around us, and the 
 sly, dark, immitigable foe, that lieth in yonder nook, already 
 feasting her imagination upon our destruction. Presently we 
 revive we stir we flutter and Fate, that foe, the old arch- 
 spider, that hath no moderation in her maw now fixeth one of 
 her many eyes upon us, and giveth us a partial glimpse of her 
 laidly and grim aspect. We pause in mute terror we gaze 
 upon the ugly spectre, so imperfectly beheld the net ceases to 
 tremble, and the wily enemy draws gently back into her nook. 
 Now we begin to breathe again we sound the strange footing 
 on which we tread we move tenderly along it, and again the 
 grisly monster advances on us ; again we pause the foe re- 
 tires not, but remains still, and surveyeth us, we see every 
 step is accompanied with danger we look round and above in 
 despair suddenly we feel within us a new impulse and a new 
 power ! we feel a vague sympathy with that unknown region 
 which spreads beyond this great net ; that limitless beyond hath 
 a mystic affinity with a part of our own frame we uncon- 
 sciously extend our wings (for the soul to us is as the wings to 
 the fly !) we attempt to rise to soar above this perilous snare,
 
 DEVEREUX. 151 
 
 from which we are unable to crawl. The old spider watcheth 
 us in self-hugging quiet, and, looking up to our native air, we 
 think now shall we escape thee. Out on it ! We rise not a 
 hair's breadth we have the wings, it is true, but the feet are 
 fettered. We strive desperately again the whole web vibrates 
 with the effort it will break beneath our strength. Not a jot 
 of it ! we cease we are more entangled than ever ! wings 
 feet frame the foul slime is over all ! where shall we turn ? 
 every line of the web leads to the one den, we know not we 
 care not we grow blind confused lost. The eyes of our 
 hideous foe gloat upon us she whetteth her insatiate maw 
 she leapeth towards us she fixeth her fangs upon us and so 
 endeth my parallel ! 
 
 But what has this to do with my tale ? Ay, Reader, that is 
 thy question, and I will answer it by one of mine. When thou 
 hearest a man moralize and preach of Fate, art thou not sure 
 that he is going to tell thee of some one of his peculiar misfor- 
 tunes ? Sorrow loves a parable as much as mirth loves a jest. 
 And thus already, and from afar, I prepare thee, at the com- 
 mencement of this, the third of these portions into which the 
 history of my various and wild life will be divided, for that 
 event with which I purpose that the said portion shall be con- 
 cluded. 
 
 It is now three months after my entire recovery from ir,y 
 wounds, and I am married to Isora ! married yes, but pri- 
 vately married, and the ceremony is as yet closely concealed. 1 
 will explain. 
 
 The moment Isora's anxiety for me led her across the thresh- 
 old of my house it became necessary for her honor that our 
 wedding should take place immediately on my recovery so 
 far I was decided on the measure now for the method. Dur- 
 ing my illness, I received a long and most affectionate letter 
 from Aubrey, who was then at Uevereux Court, so affection- 
 ate was the heart-breathing spirit of that letter so steeped in 
 all our old household remembrances and boyish feelings, that, 
 coupled as it was with a certain gloom when he spoke of him- 
 self and of worldly sins and trials, it brought tears to my eyes 
 whenever I recurred to it ; and many and many a time after- 
 wards, when I thought his affections seemed estranged from 
 me, I did recur to it to convince myself that I was mistaken. 
 Shortly afterwards I received also a brief epistle from my 
 uncle ; it was as kind as usual, and it mentioned Aubrey's re- 
 turn to Devereux Court : " That unhappy boy," said Sir Will- 
 iam, u is more than ever devoted to his religious duties ; nor
 
 152 DEVEREUX. 
 
 do I believe that any priest-ridden poor devil, in the dark ages, 
 ever made such use of the scourge and the penance." 
 
 Now, I have before stated that my uncle would, I knew, be 
 averse to my intended marriage; and on hearing that Aubrey 
 was then with him, I resolved, in replying to his letter, to en- 
 treat the former to sound Sir William on the subject I had most 
 at heart, and ascertain the exact nature and extent of the op- 
 position I should have to encounter in the step I was resolved 
 to take. By the same post I wrote to the good old knight in as 
 artful a strain as I was able, dwelling at some length upon my 
 passion, upon the high birth, as well as the numerous good 
 qualities of the object, but mentioning not her name ; and I 
 added everything that I thought likely to enlist my uncle's kind 
 and warm feelings on my behalf. These letters produced the 
 following ones : 
 
 FROM SIR WILLIAM DEVEREUX. 
 
 " 'Sdeath ! nephew Morton but I won't scold thee, though 
 thou deserves! it. Let me see, thou art now scarce twenty, and 
 thou talkest of marriage, which is the exclusive business of 
 middle age, as familiarly as ' girls of thirteen do of puppy dogs.' 
 Marry! go hang thyself rather. Marriage, my dear boy, is at 
 the best a treacherous proceeding : and a friend a true friend 
 will never counsel another to adopt it rashly. Look you I 
 have had experience in these matters: and, I think, the moment 
 a woman is wedded some terrible revolution happens in her 
 system; all her former good qualities vanish hey presto, like eggs 
 out of a conjuror's box, 'tis true they appear on t'other side 
 of the box, the side turned to other people, but for the poor 
 husband they are gone for ever. Od'sfish, Morton, go to! I 
 tell thee again that I have had experience in these matters, 
 which thou never hast had, clever as thou thinkest thyself. If 
 now it were a good marriage thou wert about to make if thou 
 wert going to wed power, and money, and place at Court, why, 
 something might be said for thee. As it is, there is no excuse 
 none. And I am astonished how a boy of thy sense could think 
 of such nonsense. Birth, Morton, what the devil does that sig- 
 nify, so long as it is birth in another country ? A foreign damsel 
 and a Spanish girl, too, above all others! 'Sdeath, man, as if 
 there was not quicksilver enough in the English women for you, 
 you must make a mercurial exportation from Spain, must you! 
 Why, Morton Morton, the ladies in that country are prover- 
 bial. I tremble at the very thought of it. But as for my con- 
 sent, I never will give it never; and though I threaten the.enqt
 
 DEVEREUX. 153 
 
 with disinheritance and such like, yet I do ask something in 
 return for the great affection I have always borne thee; and I 
 make no doubt that thou wilt readily oblige me in such a trifle 
 as giving up a mere Spanish donna. So think of her no more. 
 If thou wantest to make love, there are ladies in plenty whom 
 thou needest not to marry. And for my part, I thought that 
 thou wert all in all with the Lady Hasselton Heaven bless 
 her pretty face ! Now don't think I want to scold thee and 
 don't think thine old uncle harsh God knows he is not ; but 
 my dear, dear boy, this is quite out of the question, and thou 
 must let me hear no more about it. The gout cripples me so 
 that I must leave off. Even thine own old uncle, 
 
 " WILLIAM DEVEREUX." 
 
 " P. S. Upon consideration, I think, my dear boy, that thou 
 must want money, and thou art ever too sparing. Messrs. 
 Child, or my goldsmiths in Aldersgate, have my orders to pay 
 to thy hand's-writing whatever thou mayest desire ; and I do 
 hope that thou wilt now want nothing to make thee merry withal. 
 Why dost thou not write a comedy ? is it not the mode still?" 
 
 LETTER FROM AUBREY DEVEREUX. 
 
 " I have sounded my uncle, dearest Morton, according to 
 your wishes; and I grieve to say that I have found him inexor- 
 able. He was very much hurt by your letter to him, and declared 
 he should write to you forthwith upon the subject. I represented 
 to him all that you have said upon the virtues of your intended 
 bride; and I also insisted upon your clear judgment and strong 
 sense upon most points, being a sufficient surety for your pru- 
 dence upon this. But you know the libertine opinions, and 
 the depreciating judgment of women, entertained by my poor 
 uncle ; and he would, I believe, have been less displeased with 
 the heinous crime of an illicit connexion, than the amiable weak- 
 ness of an imprudent marriage I might say of any marriage, 
 until it was time to provide heirs to the estate." 
 
 Here Aubrey, in the most affectionate and earnest manner, 
 broke off to point out to me the extreme danger to my interests 
 that it would be to disoblige my uncle; who, despite his general 
 kindness, would, upon a disagreement on so tender a matter as 
 his sore point, and his most cherished hobby, consider my dis- 
 obedience as a personal affront. He also recalled to me all that 
 my unclr had felt and done for me; and insisted, at all events, 
 upon the absolute duty of my delaying, even though I should 
 not break off, the intended measure. Upon these points he 
 enlarged much and eloquently; and this part of his letter cer-
 
 154 DEVEREUX. 
 
 tainly left no cheering or comfortable impression upon my 
 mind. 
 
 Now my good uncle knew as much of love as L. Mummius 
 did of the fine arts,* and it was impossible to persuade him 
 that if one wanted to indulge the tender passion, one woman 
 would not do exactly as well as another, provided she were 
 equally pretty. I knew therefore that he was incapable, on the 
 one hand, of understanding my love for Isora, or, on the other, 
 of acknowledging her claims upon me. I had not, of course, 
 mentioned to him the generous imprudence which, on the news 
 of my wound, had brought Isora to my house: for if I had done 
 so, my uncle, with the eye of a courtier of Charles II., would 
 only have seen the advantage to be derived from the impropriety, 
 not the gratitude due to the devotion; neither had I mentioned 
 this circumstance to Aubrey, it seemed to me too delicate for 
 any written communication; and therefore, in his advice to delay 
 my marriage, he was unaware of the necessity which rendered 
 the advice unavailing. Now then was I in this dilemma, either 
 to marry, and i\iatinstanter, and so, seemingly, with the most hasty 
 and the most insolent indecorum, incense, wound, and in his 
 interpretation of the act, contemn one whom I loved as I loved 
 my uncle, or.to delay the marriage,to separate from Isora,and to 
 leave my future wife to the malignant consequences that would 
 necessarily be drawn from a sojourn of weeks in my house. This 
 fact there was no chance of concealing; servants have more 
 tongues than Argus had eyes, and my youthful extravagance had 
 filled my whole house with those pests of society. The latter 
 measure was impossible, the former was most painful. Was 
 there no third way ? there was that of a private marriage. This 
 obviated not every evil; but it removed many; it satisfied my 
 impatient love, it placed Isora under a sure protection, it secured 
 and established her honor the moment the ceremony should be 
 declared, and it avoided the seeming ingratitude and indelicacy 
 of disobeying my uncle, without an effort of patience toappeas? 
 him. I should have time and occasion then, I thought, for 
 soothing and persuading him, and ultimately winning that con- 
 sent which I firmly trusted I should sooner or later extract from 
 his kindness of heart. 
 
 That some objections existed to this mediatory plan was 
 true enough : those objections related to Isora rather than to 
 myself, and she was the first, on my hinting at the proposal, to 
 overcome its difficulties. The leading feature in Isora's char- 
 
 * A Roman consul, who, removing the most celebrated remains of Grecian antiquity to 
 Rome, assured the persons charged with conveying them that if they injured any, th* 
 should make others to replace them.
 
 DEVEREUX. 155 
 
 acter was generosity ; and, in truth, I know not a quality more 
 dangerous, either to man or woman. Herself was invariably 
 the last human being whom she seemed to consider ; and no 
 sooner did she ascertain what measure was the most prudent 
 for me to adopt, than it immediately became that upon which 
 she insisted. Would it have been possible for me man of 
 pleasure and of the world as I was thought to be no, my good 
 uncle, though it went to my heart to wound thee so secretly 
 it would not have been possible for me, even if I had not coined 
 my whole nature into love : even if Isora had not been to me, 
 what one smile of Isora's really was it would not have been 
 possible to have sacrificed so noble and so divine a heart, and 
 made myself, in that sacrifice, a wretch for ever. No, my good 
 uncle I could not have made that surrender to thy reason, much 
 less to thy prejudices. But if I have not done great injustice 
 to the knight's character, I doubt whether even the youngest 
 reader will not forgive him for a want of sympathy with one 
 feeling, when they consider how susceptible that charming old 
 man was to all others. 
 
 And herewith I could discourse most excellent wisdom upon 
 that most mysterious passion of love. I could show, by trac.- 
 ing its causes, and its inseparable connection with the imagi- 
 nation, that it is only in certain states of society, as well as ii> 
 certain periods of life, that love real, pure, high love can be 
 born. Yea, I could prove, to the nicety of a very problem, 
 that in the court of Charles II. it would have been as impos- 
 possible for such a feeling to find root, as it would be for myr- 
 tle trees to effloresce from a Duvillier periwig. And we are 
 not to expect a man, however tender and affectionate he may 
 be, to sympathize with that sentiment in another, which, from 
 the accidents of birth and position, nothing short of a miracle 
 could ever have produced in himself. 
 
 We were married then in private by a Catholic priest. St. 
 John, and one old lady who had been my father's godmother 
 for I wished for a female assistant in the ceremony, and this 
 old lady could tell no secrets, for, being excessively deaf, no- 
 body ever talked to her, and indeed she scarcely ever went 
 abroad were the sole witnesses. I took a small house in the 
 immediate neighborhood of London ; it was surrounded on all 
 sides with a high wall which defied alike curiosity and attack. 
 This was, indeed, the sole reason which had induced me to pre- 
 fer it to many more gaudy or more graceful dwellings. But 
 within I had furnished it with every luxury that wealth, the 
 most lavish and unsp'aring, could procure. Thither, under an
 
 156 DEVEREtX. 
 
 assumed name, I brought my bride, and there was the greater 
 part of my time spent. The people I had placed in the house 
 believed I was a rich merchant, and this accounted for my fre- 
 quent absences (absences which Prudence rendered neces- 
 sary) for the wealth which I lavished, and for the precautions 
 of bolt, bar, and wall, which they imagined the result of com- 
 mercial caution. 
 
 Oh the intoxication of that sweet Elysium, that Tadmor in 
 life's desert the possession of the one whom we have first 
 loved ! It is as if poetry, and music, and light, and the fresh 
 breath of flowers, were all blent into one being, and from that 
 being rose our existence ! It is content made rapture noth- 
 ing to wish for, yet everything to feel ! Was that air the air 
 which I had breathed hitherto ? that earth the earth which I 
 had hitherto beheld? No, my heart dwelt in a new world, and 
 all these motley and restless senses were melted into one sense 
 deep, silent, fathomless delight ! 
 
 Well, too much of this species of love is not fit for a world- 
 ly tale, and I will turn, for the reader's relief, to worldly affec- 
 tions. From my first reunion with Isora, I had avoided all the 
 former objects and acquaintances in which my time had been 
 so charmingly employed. Tarleton was the first to suffer by 
 my new pursuit ; "What has altered you?" said he; "you 
 drink not, neither do you play. The women say you are grown 
 duller than a Norfolk parson, and neither the Puppet-Show, nor 
 the Water-Theatre, the Spring Gardens, nor the Ring, Wills's, 
 nor the Kit-Cat, the Mulberry Garden, nor the New Exchange, 
 witness any longer your homage and devotion. What has come 
 over you ? speak ! " 
 
 " Apathy ! " 
 
 " Ah ! I understand you are tired of these things ; pish, 
 man ! go down into the country, the green fields will revive 
 thee, and send thee back to London a new man ! One would 
 indeed find the town intolerably dull, if the country were not, 
 happily, a thousand times duller, go to the country, Count, 
 or I shall drop your friendship." 
 
 " Drop it ! " said I, yawning, and Tarleton took pet, and did 
 as I desired him. Now had I got rid of my friend as easily as 
 I had found him, a matter that would not have been so read- 
 ily accomplished had not Mr. Tarleton owed me certain moneys, 
 concerning which, from the moment he had " dropped my 
 friendship," good-breeding effectually prevented his saying a 
 single syllable to me ever after. There is no knowing the bless 
 ings of money until one has learnt to manage it properly.
 
 DEVEREUX. 157 
 
 So much, then, for the friend ; now for the mistress. Lady 
 Hasselton had, as Tarleton hinted before, resolved to play me 
 a trick of spite ; the reasons of our rupture really were, as I had 
 stated to Tarleton the, mighty effects of little things. She lived 
 in a sea of trifles, and she was desperately angry if her lover 
 was not always sailing a pleasure-boat in the same ocean. Now 
 this was expecting too much from me, and, after twisting our 
 silken strings of attachment into all manner of fantastic forms, 
 we fell fairly out one evening and broke the little ligatures in 
 two. No sooner had I quarrelled with Tarleton, than Lady 
 Hasselton received him in my place, and a week afterwards I 
 was favored with an anonymous letter, informing me of the vio- 
 lent passion which a certain dame de la cour had conceived for 
 me, and requesting me to meet her at an appointed place. I 
 looked twice over the letter, and discovered in one corner of 
 it, two g's' peculiar to the calligraphy of Lady Hasselton, though 
 the rest of the letter (bad spelling excepted) was pretty de- 
 cently disguised. Mr. Fielding was with me at the time ; 
 " What disturbs you ? " said he, adjusting his knee-buckles. 
 
 "Read it !" said I, handing him the letter. 
 
 " Body of me, you are a lucky dog ! " cried the beau. "You 
 will hasten thither on the wings of love." 
 
 "Not a whit of it," said I ; "I suspect that it comes from a 
 rich old widow, whom I hate mortally." 
 
 " A rich old widow ! " repeated Mr. Fielding, to whose eyes 
 there was something very piquant in a jointure, and who thought 
 consequently that there were few virginal flowers equal to a 
 widow's weeds. "A rich old widow you are right, Count, you 
 are right. Don't go, don't think of it. I cannot abide those 
 depraved creatures. Widow, indeed quite an affront to your 
 gallantry ! " 
 
 " Very true," said I. "Suppose you supply my place?" 
 
 "I'd sooner be shot first," said Mr. Fielding, taking his de- 
 parture, and begging me for the letter to wrap some sugar 
 plums in. 
 
 Need I add, that Mr. Fielding repaired to the place of as- 
 signation, where he received, in the shape of a hearty drubbing, 
 the kind favors intended for me? The story was now left for 
 me to tell, not for the Lady Hasselton and that makes all the 
 difference in the manner a story is told me narrante, it-is de 
 tc fabula narratur te narrante, and it is de me fabula, etc. Poor 
 Lady Hasselton ! to be laughed at, and have Tarleton for a 
 lover ! 
 
 I have gone back somewhat in the progress of my history, in
 
 15& DEVEREUX. 
 
 order to make the above honorable mention of my friend and 
 my mistress, thinking it due to their own merits, and thinking 
 it may also be instructive to young gentlemen, who have not yet 
 seen the world, to testify the exact nature and the probable 
 duration of all the loves and friendships they are likely to find 
 in that Great Monmouth Street of glittering and of damaged 
 affections ! I now resume the order of narration. 
 
 I wrote to Aubrey, thanking him for his intercession, but con- 
 cealing, till we met, the measure I had adopted. I wrote also 
 to my uncle, assuring him that I would take an early oppor- 
 tunity of hastening to Devereux Court, and conversing with him 
 on the subject of his letter. And after an interval of some 
 weeks, I received the two following answers from my corres- 
 pondents : the latter arrived several days after the former. 
 
 FROM AUBREY DEVEREUX. 
 
 " I am glad to understand from your letter, unexplanatory as 
 it is, that you have followed my advice. I will shortly write to 
 you more at large ; at present I am on the eve of my departure 
 for the North of England, and have merely time to assure you 
 of my affection. "AUBREY DEVEREUX." 
 
 " P. S. Gerald is in London have you seen him ? Oh, this 
 world ! this world ! how it clings to us, despite our education 
 our wishes, our conscience, our knowledge of the Dread Here- 
 after ! " 
 
 LETTER FROM SIR WILLIAM DEVEREUX. 
 
 " My Dear Nephew : 
 
 " Thank thee for thy letter, and the new plays thou sentest me 
 down, and that droll new paper, the Spectator : it is a pretty 
 shallow thing enough, though it is not so racy as Rochester or 
 little Sid would have made it ; but I thank thee for it, because 
 it shows thou wast not angry with thine old uncle for opposing 
 thee on thy love whimsies (in which most young men are dread- 
 fully obstinate), since thou didst provide so kindly for his amuse- 
 ment. Well, but, Morton, I hope thou hast got that crotchet 
 clear out of thy mind, and prithee now don't talk of it when thou 
 comest down to see me. I hate conversations on marriage more 
 than a boy does flogging od'sfish, I do. So you must humor 
 me on that point ! 
 
 "Aubrey has left me again, and I am quite alone not that I 
 was much better off when he was here, for he was wont, of late, 
 to shun my poor room like a ' lazar house,' and when I spoke to 
 his mother about it, she muttered something about 'example/
 
 DEVEREUX. 159 
 
 and ' corrupting.' 'Sdeath, Morton, is your old uncle, who loves 
 all living things, down to poor Ponto the dog, the sort of man 
 whose example corrupts youth ? As for thy mother, she grows 
 more solitary every day ; and I don't know how it is, but I am 
 not so fond of strange faces as I used to be. 'Tis a new thing 
 for me to be avoided and alone. Why, I remember even little 
 Sid, who had as much venom as most men, once said it was im- 
 possible to Fie now see if I was not going to preach a ser- 
 mon from a text in favor of myself ! But come, Morton, come, 
 I long for your face again ; it is not so soft as Aubrey's, nor so 
 regular as Gerald's, but it is twice as kind as either. Come, 
 before it is too late ; I feel myself going ; and, to tell thee a se- 
 cret, the doctors tell me I may not last many months longer. 
 Come, and laugh once more at the old knight's stories. Come, 
 and show him that there is still some one not loo good to love 
 him. Come, and I will tell thee a famous thing of old Rowley, 
 which I am too ill and too sad to tell thee now. 
 
 "WM. DEVEREUX." 
 
 Need I say that upon receiving this letter, I resolved, without 
 any delay, to set out for Devereux Court ? I summoned Des- 
 marais to me ; he answered not my call : he was from home an 
 unfrequent occurrence with the necessitarian valet. I waited 
 his return, which was not for some hours, in order to give him 
 sundry orders for my departure. The exquisite Desmarais 
 hemmed thrice "Will Monsieur be so very kind as to excuse 
 my accompanying him ?" said he, with his usual air and tone of 
 obsequious respect. 
 
 " And why ? " The valet explained. A relation of his was in 
 England only for a few days the philosopher was most anxious 
 to enjoy his society a pleasure which fate might not again 
 allow him. 
 
 Though I had grown accustomed to the man's services, and 
 did not like to lose him even for a time, yet I could not refuse 
 his request ; and I therefore ordered another of my servants to 
 supply his place. This change, however, determined me to 
 adopt a plan which I had before meditated, viz. the conveying 
 of my own person to Devereux Court on horseback, and send- 
 ing my servant with my luggage in my post-chaise. The eques- 
 trian mode of travelling is, indeed to this day, the one most 
 pleasing to me ; and the reader will find me pursuing it many 
 years afterwards, and to the same spot. 
 
 I might as well observe here that 1 had never entrusted Des- 
 marais, no, nor one of my own servants, with the secret of my
 
 l6o DEVEREUX. 
 
 marriage with, or my visits to, Isora. I am a very fastidious 
 person on those matters, and of all confidants, even in the most 
 trifling affairs, I do most eschew those by whom we have the 
 miserable honor to be served. 
 
 In order, then, to avoid having my horse brought me to 
 Isora's house by any of these menial spies, I took the steed 
 which I had selected for my journey, and rode to Isora's, with 
 the intention of spending the evening there, and thence com- 
 mencing my excursion with the morning light. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Love Parting a Death Bed. After all Human Nature is a beautiful 
 Fabric ; and even its Imperfections are not odious to him who has studied 
 the Science of its Architecture, and formed a reverent Estimate of its 
 Creator. 
 
 IT is a noticeable thing how much fear increases love. I 
 mean for the aphorism requires explanation how much we 
 love, in proportion to our fear of losing (or even to our fear of 
 injury done to) the beloved object. 'Tis an instance of the 
 reaction of the feelings the love produces the fear, and the 
 fear reproduces the love. This is one reason, among many, 
 why women love so much more tenderly and anxiously than 
 we do ; and it is also one reason among many, why frequent 
 absences are, in all stages of love, the most keen exciters of the 
 passion. I never breathed, away from Isora, without trembling 
 for her safety. I trembled lest this Barnard, if so I should 
 still continue to call her persecutor, should again discover and 
 molest her. Whenever (and that was almost daily) I rode to 
 the quiet and remote dwelling I had procured her, my heart 
 beat so vehemently, and my agitation was so intense, that on 
 arriving at the gate I have frequently been unable, for several 
 minutes, to demand admittance. There was, therefore, in the 
 mysterious danger which ever seemed to hang over Isora, a 
 perpetual irritation to a love otherwise but little inclined to 
 slumber ; and this constant excitement took away from the 
 torpor into which domestic affection too often languishes, and 
 increased my passion even while it diminished my happiness. 
 
 On my arrival now at Isora's, I found her already stationed 
 at the window, watching for my coming. How her dark eyes 
 lit into lustre when they saw me ! How the rich blood mantled 
 up under the soft cheek which feeling had refined of late into 
 a paler hue than it was wont, when I first gazed upon it, tp
 
 DEVEREUX. l6l 
 
 wear ! Then how sprung forth her light step to meet me ! 
 How trembled her low voice to welcome me ! How spoke, 
 from every gesture of her graceful form, the anxious, joyful, 
 all-animating gladness of her heart ! It is a melancholy pleas- 
 ure to the dry, harsh, after-thoughts of later life, to think one 
 has been thus loved ; and one marvels, when one considers 
 what one is now, how it could have ever been ! That love of 
 ours was never made for after-years ! It could never have 
 flowed into the common and cold channel of ordinary affairs ! 
 It could never have been mingled with the petty cares and the 
 low objects with which the loves of all who live long together 
 in this sordid and earthly earth are sooner or later blended ! 
 We could not have spared to others an atom of the great 
 wealth of our affection. We were misers of every coin in that 
 boundless treasury. It would have pierced me to the soul to 
 have seen Isora smile upon another. I know not even, had we 
 had children, if I should not have been jealous of my child ! 
 Was this selfish love ? Yes, it was intensely, wholly selfish ; 
 but it was a love made so only by its excess ; nothing selfish 
 on a smaller scale polluted it. There was not on earth that 
 which the one would not have forfeited at the lightest desire 
 of the other. So utterly were happiness and Isora entwined 
 together that I could form no idea of the one with which the 
 other was not connected. Was this love made for the many 
 and miry roads through which man must travel ? Was it made 
 for age, or, worse than age, for those cool, ambitious, scheming 
 years that we call mature, in which all the luxuriance and 
 verdure of things are pared into tame shapes that mimic life, 
 but a life that is estranged from nature, in which art is the only 
 beauty, and regularity the only grace ? No, in my heart of 
 hearts, I feel that our love was not meant for the stages of life 
 through which I have already passed ; it would have made us 
 miserable to see it fritter itself away, and to remember what it 
 once was. Better as it is ! better to mourn over the green 
 bough than to look upon the sapless stem. You who now 
 glance over these pages, are you a mother ? if so, answer me 
 one question Would you not rather that the child whom you 
 have cherished with your soul's care, whom you have nurtured 
 at your bosom, whose joys your eyes have sparkled to behold, 
 whose lightest grief you have wept to witness, as you would 
 have wept not for your own ; over whose pure and unvexed 
 sleep you have watched and prayed, and, as it lay before you 
 thus still and unconscious of your vigil, have shaped out, oh, 
 such bright hopes for its future lot ; would you not rather that,
 
 162 DEVEREUX. 
 
 while thus young and innocent, not a care tasted, not a crime 
 incurred, it went down at once into the dark grave ? Would 
 you not rather surfer this grief, bitter though it be, than watch 
 the predestined victim grow and ripen, and wind itself more 
 and more around your heart, and when it is of full and mature 
 age, and you yourself are stricken by years, and can form 
 no new ties to replace the old that are severed, when woes 
 have already bowed the darling of your hope, whom woe 
 never was to touch, when sins have already darkened the 
 bright, seraph, unclouded heart which sin never was to dim ; 
 behold it sink day by day altered, diseased, decayed, into the 
 tomb which its childhood had in vain escaped ? Answer me : 
 would not the earlier fate be far gentler than the last ? And if 
 you have known and wept over that early tomb if you have 
 seen the infant flower fade away from the green soil of your 
 affections if you have missed the bounding step, and the 
 laughing eye, and the winning mirth which made this sterile 
 world a perpetual holiday Mother of the Lost, if you have 
 known, and you still pine for these, answer me yet again ! Is 
 it not a comfort, even while you mourn, to think of all that 
 that breast, now so silent, has escaped ? The cream, the 
 sparkle, the elixir of life, it had already quaffed ; is it not 
 sweet to think it shunned the wormwood and the dregs ? 
 Answer me, even though the answer be in tears ! Mourner, 
 your child was to you what my early and only love was to me ; 
 and could you pierce down, down through a thousand fathom 
 of ebbing thought, to the far depths of my heart, you would 
 there behold a sorrow and a consolation, that have something in 
 unison with your own ! 
 
 When the light of the next morning broke into our room, 
 Isora was still sleeping. Have you ever observed that the 
 young, seen asleep and by the morning light, seem much 
 younger even than they are ? partly because the air and the 
 light sleep of dawn bring a fresher bloom to the cheek, and 
 partly, because the careless negligence and the graceful postures 
 exclusively appropriated to youth, are forbidden by custom and 
 formality through the day, and developing themselves uncon- 
 sciously in sleep, they strike the eye like the ease and freedom 
 of childhood itself. There, as I looked upon Isora's tranquil 
 and most youthful beauty, over which circled and breathed an 
 ineffable innocence even as the finer and subtler air, which 
 was imagined by those dreamy bards who kindled the soft 
 creations of naiad and of nymph, to float around a goddess I 
 eould not believe that aught evil awaited one for whom infancy
 
 DEVEREUX. 163 
 
 itself seemed to linger, linger as if no elder shape and less 
 delicate hue were meet to be the garment of so much guileless- 
 ness and tenderness of heart. I felt, indeed, while I bent over 
 her, and her regular and quiet breath came upon my cheek, 
 that feeling which is exactly the reverse to a presentiment of 
 ill. I felt as if, secure in her own purity, she had nothing to 
 dread, so that even the pang of parting was lost in the con- 
 fidence which stole over me as I then gazed. 
 
 I rose gently, went to the next room and dressed myself I 
 heard my horse neighing beneath, as the servant walked him 
 lazily to and fro. I re-entered the bed-chamber, in order to 
 take leave of Isora ; she was already up. " What ! " said I, 
 "it is but three minutes since I left you asleep, and I stole 
 away as gently as time does when with you." 
 
 "Ah!" said Isora, smiling and blushing too, "but for my 
 part, I think there is an instinct to know, even if all the senses 
 were shut up, whether the one we love is with us or not. The 
 moment you left me, I felt it at once, even in sleep, and I woke. 
 But you will not, no, you will not leave me yet ! " 
 
 I think I see Isora now, as she stood by the window which 
 she had opened, with a woman's minute anxiety, to survey even 
 the aspect of the clouds, and beseech caution against the 
 treachery of the skies. I think I see her now, as she stood the 
 moment after I had torn myself from her embrace, and had 
 looked back, as I reached the door, for one parting glance 
 her eyes all tenderness, her lips parted, and quivering with the 
 attempt to smile the long, glossy ringlets (through whose raven 
 hue the purpureum lumen broke like an imprisoned sunbeam), 
 straying in dishevelled beauty over her transparent neck ; the 
 throat bent in mute despondency ; the head drooping ; the 
 arms half extended, and dropping gradually as my steps de- 
 parted ; the sunken, absorbed expression of face, form, and 
 gesture, so steeped in the very bitterness of dejection all are 
 before me now, sorrowful, and lovely in sorrow, as they were 
 beheld years ago, by the gray, cold, comfortless light of 
 morning ! 
 
 " God bless you my own, own love," I said ; and as my 
 look lingered, I added, with a full but an assured heart ; " and 
 He will ! " I tarried no more I flung myself on my horse, 
 and rode on as if I were speeding to, and not/>w, my bride. 
 
 The noon was far advanced, as, the day after I left Isora, I 
 found myself entering the park in which Devereux Court is 
 situated. I did not enter by one of the lodges, but through a 
 private gate. My horse was thoroughly jaded ; for the distance
 
 164 DEVEREUX. 
 
 I had come was great, and I had ridden rapidly ; and as I came 
 into the park, I dismounted, and throwing the rein over my 
 arm, proceeded slowly on foot. I was passing through a thick, 
 long plantation, which belted the park and in which several 
 walks and rides had been cut, when a man crossed the same 
 road which I took, at a little distance before me. He was 
 looking on the ground, and appeared wrapt in such earnest 
 meditation that he neither saw nor heard me. But I had seen 
 enough of him, in that brief space of time, to feel convinced 
 that it was Montreuil whom I beheld. What brought him 
 hither, him, whom I believed in London, immersed with Gerald 
 in political schemes, and for whom these woods were not only 
 interdicted ground, but to whom they must have also been but 
 a tame field of interest, after his audiences with ministers and 
 nobles ? I did not, however, pause to consider on his appari- 
 tion ; I rather quickened my pace towards the house, in the ex- 
 pectation of there ascertaining the cause of his visit. 
 
 The great gates of the outer court were open as usual : I 
 rode unheedingly through them, and was soon at the door of 
 the hall. The porter, who unfolded to my summons the pon- 
 derous door, uttered, when he saw me, an exclamation that 
 seemed to my ear to have in it more of sorrow than welcome. 
 
 " How is your master ?" I asked. 
 
 The man shook his head, but did not hasten to answer: and 
 impressed with a vague alarm, I hurried on without repeating 
 the question. On the staircase I met old Nicholls, my uncle's 
 valet : I stopped and questioned him. My uncle had been 
 seized on the preceding day with gout in the stomach ; medical 
 aid had been procured, but it was feared ineffectually, and the 
 physicians had declared, about an hour before I arrived, that 
 he could not, in human probability, outlive the night. Stifling 
 the rising at my heart, I waited to hear no more I flew up the 
 stairs I was at the door of my uncle's chamber I stopped 
 there, and listened ; all was still I opened the door gently I 
 stole in, and, creeping to the bed-side, knelt down and covered 
 my face with my hands ; for I required a pause for self-posses- 
 sion, before I had courage to look up. When I raised my eyes, I 
 saw my mother on the opposite side ; she sat on a chair with a 
 draught of medicine in one hand, and a watch in the other. 
 She caught my eye, but did not speak ; she gave me a sign of 
 recognition, and looked down again upon the watch. My 
 uncle's back was turned to me, and he lay so still that, for 
 some moments, I thought he was asleep ; at last, however, he 
 moved restlessly.
 
 DEVEREUX. 165 
 
 " It is past noon ! " said he to my mother, " is it not ? " 
 
 " It is three minutes and six seconds after four," replied my 
 mother, looking closer at the watch. 
 
 My uncle sighed. " They have sent an express for the dear 
 boy, madam ! " said he. 
 
 " Exactly at half-past nine last evening," answered my 
 mother, glancing at me. 
 
 " He could scarcely be here by this time," said my uncle, 
 and he moved again in the bed. " Pish how the pillow frets 
 one." 
 
 " Is it too high ? " said my mother. 
 
 " No," said my uncle faintly, " no no the discomfort is not 
 in the pillow, after all 'tis a fine day is it not ? " 
 
 " Very ! " said my mother ; " I wish you could go out." 
 
 My uncle did not answer : there was a pause. " Od'sfish, 
 madam, are those carriage wheels ? " 
 
 " No, Sir William but ." 
 
 "There are sounds in my ear my senses grow dim," said my 
 uncle, unheeding her, " would that I might live another day 
 I should not like to die without seeing him. 'Sdeath, madam, 
 I do hear something behind ! Sobs, as I live ! Who sobs for 
 the old knight ? " and my uncle turned round, and saw me. 
 
 " My dear dear uncle ! " I said, and could say no more. 
 
 " Ah, Morton," cried the kind old man, putting his hand 
 affectionately upon mine. " Beshrew me, but I think I have 
 conquered the grim enemy now that you are come. But what's 
 this, my boy ? tears tears, why, little Sid no, nor Roches- 
 ter either, would ever have believed this if I had sworn it ! 
 Cheer up cheer up." 
 
 But, seeing that I wept and sobbed the more, my uncle, 
 after a pause, continued in the somewhat figurative strain which 
 the reader has observed he sometimes adopted, and which 
 perhaps his dramatic studies had taught him. 
 
 "Nay, Morton, what do you grieve for? that Age should 
 throw off its fardel of aches and pains, and no longer groan 
 along its weary road, meeting cold looks and unwilling wel- 
 comes, as both host and comrade grow weary of the same face, 
 and the spendthrift heart has no longer quip or smile where- 
 with to pay the reckoning ? No no let the poor pedler shuffle 
 of his dull pack, and fall asleep. But I am glad you are come : 
 I would sooner have one of your kind looks at your uncle's 
 stale saws or jests than all the long faces about me, saving only 
 the presence of your mother "; and with his characteristic 
 gallantry, my uncle turned courteously to her.
 
 l66 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " Dear Sir William ! " said she, "it is time you should take 
 your draught ; and then would it not be better that you should 
 see the chaplain he waits without." 
 
 "Od'sfish," said my uncle, turning again to me, "tisthe way 
 with them all when the body is past hope, comes the physi- 
 cian, and when the soul is past mending, comes the priest. 
 No, madam, no, 'tis too late for either. Thank ye, Morton, 
 thank ye," (as I started up took the draught from my mother's 
 hand, and besought him to drink it) " 'tis of no use ; but if it 
 pleases thee, I must," and he drank the medicine. 
 
 My mother rose, and walked towards the door it was ajar, 
 and, as my eye followed her figure, I perceived, through the 
 opening, the black garb of the chaplain. 
 
 " Not yet," said she quietly ; " wait." And then gliding 
 away, she seated herself by the window in silence, and told her 
 beads. 
 
 My uncle continued : " They have been at me, Morton, as 
 if I had been a pagan : and I believe, in their hearts, they are 
 not a little scandalized that I don't try to win the next world, 
 by trembling like an ague. Faith now, I never could believe 
 that Heaven was so partial to cowards ; nor can I think, Mor- 
 ton, that Salvation is like a soldier's muster-roll, and that we 
 may play the devil between hours, so that, at the last moment, 
 \ve whip in, and answer to our names. Od'sfish, Morton, I 
 could tell thee a tale of that ; but 'tis a long one, and we have 
 not time now. Well, well, for my part, I believe reverently and 
 gratefully of God, and do not think He will be very wroth 
 with our past enjoyment of life, if we have taken care that 
 others should enjoy it too ; nor do I think, with thy good 
 mother, and Aubrey, dear child ! that an idle word has the 
 same weight in the Almighty's scales as a wicked deed." 
 
 " Blessed, blessed are they," I cried, through my tears, 
 " on whose souls there is as little stain as there is on 
 yours !" 
 
 " Faith, Morton, that's kindly said ; and thou knowest not 
 how strangely it sounds, after their exhortations to repentance. 
 I know I have had my faults, and walked on to our common 
 goal in a very irregular line : but I never wronged the living 
 nor slandered the dead, nor ever shut my heart to the poor 
 'twere a burning sin if I had ; and I have loved all men 
 and all things, and I never bore ill-will to a creature. Poor 
 Ponto, Morton, thou wilt take care of poor Ponto, when I'm 
 dead nay. nay, don't grieve so. Go, my child, go compose 
 thyself while I see the priest, for 'twill please thy poor mother ;
 
 13EVEREUX. 167 
 
 and though she thinks harshly of me now, I should not like 
 her to do so to-morrow! Go, ray dear boy go." 
 
 I went from the room, and waited by the door, till the office 
 of the priest was over. My mother then came out, and said 
 Sir William had composed himself to sleep. While she was 
 yet speaking, Gerald surprised me by his appearance. I 
 learned that he had been in the house for the last three days, 
 and when I heard this, I involuntarily accounted for the ap- 
 pearance of Montreuil. I saluted him distantly, and he returned 
 my greeting with the like pride. He seemed, however, though 
 in a less degree, to share in my emotions ; and my heart 
 softened to him for it. Nevertheless we stood apart, and met 
 not as brothers should have met by the death-bed of a mutual 
 benefactor. 
 
 " Will you wait without ? " said my mother. 
 
 " No," answered I, " I will watch over him." So I stole in, 
 with a light step, and seated myself by my uncle's bed-side. 
 He was asleep, and his sleep was as hushed and quiet as an 
 infant's. I looked upon his face, and saw a change had come 
 over it, and was increasing sensibly : but there was neither 
 harshness nor darkness in the change, awful as it was. The 
 soul, so long nurtured on benevolence, could not, in parting, 
 leave a rude stamp on the kindly clay which had seconded its 
 impulses so well. 
 
 The evening had just set in, when my uncle woke ; he turned 
 very gently, and smiled when he saw me. 
 
 " It is late," said he, and I observed with a wrung heart, that 
 his voice was fainter. 
 
 " No, sir, not very," said I. 
 
 " Late enough, my child ; the warm sun has gone down ; 
 and 'tis a good time to close one's eyes, when all without looks 
 gray and chill : methinks it is easier to wish thee farewell, 
 Morton, when I see thy face indistinctly. I am glad I shall 
 not die in the day-time. Give me thy hand, my child, and tell 
 me that thoti art not angry with thine old uncle for thwarting 
 the in that love business. I have heard tales of the girl, too, 
 which make me glad, for thy sake, that it is all off, though I 
 might not tell thee of them before. 'Tis very dark, Morton. 
 I have had a pleasant sleep. Od'sfish, I do not think a bad 
 man would have slept so well. The fire burns dim, Morton 
 it is very cold. Cover me up double the counterpane over 
 the legs, Morton. I remember once walking in the Mall 
 little Sid said 'Devereux.' .It is colder and colder, Morton 
 raise the blankets more over the back. ' Devereux,' said little
 
 1 68 DEVEREUX. 
 
 Sid faith, Morton, 'tis ice now where art thou ? is the fire 
 out, that I can't see thee ? Remember thine old uncle, Mor- 
 ton and and don't forget poor Ponto. Bless thee, my 
 child bless you all ! " 
 And my uncle died ! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A great Change of Prospects. 
 
 I SHUT myself up in the apartments prepared for me (they 
 were not those I had formerly occupied), and refused all par- 
 ticipation in my solitude, till, after an interval of some days, 
 my mother came to summon me to the opening of the will. 
 She was more moved than I had expected. " It is a pity," 
 said she, as we descended the stairs, " that Aubrey is not here, 
 and that we should be so unacquainted with the exact place 
 where he is likely to be that I fear the letter I sent him may 
 be long delayed, or, indeed, altogether miscarry." 
 
 " Is not the Abbe here ? " said I, listlessly. 
 
 " No ! " answered my mother, " to be sure not." 
 
 " He has been here," said I, greatly surprised. " I certainly 
 saw him on the day of my arrival." 
 
 " Impossible ! " said my mother, in evident astonishment ; 
 and seeing that, at all events, she was unacquainted with the 
 circumstance, I said no more. 
 
 The will was to be read in the little room, where my uncle 
 had been accustomed to sit. I felt it as a sacrilege to his 
 memory to choose that spot for such an office, but I said nothing. 
 Gerald and my mother, the lawyer (a neighboring attorney, 
 named Oswald), and myself, were the only persons present ; 
 Mr. Oswald hemmed thrice, and broke the seal. After a pre- 
 liminary, strongly characteristic of the testator, he came to the 
 disposition of the estates. I had never once, since my poor 
 uncle's death, thought upon the chances of his will indeed, 
 knowing myself so entirely his favorite, I could not, if I had 
 thought upon them, have entertained a doubt as to their result. 
 What then was my astonishment, when, couched in terms of 
 the strongest affection, the whole bulk of the property was 
 bequeathed to Gerald ; to Aubrey the sum of forty, to myself 
 that of twenty, thousand pounds (a capital considerably less 
 than the yearly income of my uncle's princely estates), was 
 allotted. Then followed a list of minor bequests, to my 
 mother an annuity of three thousand a year, with the privilege
 
 DEVEREtrX. 169 
 
 of apartments in the house during her life ; to each of the ser- 
 vants legacies sufficient for independence ; to a few friends, 
 and distant connections of the family, tokens of the testator's 
 remembrance, even the horses to his carriage, and the dogs 
 that fed from his menials' table, were not forgotten, but were 
 to be set apart from work, and maintained in indolence during 
 their remaining span of life. The will was concluded I could 
 not believe my senses : not a word was said as a reason for 
 giving Gerald the priority. 
 
 I rose calmly enough. "Suffer me, sir," said I to the law- 
 yer, "to satisfy my own eyes." Mr. Oswald bowed, and placed 
 the will in my hands. I glanced at Gerald as I took it : his 
 countenance betrayed, or feigned, an astonishment equal to 
 my own. With a jealous, searching, scrutinizing eye, I ex- 
 amined the words of the bequest. I examined especially (for 
 I suspected that the names must have been exchanged) the 
 place in which my name and Gerald's occurred. In vain : all 
 was smooth and fair to the eye, not a vestige of possible erasure 
 or alteration was visible. I looked next at the wording of the 
 wilh it was evidently my uncle's no one could have feigned 
 or imitated the peculiar turn of his expressions ; and, above 
 all, many parts of the will : (the affectionate and personal parts) 
 were in his own handwriting. 
 
 "The date," said I "is, I perceive, of very recent period ; 
 the will is signed by two witnesses besides yourself. Who and 
 where are they?" 
 
 " Robert Lister, the first signature, my clerk, he is since 
 dead, sir." 
 
 " Dead ! " said I ; "and the other witness, George Davis?" 
 
 " Is one of Sir William's tenants, and is below, sir, in waiting." 
 
 " Let him come up," and a middle-sized, stout man, with a 
 blunt, bold, open countenance, was admitted. 
 
 " Did you witness this will ? " said I. 
 
 " I did, your honor ! " 
 
 " And this is your handwriting?" pointing to the scarcely 
 legible scrawl. 
 
 " Yees, your honor," said the man, scratching his head. "I 
 think it be, they are my ees, and G, and Z>, sure enough." 
 
 " And do you know the purport of the will you signed ? " 
 
 " Anan ! "' 
 
 " I mean, do you know to whom Sir William stop, Mr. Os- 
 wald suffer the man to answer me to whom Sir William left 
 his property?" 
 
 " Noa, to be sure, sir ; the will was a woundy long one, and
 
 170 DEVEREUX. 
 
 Maister Oswald there told me it was no use to read it over to 
 me, but merely to sign, as a witness to Sir William's hand- 
 writing." 
 
 "Enough ; you may retire"; and George Davis vanished. 
 
 "Mr. Oswald," said I, approaching the attorney,"! may 
 wrong you, and if so, I am sorry for it, but I suspect there has 
 been foul practice in this deed. I have reason to be convinced 
 that Sir William Devereux could never have made this devise. 
 J give you warning, sir, that I shall bring the business immedi- 
 ately before a court of law, and that if guilty ay, tremble, 
 sir of what I suspect you will answer for this deed at the foot 
 of the gallows." 
 
 I turned to Gerald, who rose while I was yet speaking. 
 Before I could address him, he exclaimed with evident and ex- 
 treme agitation: 
 
 " You cannot, Morton you cannot you dare not insinuate 
 that I, your brother, have been base enough to forge, or to in- 
 stigate the forgery of, this will ? " 
 
 Gerald's agitation made me still less doubtful of his guilt. 
 
 " The case, sir," I answered coldly, " stands thus : my uncle 
 could not have made this will it is a devise that must seem 
 incredible to all who knew aught of our domestic circumstances. 
 Fraud has been practiced, how I know not ! by whom I do 
 know." 
 
 " Morton, Morton this is insufferable I cannot bear such 
 charges, even from a brother." 
 
 " Charges ! your conscience speaks, sir not I ; no one 
 benefits by this fraud but you : pardon me if I draw an infer- 
 ence from a fact." 
 
 So saying, I turned on my heel, and abruptly left the apart- 
 ment. I ascended the stairs which led to my own : there I 
 found my servant preparing the paraphernalia in which that 
 very evening I was to attend my uncle's funeral. I gave him, 
 with a calm and collected voice, the necessary instructions for 
 following me to town immediately after that event, and then I 
 passed on to the room where the deceased lay in state. The 
 room was hung with black the gorgeous pall, wrought with 
 the proud heraldry of our line, lay over the coffin, and by the 
 lights which made, in that old chamber, a more brilliant, yet 
 more ghastly day, sat the hired watchers of the dead. 
 
 I bade them leave me, and kneeling down beside the coffin, 
 I poured out the last expressions of my grief. I rose, and was 
 retiring once more to my room, when I encountered Gerald. 
 
 " Morton," said he, " I o\vn to you. I myself am astounded
 
 DEVEREUX. 171 
 
 by my uncle's will. I do not come to make you offers you 
 would not accept them I do not come to vindicate myself, it is 
 beneath me; and we have never been as brothers, and we know 
 not their language but I do come to demand you to retract the 
 dark and causeless suspicions you have vented against me, and 
 also to assure you that, if you have doubts of the authenticity 
 of the will, so far from throwing obstacles in your way, I myself 
 will join in the inquiries you institute, and the expanses of the 
 law." 
 
 I felt some difficulty in curbing my indignation while Gerald 
 thus spoke. I saw before me the persecutor of Isora the fraud- 
 ulent robber of my rights, and I heard this enemy speak to me 
 of aiding in the inquiries which were to convict himself of the 
 basest, if not the blackest, of human crimes ; there was some- 
 thing too in the reserved and yet insolent tone of his voice which, 
 reminding me as it did of our long aversion to each other, made 
 my very blood creep with abhorrence. I turned away, that I 
 might not break my oath to Isora, for I felt strongly tempted 
 to do so ; and said in as calm an accent as I could command, 
 "The case will, I trust, require no king's evidence; and at least, 
 I will not be beholden to the man whom my reason condemns 
 for any assistance in bringing upon himself the ultimate con- 
 demnation of the law.'" 
 
 Gerald looked at me sternly : " Were you not my brother," 
 said he in a low tone, " I would, for a charge so dishonoring my 
 fair name, strike you dead at my feet." 
 
 " It is a wonderful exertion of fraternal love," I rejoined, with 
 a scornful laugh, but an eye flashing with passions a thousand 
 times more fierce than scorn, " that prevents your adding that 
 last favor to those you have already bestowed on me." 
 
 Gerald, with a muttered curse, placed his hand upon his sword; 
 my own rapier was instantly half drawn, when to save us from 
 the great guilt of mortal contest against each other, steps were 
 heard, and a number of the domestics charged with melancholy 
 duties at the approaching rite were seen slowly sweeping in 
 black robes along the opposite gallery. Perhaps that interrup- 
 tion restored both of us to our senses, for we said, almost in the 
 same breath, and nearly in the same phrase, " This way of ter- 
 minating strife is not for us" ; and, as Gerald spoke, he turned 
 slowly away, descended the staircase, and disappeared. 
 
 The funeral took place at night : a numerous procession of 
 the tenants and peasantry attended. My poor uncle! there was 
 not a dry eye for thee but those of thine own kindred. Tall, 
 stately, erect in the power and majesty of his unrivalled form,
 
 172 DEVEREUX. 
 
 stood Gerald, already assuming the dignity and lordship which, 
 to speak frankly, so well became him ; my mother's face was 
 turned from me, but her attitude proclaimed her utterly absorbed 
 in prayer. As for myself, my heart seemed hardened: I could 
 not betray to the gaze of a hundred strangers the emotion which 
 I would have hidden from those whom I loved the most; wrapped 
 in my cloak, with arms folded on my breast, and eyes bent to 
 the ground; I leaned against one of the pillars of the chapel, 
 apart, and apparently unmoved. 
 
 But when they were about to lower the body into the vault, 
 a momentary weakness came over me. I made an involuntary 
 step forward, a single but deep groan of anguish broke from me, 
 and then, covering my face with my mantle, I resumed my for- 
 mer attitude, and all was still. The rite was over; in many and 
 broken groups the spectators passed from the chapel : some to 
 speculate on the future lord, some to mourn over the late, and 
 all to return the next morning to their wonted business, and let 
 the glad sun teach them to forget the past, until for themselves 
 the sun should be no more, and the forgetfulness eternal. 
 
 The hour was so late that I relinquished my intention of leav- 
 ing the house that night; I ordered my horse to be in readiness 
 at daybreak, and, before I retired to rest, I went to my mother's 
 apartments : she received me with more feeling than she had 
 ever testified before. 
 
 "Believe me, Morton," said she, and she kissed my forehead; 
 "believe me, I can fully enter into the feelings which you must 
 naturally experience on an event so contrary to your expecta- 
 tions. I cannot conceal from you how much I am surprised. 
 Certainly Sir William never gave any of us cause to suppose 
 that he liked either of your brothers Gerald less than Aubrey 
 so much as yourself ; nor poor man, was he in other things at 
 all addicted to conceal his opinions." 
 
 "It is true, my mother," said I ; "it is true. Have you not 
 therefore some suspicions of the authenticity of the will ? " 
 
 " Suspicions ! " cried my mother. " No ! impossible! sus- 
 picions of whom ? You could not think Gerald so base, and 
 who else had an interest in deception ? Besides, the signature 
 is undoubtedly Sir William's handwriting, and the will was regu- 
 larly witnessed ; suspicions, Morton no, impossible ! Reflect 
 too, how eccentric and humorsome your uncle always was: sus- 
 picions ! no, impossible ! " 
 
 " Such things have been, my mother, nor are they uncommon: 
 men will hazard their souls, ay, and what to some is more 
 precious still, their lives too for the vile clay we call money.
 
 DEVEREUX. 173 
 
 But enough of this now: the Law that great arbiter that eater 
 of the oyster, and divider of its shells the Law will decide be- 
 tween us, and if against me, as I suppose, and fear the decision 
 will be why I must be a suitor to Fortune, instead of her com- 
 mander. Give me your blessing, my dearest mother ; I cannot 
 stay longer in this house: to-morrow I leave you." 
 
 And my mother did bless me, and I fell upon her neck and 
 clung to it. "Ah ! " thought I, " this blessing is almost worth 
 my uncle's fortune." 
 
 I returned to my room there I saw on the table the case 
 of the sword sent me by the French king. I had left it with my 
 uncle, on my departure to town, and it had been found among 
 his effects and reclaimed by me. I took out the sword, and 
 drew it from the scabbard. 
 
 "Come," said I, and I kindled with a melancholy, yet a deep, 
 enthusiasm, as I looked along the blade, "come, my bright 
 friend, with thee through this labyrinth which we call the world, 
 will I carve my way ! Fairest and speediest of earth's levellers, 
 thou makest the path from the low valley to the steep hill, and 
 shapest the soldier's axe into the monarch's sceptre ! The laurel 
 and the fasces, the curule car, and the emperor's purple what 
 are these but thy playthings, alternately thy scorn and thy re- 
 ward? Founder of all empires, propagator of all creeds, thou 
 leddest the Gaul and the Goth, and the Gods of Rome and 
 Greece crumbled upon their altars ! Beneath thee, the fires of 
 the Gheber waxed pale, and on thy point the badge of the camel- 
 driver blazed like a sun over the startled East ! Eternal arbiter, 
 and unconquerable despot, while the passions of mankind exist ! 
 Most solemn of hypocrites circling blood with glory as with a 
 halo, and consecrating homicide and massacre with a hollow 
 name, which the parched throat of thy votary, in the battle and 
 the agony, shouteth out with its last breath ! Star of all human 
 destinies ! I kneel before thee, and invoke from thy bright 
 astrology an omen and a smile." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 An Episode. The Son of the Greatest Man who (one only except ed) ever 
 rose to a Throne, but by no means of the Greatest Man (save one) who 
 ever existed. 
 
 BEFORE sunrise the next morning, I had commenced my re- 
 turn to London. I had previously entrusted to the locum teneru 
 of the sage Desmarais the royal gift, and (singular conjunc-
 
 174 DEVEREUX. 
 
 tion !) poor Ponto, my uncle's dog. Here let me pause, as I 
 shall have no other opportunity to mention him, to record the 
 fate of the canine bequest. He accompanied me some years 
 afterwards to France, and he died there in extreme age. I shed 
 tears, as I saw the last relic of my poor uncle expire, and I 
 was not consoled even though he was buried in the garden of 
 the gallant Villars, and immortalized by an epitaph from the 
 pen of the courtly Chaulieu. 
 
 Leaving my horse to select his own pace, I surrendered my- 
 self to reflection upon the strange alteration that had taken 
 place in my fortunes. There did not, in my own mind, rest a 
 doubt that some villainy had been practiced with respect to the 
 will. My uncle's constant and unvarying favor towards me ; 
 the unequivocal expressions he himself from time to time had 
 dropped indicative of his future intentions on my behalf ; the 
 easy and natural manner in which he had seemed to consider, 
 as a thing of course, my heritage and succession of his estates ; 
 all, coupled with his own frank and kindly character, so little 
 disposed to raise hopes which he meant to disappoint, might 
 alone have been sufficient to arouse my suspicions at a devise 
 so contrary to all past experience of the testator. But when to 
 these were linked the bold temper and the daring intellect of 
 my brother, joined to his personal hatred to myself: his close 
 intimacy with Montreuil, whom I believed capable of the dark- 
 est designs ; the sudden and evidently concealed appearance 
 of the latter on the day my uncle died ; the agitation and pale- 
 ness of the attorney ; the enormous advantages accruing to 
 Gerald, and to no one else, from the terms of the devise : when 
 these were all united into one focus of evidence, they appeared 
 to me to leave no doubt of the forgery of the testament, and 
 the crime of Gerald. Nor was there anything in my brother's 
 bearing and manner calculated to abate my suspicions. His 
 agitation was real ; his surprise might have been feigned ; his 
 offer of assistance in investigation was an unmeaning bravado ; 
 his conduct to myself testified his continued ill-will towards 
 me an ill-will which might possibly have instigated him in the 
 fraud, scarcely less than the whispers of interest and cupidity. 
 
 But while this was the natural and indelible impression on 
 my mind, I could not disguise from myself the extreme diffi- 
 culty I should experience in resisting my brother's claim. So 
 far as my utter want of all legal knowledge would allow me to de- 
 cide, I could perceive nothing in the will itself which would 
 admit of a lawyer 's successful cavil : my reasons for suspicion, 
 so conclusive to myself, would seem nugatory to a judge. My un-
 
 DEVEREUX 175 
 
 clewas known as a humorist ; and prove that a man differs from 
 others in one thing, and the world will believe that he differs from 
 them in a thousand. His favor to me would be, in the popular 
 eye, only an eccentricity, and the unlooked-for disposition of his 
 will only a caprice. Possession, too, gave Gerald a proverbial 
 vantage-ground, which my whole life might be wasted in con- 
 testing ; while his command of an immense wealth might, more 
 than probably, exhaust my spirit by delay, and my fortune by 
 expenses. Precious prerogative of law, to reverse the attribute 
 of the Almighty ! to filL the rich with good things, but to send 
 the poor empty away ! In corruptissimd republicd pluriiiuz leges. 
 Legislation perplexed is synonymous with crime unpunished. 
 A reflection, by the way, I should never have made, if I had 
 never had a law-suit sufferers are ever reformers. 
 
 Revolving, then, these anxious and unpleasing thoughts, in- 
 terrupted, at times, by regrets of a purer and less selfish na- 
 ture for a friend I had lost, and wandering, at others, to the 
 brighter anticipations of rejoining Isora, and drinking from 
 her eyes my comfort for the past, and my hope for the future, 
 I continued and concluded my day's travel. 
 
 The next daj r , on resuming my journey, and on feeling the time 
 approach that would bring me to Isora,something like joy became 
 the most prevalent feeling on my mind. So true is it that mis- 
 fortunes little affect us so long as we have some ulterior object, 
 which, by arousing hope, steals us from affliction. Alas! the 
 pang of a moment becomes intolerable when we know of noth- 
 ing t>eyond\.\\e moment,which it soothes us to anticipate ! Hap- 
 piness lives in the light of the future : attack the present she 
 defies you ! Darken the future, and you destroy her ! 
 
 It was a beautiful morning : through the vapors which rolled 
 slowly away beneath his beams, the sun broke gloriously forth ; 
 and over wood and hill, and the low plains which, covered 
 with golden corn, stretched immediately before me, his smile 
 lay in stillness, but in joy. And ever from out the brake and 
 the scattered copse, which at frequent intervals beset the road, 
 the merry birds sent a fitful and glad music to mingle with 
 the sweets and freshness of the air. 
 
 I had accomplished the greater part of my journey, and had 
 entered into a more wooded and garden-like description of 
 country, when I perceived an old man, in a kind of low chaise, 
 vainly endeavoring to hold in a little, but spirited horse, which 
 had taken alarm at some object on the road, and was running 
 away with its driver. The age of the gentleman, and the light- 
 uess of the chaise, gave me some alarm for the safety of the
 
 176 DEVEREUX. 
 
 driver ; so, tying my horse to a gate, lest the sound of his hoofs 
 might only increase the speed and fear of the fugitive, I ran 
 with a swift and noiseless step along the other side of the 
 hedge, and coming out into the road, just before the pony's 
 head, I succeeded in arresting him, at rather a critical spot 
 and moment. The old gentleman very soon recovered his 
 alarm ; and, returning me many thanks for my interference, re- 
 quested me to accompany him to his house, which he said was 
 two or three miles distant. 
 
 Though I had no desire to be delayed in my journey, for the 
 mere sake of seeing an old gentleman's house, I thought my 
 new acquaintance's safety required me, at least, to offer to act 
 as his charioteer till we reached his house. To my secret vex- 
 ation at that time, though I afterwards thought the petty incon- 
 venience was amply repaid by a conference with a very singular 
 and once noted character, the offer was accepted. Surrender- 
 ing my own steed to the care of a ragged boy, who promised to 
 lead it with equal judgment and zeal, I entered the little car, 
 and, keeping a firm hand and constant eye on the reins, brought 
 the offending quadruped into a very equable and sedate 
 pace. 
 
 "Poor Fob," said the old gentleman, apostrophizing his horse; 
 "poor Fob, like thy betters, thou knowest the weak hand 
 from the strong ; and when thou art not held in by power, thou 
 wilt chafe against love ; so that thou renewest in my mind the 
 remembrance of its favorite maxim, viz., 'The only preventative 
 to rebellion is restraint ! ' ' 
 
 " Your observation, sir," said I, rather struck by this address, 
 " makes very little in favor of the more generous feelings by 
 which we ought to be actuated. It is a base mind which 
 always requires the bit and bridle." 
 
 " It is, sir," answered the old gentleman ; " I allow it ; but, 
 though I have some love for human nature, I have no respect 
 for it ; and while I pity its infirmities, I cannot but confess 
 them." 
 
 " Methinks, sir," replied I, " that you have uttered in that 
 short speech more sound philosophy than I have heard for 
 months. There is wisdom in not thinking too loftily of human 
 clay, and benevolence in not judging it too harshly, and some- 
 thing, too, of magnanimity in this moderation ; for we seldom 
 contemn mankind till they have hurt us, and when they have 
 hurt us, we seldom do anything but detest them for the injury." 
 
 " You speak shrewdly, sir, for one so young," returned the 
 old man, looking hard at me ; " and I will be sworn you have
 
 DEVEREiJX. 17? 
 
 suffered some cares ; for we never begin to think, till we are a 
 little afraid to hope." 
 
 I sighed as I answered, " There are some men, I fancy, to 
 whom constitution supplies the office of care ; who, naturally 
 melancholy, become easily addicted to reflection, and reflection 
 is a soil which soon repays us for whatever trouble we bestow 
 upon its culture." 
 
 " True, sir ! " said my companion and there was a pause. 
 The old gentlemen resumed : " We are not far from my home 
 now (or rather my temporary residence, for my proper and 
 general home is at Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire); and, as the day 
 is scarcely half spent, I trust you will not object to partake of a 
 hermit's fare. Nay, nay, no excuse : I assure you that I am 
 not a gossip in general, or a liberal dispenser of invitations ; 
 and I think, if you refuse me now, you will hereafter regret it." 
 
 My curiosity was rather excited by this, threat ; and, reflect- 
 ing that my horse required a short rest, I subdued my impa- 
 tience to return to town, and accepted the invitation. We came 
 presently to a house of moderate size, and rather antique fash- 
 ion. This, the old man informed me, was his present abode. 
 A servant, almost as old as his master, came to the door, and, 
 giving his arm to my host, led him, for he was rather lame 
 and otherwise infirm, across a small hall into a long, low apart- 
 ment. I followed. 
 
 A miniature of Oliver Cromwell, placed over the chimney- 
 piece, forcibly arrested my attention. 
 
 " It is the only portrait of the Protector, I ever saw," said I, 
 "which impresses on me the certainty of a likeness ; that reso- 
 lute, gloomy brow that stubborn lip that heavy, yet not 
 stolid, expression all seem to warrant resemblance to that sin- 
 gular and fortunate man, to whom folly appears to have been 
 as great an instrument of success as wisdom, and who rose to 
 the supreme power, perhaps, no less from a pitiable fanaticism 
 than an admirable genius. So true is it that great men often soar 
 to their height, by qualities the least obvious to the spectator, 
 and (to stoop to a low comparison,) resemble that animal* in 
 which a common ligament supplies the place, and possesses the 
 property, of wings." 
 
 The old man smiled very slightly, as I made this remark. 
 "If this be true," said he, with an impressive tone, " though we 
 may wonder less at the talents of the Protector, we must be 
 more indulgent to his character, nor condemn him for insincer- 
 ity, when at heart he himself was deceived." 
 
 * The flying squirrel
 
 178 DEVEREifX. 
 
 " It is in that light," said I, " that I have always viewed his 
 conduct. And though myself, by prejudice, a cavalier and a 
 tory, I own that Cromwell (hypocrite as he is esteemed) appears 
 to me as much to have exceeded his royal antagonist and vic- 
 tim in the virtue of sincerity, as he did in the grandeur of his 
 genius and the profound consistency of his ambition." 
 
 "Sir," said my host, with a warmth that astonished me, 
 "you seem to have known that man, so justly do you judge 
 him. Yes," said he, after a pause, "yes, perhaps no one ever 
 so varnished to his own breast his designs no one, so covetous 
 of glory, was ever so duped by conscience no one ever rose to 
 such a height, through so few acts that seemed to himself 
 worthy of remorse." 
 
 At this part of our conversation, the servant, entering, 
 announced dinner. We adjourned to another room, and par- 
 took of a homely yet not uninviting repast. When men are 
 pleased with each other, conversation soon gets beyond the 
 ordinary surfaces to talk ; and an exchange of deeper opin- 
 ions is speedily effected by what old Barnes* quaintly enough 
 terms. "The Gentleman Usher of all Knowledge Sermocina- 
 tion ! " 
 
 It was a pretty, though small room, where we dined ; and I 
 observed that in this apartment, as in the other into which I 
 had been first ushered, there were several books scattered 
 about, in that confusion and number which show that they have 
 become to their owner both the choicest luxury and the least 
 dispensable necessary. So, during dinner time, we talked prin- 
 cipally upon books, and I observed that those that my host 
 seemed to know the best were of the elegant and poetical 
 order of philosophers, who, more fascinating than deep, preach 
 up the blessings of a solitude which is useless, and a content, 
 which, deprived of passion, excitement, and energy, would, if it 
 could ever exist, only be a dignified name for vegetation. 
 
 " So," said he, when, the dinner being removed, we were left 
 alone with that substitute for all society wine ! " so you are 
 going to town : in four hours more you will be in that great 
 focus of noise, falsehood, hollow joy, and real sorrow. Do you 
 know that I have become so wedded to the country that I can- 
 not but consider all those who leave it for the turbulent city, 
 in the same light, half wondering, half compassionating, as that 
 in which the ancients regarded the hardy adventurers who left 
 the safe land and their happy homes, voluntarily to expose 
 themselves in a frail vessel to the dangers of an uncertain sea. 
 
 * In the Gerania.
 
 bEVEREtrx. 179 
 
 Here, when I look out on the green fields, and the blue sky, 
 the quiet herds, basking in the sunshine, or scattered over the 
 unpolluted plains, I cannot but exclaim with Pliny, 'This is 
 the true Movaeiov ! ' this the source whence flow inspiration 
 to the mind and tranquillity to the heart ! And in my love of 
 nature more confiding and constant than ever is the love we 
 bear to women I cry with the tender and sweet Tibullus 
 
 ' Ego composite securus acervo 
 Despiciam dites despiciamque famem.'"* 
 
 " These," said I, " are the sentiments we all (perhaps the 
 most restless of us the most passionately) at times experience. 
 But there is in our hearts some secret, but irresistible, princi- 
 ple, that impels us, as a rolling circle, onward, onward, in the 
 great orbit of our destiny ; nor do we find a respite until the 
 wheels on which we move are broken at the tomb." 
 
 " Yet," said my host, " the internal principle you speak of 
 can be arrested before the grave : at least stilled and impeded. 
 You will smile incredulously, perhaps (for I see you do not 
 know who I am), when I tell you that I might once have been 
 a monarch, and that obscurity seemed to me more enviable 
 than empire ; I resigned the occasion : the tide of fortune 
 rolled onward, and left me safe, but solitary and forsaken, upon 
 the dry land. If you wonder at my choice, you will wonder 
 still more when I tell you that I have never repented it." 
 
 Greatly surprised, and even startled, I heard my host make 
 this strange avowal. " Forgive me," said I, " but you have 
 powerfully excited my interest ; dare I inquire from whose 
 experience I am now deriving a lesson?" 
 
 " Not yet," said my host, smiling, " not till our conversation 
 is over, and you have bid the old anchorite adieu, in all pro- 
 bability, for ever : you will then know that you have conversed 
 with a man, perhaps more universally neglected and con- 
 temned than any of his contemporaries. Yes," he continued, 
 "yes, I resigned power, and I got no praise for my moderation, 
 but contempt for my folly ; no human being would believe 
 that I could have relinquished that treasure through a disregard 
 for its possession which others would only have relinquished 
 through an incapacity to retain it ; and that which, had they 
 seen it recorded in an ancient history, men would have 
 regarded as the height of philosophy, they despised when acted 
 under their eyes, as the extremest abasement of imbecility. 
 Yet I compare my lot with that of the great man whom I was 
 expected to equal in ambition, and to whose grandeur I might 
 
 'Satisfied with my little hoard, I can despise wealthand fear not hunger.
 
 DEVEREUX. 
 
 have succeeded ; and am convinced that in this retreat I am 
 more to be envied than he in the plenitude of his power and 
 the height of his renown ; yet is not happiness the aim of 
 wisdom ? if my choice is happier than his, is it not wiser?" 
 
 "Alas," thought I, " the wisest men seldom have the loftiest 
 genius, and perhaps happiness is granted rather to mediocrity 
 of mind than to mediocrity of circumstance"; but I did not 
 give so uncourteous a reply to my host an audible utterance ; 
 on the contrary : " I do not doubt," said I, as I rose to depart, 
 " the wisdom of a choice which has brought you self-gratula- 
 tion. And it has been said by a man both great and good, a 
 man to whose mind was open the lore of the closet and the 
 experience of courts that in wisdom or in folly, ' the only 
 difference between one man and another, is whether a man 
 governs his passions or his passions him.' According to this 
 rule, which indeed is a classic and a golden aphorism, Alex- 
 ander, on the throne of Persia, might have been an idiot to 
 Diogenes in his tub. And now, sir, in wishing you farewell, 
 let me again crave your indulgence to my curiosity." 
 
 "Not yet, not yet," answered my host ; and he led me once 
 more into the other room. While they were preparing my 
 horse, we renewed our conversation. To the best of my recol- 
 lection, we talked about Plato ; but I had now become so 
 impatient to rejoin Isora that I did not accord to my worthy 
 host the patient attention I had hitherto given him. When I 
 took leave of him he blessed me, and placed a piece of paper 
 in my hand ; " Do not open this," said he, " till you are at 
 least two miles hence ; your curiosity will then be satisfied. If 
 ever you travel this road again, or if ever you pass by Cheshunt, 
 pause and see if the old philosopher is dead. Adieu ! " 
 
 And so we parted. 
 
 You may be sure that I had not passed the appointed dis- 
 tance of two miles very far when I opened the paper and read 
 the following words : 
 
 " Perhaps, young stranger, at some future period of a life, 
 which I venture to foretell will be adventurous and eventful, it 
 may afford you a matter for reflection, or a resting-spot for a 
 moral, to remember that you have seen, in old age and obscur- 
 ity, the son of Him who shook an empire, avenged a people, 
 ami obtained a throne, only to be the victim of his own pas- 
 sions and the dupe of his own reason. I repeat now the ques- 
 tion I before put to you was the fate of the great Protector 
 fairer than that of the despised and forgotten 
 
 " RICHARD CROMWELL ?"
 
 DEVEREUX. iSl 
 
 " So," thought I, " it is indeed with the son of the greatest 
 ruler England or perhaps, in modern times, Europe has ever 
 produced, that I have held this conversation upon content ! 
 Yes, perhaps your fate is more to be envied than that of your 
 illustrious father ; but who would envy it more ? Strange that 
 while we pretend that happiness is the object of all desire, hap- 
 piness is the last thing which we covet. Love, and wealth, and 
 pleasure, and honor, these are the roads which we take, so 
 long that, accustomed to the mere travel, we forget that it was 
 first undertaken, not for the course, but the goal ; and, in the 
 common infatuation which pervades all our race, we make the 
 toil the meed, and in following the means forsake the end." 
 
 I never saw my host again ; very shortly afterward he died :* 
 and fate, which had marked with so strong a separation the 
 lives of the father and the son, united in that death as its 
 greatest, so its only universal, blessing the philosopher and 
 the recluse with the warrior and the chief \ 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 In which the Hero shows decision on more points than one. More of Isora's 
 character is developed. 
 
 To use the fine image in the Arcadia, it was " when the sun, like 
 a noble heart, began to show his greatest countenance in his 
 lowest estate," that I arrived at Isora's door. I had written to 
 her once, to announce my uncle's death, and the day of my 
 return ; but I had not mentioned in my letter my reverse of for- 
 tunes : I reserved that communication till it could be softened 
 by our meeting. I saw by the countenance of the servant who 
 admitted me that all was well ; so I asked no question I flew 
 up the stairs I broke into Isora's chamber, and in an instant 
 she was in my arms. Ah, Love, Love ! wherefore art them so 
 transitory a pilgrim on the earth an evening cloud which 
 hovers on our horizon, drinking the hues of the sun, that grows 
 ominously brighter as it verges to the shadow and the night, and 
 which, the moment that sun is set, wanders on in darkness or 
 descends in tears ? 
 
 "And now, my bird of Paradise," said I, as we sat alone in 
 the apartment I had fitted up as the banqueting room, and on 
 which, though small in its proportions, I had lavished all the love 
 pf luxury and show which made one of my most prevailing 
 
 * Richard Cromwell died in 1712. ED.
 
 i8a DEVEREUX. 
 
 weaknesses, " and now, how has time passed with you since we 
 parted ? " 
 
 " Need you ask, Morton ? Ah, have you ever noted a poor 
 dog deserted by its master, or rather not deserted, for that you 
 know is not my case yet," added Isora playfully, "but left at 
 home while the master went abroad ? have you noted how rest- 
 less the poor animal is how it refuses all company and all com- 
 fort how it goes a hundred times a day into the room which 
 its master is wont mostly to inhabit how it creeps on the sofa 
 or the chair which the same absent idler was accustomed to 
 press how it selects some article of his very clothing, and 
 curls jealously around it, and hides and watches over it, as 
 I have hid and watched over this glove, Morton ? Have 
 you ever noted that humble creature whose whole happiness 
 is the smile of one being, when the smile was away ? then, 
 Morton, you can tell how my time has passed during your 
 absence." 
 
 I answered Isora by endearments and by compliments. She 
 turned away from the latter. 
 
 " Never call me those fine names, I implore you," she whis- 
 pered ; "call me only by those pretty pet words by which I know 
 you will never call any one else. Bee and bird are my names, 
 and mine only ; but beauty and angel are names you have given, 
 or may give, to a hundred others ! Promise me, then, to ad- 
 dress me only in our own language." 
 
 "I promise, and lo, the seal to the promise. But tell me, 
 Isora, do you not love these rare scents that make an Araby of 
 this unmellowed clime ? Do you not love the profusion of light 
 which reflects so dazzling a lustre on that soft cheek and those 
 eyes which the ancient romancer* must have dreamt of when 
 he wrote so prettily of 'eyes that seemed a temple where love 
 and beauty were married ' ? Does not yon fruit take a more 
 tempting hue, bedded as it is in those golden leaves? Does not 
 sleep seem to hover with a downier wing over those sofas on 
 which the limbs of a princess have been laid? In a word, is 
 there not in luxury and in pomp a spell which no gentler or 
 wiser mind would disdain?" 
 
 " It may be so ! " said Isora, sighing ; "but the splendor which 
 surrounds us chills and almost terrifies me. I think that every 
 proof of your wealth and rank puts me farther from you ; then, 
 too, I have some remembrance of the green sod, and the silver 
 rill, and the trees upon which the young winds sing and play 
 
 * Sir Philip Sydney, who, if we may judge from the number of quotations from his works 
 jcattered in this book, seems to have been an especial favorite with Count Devereux. ED.
 
 DEVEREUX. 183 
 
 and I own that it is with the country, and not the town, that all 
 my ideas of luxury are wed." 
 
 " But the numerous attendants, the long row of liveried hire- 
 lings, through which you may pass, as through a lane, the ca- 
 parisoned steeds, the stately equipage, the jewelled tiara, the 
 costly robe which matrons imitate and envy, the music, which 
 lulls you to sleep, the lighted show, the gorgeous stage, all 
 these, the attributes or gifts of wealth, all these that you have 
 the right to hope you will one day or other command, you will 
 own are what you could very reluctantly forego ! " 
 
 " Do you think so, Morton ? Ah, I wish you were of my 
 humble temper : the more we limit and concentre happiness 
 the more certain, I think, we are of securing it they who 
 widen the circle encroach upon the boundaries of danger ; and 
 they who freight their wealth upon an hundred vessels are 
 more liable, Morton, are they not, to the peril of the winds and 
 the waves than they who venture it only upon one ? " 
 
 " Admirably reasoned, my little sophist ; but if the one ship 
 sink ? " 
 
 " Why, I would embark myself in it as well as my wealth, 
 and should sink with it." 
 
 " Well, well, Isora, your philosophy will, perhaps, soon be 
 put to the test. I will talk to you to-morrow of business." 
 
 " And why not to-night? " 
 
 " To-night, when I have just returned ! No, to-night I will 
 only talk to you of love ! " 
 
 As may be supposed, Isora was readily reconciled to my 
 change of circumstances, and indeed that sum which seemed 
 poverty to me appeared positive wealth to her. But perhaps 
 few men are by nature and inclination more luxurious and 
 costly than myself ; always accustomed to a profuse expendi- 
 ture at my uncle's, I fell insensibly and con amore on my debut 
 in London, into all the extravagancies of the age. Sir William, 
 pleased, rather than discontented with my habits, especially as 
 they were attended with some Mat, pressed upon me proofs of 
 his generosity which, since I knew his wealth and considered 
 myself his heir, I did not scruple to accept, and at the time of 
 my return to London after his death, I had not only spent to 
 the full the princely allowance I had received from him, but was 
 above half my whole fortune in debt. However, I had horses and 
 equipages, jewels and plate, and I did not long wrestle with my 
 pride before I obtained the victory, and sent all my valuables 
 to the hammer. They sold pretty well, all things considered, 
 for I had a certain reputation in the world for taste and mu-
 
 184 DEVEREUX/ 
 
 nificence ; and when I had received the product and paid my 
 debts, I found that the whole balance in my favor, including, 
 of course, my uncle's legacy, was fifteen thousand pounds. 
 
 . It was no bad younger brother's portion, perhaps, but I was in 
 no humor to be made a younger brother without a struggle. So 
 I went to the lawyers ; they looked at the will, considered the 
 case, and took their fees. Then the honestest of them, with the 
 coolest air in the world, told me to content myself with my 
 legacy, for the case was hopeless ; the will was sufficient to ex- 
 clude a wilderness of elder sons. I need not add that I left this 
 lawyer with a very contemptible opinion of his understanding. 
 I went to another, he told me the same thing, only in a different 
 manner, and I thought him as great a fool as his fellow prac- 
 tioner. At last I chanced upon a little brisk gentleman, with a 
 quick eye and a sharp voice, who wore a wig that carried con- 
 viction in every curl ; had an independent, upright mien, and 
 such a logical, emphatic way of expressing himself, that I was 
 quite charmed with him. This gentleman scarce heard me out 
 before he assured me that I had a famous case of it, that he 
 liked making quick work, and proceeding with vigor, that he 
 hated rogues, and delay which was the sign of a rogue, but not 
 the necessary sign of law, that I was the most fortunate man 
 imaginable in coming to him, and, in short, that I had nothing 
 to do but to commence proceedings, and leave all the rest to 
 him. I was very soon talked into this proposal, and very soon 
 embarked in the luxurious ocean of litigation. 
 
 Having settled this business so satisfactorily, I went to re- 
 ceive the condolence and sympathy of St. John. Notwithstand- 
 ing the arduous occupations both of pleasure and of power, in 
 which he was constantly engaged, he had found time to call 
 upon me very often, and to express by letter great disappoint- 
 ment that I had neither received nor returned his visits. 
 Touched by the phenomenon of so much kindness in a states- 
 man, I paid him in return the only compliment in my power, 
 viz., I asked his advice with a view of taking it. 
 
 " Politics politics, my dear Count," said he, in answer to 
 that request, " nothing like it ; I will get you a seat in the 
 House by next week, you are just of age, I think, Heavens ! 
 a man like you, who has learning enough for a German profes- 
 sor assurance that would almost abash a Milesian a very 
 pretty choice of words, and a pointed way of consummating a 
 jest why, with you by my side, my dear Count, I will soon " 
 
 " St. John," said I, interrupting him, " you forget I am a 
 Catholic!"
 
 DEVEREUX. 185 
 
 "Ah, I did forget that," replied St. John slowly. "Heaven 
 help me, Count, but I am sorry your ancestors were not con- 
 verted ; it was a pity they should bequeath you their religion 
 without the estate to support it, for papacy has become a terri- 
 ble tax to its followers." 
 
 " I wonder," said I, " whether the earth will ever be gov- 
 erned by Christians, not cavillers ; by followers of our Saviour, 
 not by co-operators of the devil ; by men who obey the former, 
 and ' love one another/ not by men who walk about with the 
 latter (that roaring lion), ' seeking whom they may devour.' 
 Intolerance makes us acquainted with strange nonsense, and 
 folly is never so ludicrous as when associated with something 
 sacred ; it is then like Punch and his wife in Powell's puppet- 
 show, dancing in the Ark. For example, to tell those who differ 
 from us that they are in a delusion, and yet to persecute them 
 for that delusion, is to equal the wisdom of our forefathers, 
 who, we are told, in the Dsemonologie of the Scottish Solomon, 
 ' burnt a whole monasterie of nunnes for being misled, not by 
 men, but dreames ! ' ' 
 
 And being somewhat moved, I ran on for a long time in a 
 very eloquent strain, upon the disadvantages of intolerance ; 
 which, I would have it, was a policy as familiar to Protestantism 
 now as it had been to Popery in the dark ages ; quite forgetting 
 that it is not the vice of a peculiar sect, but of a ruling party. 
 
 St. John, who thought, or affected to think, very differently 
 from me on these subjects, shook his head gently, but, with his 
 usual good breeding, deemed it rather too sore a subject for 
 discussion. 
 
 " I will tell you a discovery I have made," said I. 
 
 "And what is it?" 
 
 " Listen : that man is wisest who is happiest granted. What 
 does happiness consist in ? Power, wealth, popularity, and, 
 above all, content ! Well, then, no man ever obtains so much 
 power, so much money, so much popularity, and, above all, such 
 thorough self-content as a fool ; a fool, therefore (this is no 
 paradox), is the wisest of men. Fools govern the world in pur- 
 ple the wise laugh at them but they laugh in rags. Fools 
 thrive at court fools thrive in state chambers fools thrive in 
 boudoirs fools thrive in rich men's legacies. Who is so be- 
 loved as a fool ? Every man seeks him, laughs at him, and 
 hugs him. Who is so secure in his own opinion so high in 
 complacency, as a fool ? suavirtuteinvolvit. Hark ye, St. John, 
 let us turn fools they are the only potentates the only phil 
 osophers of earth. Qh, motley, ' motley's your only wear ! ' '"
 
 l86 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " laughed St. John ; and, rising, he insisted upon 
 carrying me with him to the rehearsal of a new play, in order, 
 as he said, to dispel my spleen, and prepare me for ripe decision 
 upon the plans to be adopted for bettering my fortune. 
 
 But, in good truth, nothing calculated to advance so comfort- 
 able and praiseworthy an end seemed to present itself. My re- 
 ligion was an effectual bar to any hope of rising in the state. 
 Europe now began to wear an aspect that promised universal 
 peace, and the sword which I had so poetically apostrophized 
 was not likely to be drawn upon anymore glorious engagement 
 than a brawl with the Mohawks, any incautious noses apper- 
 taining to which fraternity I was fully resolved to slit whenever 
 they came conveniently in my way. To add to the unpromis- 
 ing state of my worldly circumstances, my uncle's death had re- 
 moved the only legitimate barrier to the acknowledgment of my 
 marriage with Isora, and it became due to her to proclaim and 
 publish that event. Now, if there be any time in the world 
 when a man's friends look upon him most coldly, when they 
 speak of his capacities of rising the most despondingly, when 
 they are most inclined, in short, to set him down as a silly sort 
 of fellow, whom it is no use inconveniencing oneself to assist, 
 it is at that moment when he has made what the said friends 
 are pleased to term an imprudent marriage ! It was, therefore, 
 no remarkable instance of good luck that the express time for 
 announcing that I had contracted that species of marriage, was 
 the express time for my wanting the assistance of those kind- 
 hearted friends. Then, too, by the pleasing sympathies in 
 worldly opinion, the neglect of one's friends is always so damn- 
 ably neighbored by the exultation of one's foes ! Never was 
 there a man who, without being very handsome, very rude, or 
 very much in public life, had made unto himself more enemies 
 than it had been my lot to make. How the rascals would all 
 sneer and coin dull jests when they saw me so down in the 
 world ! The very old maids, who, so long as they thought me 
 single, would have declared that the will was a fraud, would, 
 directly they heard I was married, ask if Gerald was handsome, 
 and assert, with a wise look, that my uncle knew well what he was 
 about. Then the joy of the Lady Hasselton, and the curled lip 
 of the haughty Tarleton ! It is a very odd circumstance, but 
 it is very true, that the people we most despise have the most 
 influence over our actions : a man never ruins himself by giv- 
 ing dinners to hi c father, or turning his house into a palace in 
 order to feast his bosom friend : on the contrary, 'tis the poor 
 devil pf a friend who fares the worst, and starves on the family
 
 DEVEREUX. 187 
 
 joint, while mine host beggars himself to banquet "that dis- 
 agreeable Mr. A., who is such an insufferable ass," and mine 
 hostess sends her husband to the Fleet by vying with " that 
 odious Mrs. B., who was always her aversion ! " 
 
 Just in the same manner, no thought disturbed me, in the 
 step I was about to take, half so sorely as the recollection of 
 Lady Hasselton the coquette, and Mr. Tarleton the gambler. 
 However, I have said somewhere or other that nothing selfish 
 on a small scale polluted my love for Isora nor did there. I 
 had resolved to render her speedy and full justice ; and if I 
 sometimes recurred to the disadvantages to myself, I always 
 had pleasure in thinking that they were sacrifices to her. But 
 to my great surprise, when I first announced to Isora my inten- 
 tion of revealing our marriage, I perceived in her countenance, 
 always such a traitor to her emotions, a very different expres- 
 sion from that which 1 had anticipated. A deadly paleness 
 spread over her whole face, and a shudder seemed to creep 
 through her frame. She attempted, however, to smile away 
 the alarm she had created in me ; nor was I able to penetrate 
 the cause of an emotion so unlocked for. But I continued to 
 speak of the public announcement of our union as of a thing 
 decided ; and at length she listened to me while I arranged 
 the method of making it, and sympathized in the future pro- 
 jects I chalked out for us to adopt. Still, however, when I 
 proposed a definite time for the re-celebration of our nup- 
 tials, she ever drew back, and hinted the wish for a longer 
 delay. 
 
 " Not so soon, dear Morton," she would say tearfully, " not 
 so soon ; we are happy now, and perhaps when you are with 
 me always, you will not love me so well ! " 
 
 I reasoned against this notion, and this reluctance, but in 
 vain ; and day passed on day, and even week on week, and 
 our marriage was still undeclared. I now lived, however, 
 almost wholly with Isora, for busy tongues could no longer 
 carry my secret to my uncle ; and, indeed, since I had lost the 
 fortune which I was expected to inherit, it is astonishing how 
 little people troubled themselves about my movements or my- 
 self. I lived then almost wholly with Isora and did familiar- 
 ity abate my love ? Strange to say, it did not abate even the 
 romance of it. The reader may possibly remember a conver- 
 sation with St. John recorded in the Second Book of this his- 
 tory. " The deadliest foe to love," said he, (he who had 
 known all love that of the senses and that also of the soul), 
 "is not change, nor misfortune, nor jealousy, nor wrath, nor
 
 i88 DEVEREUX. 
 
 anything that flows from passion, or emanates from fortune. 
 The deadliest foe to love is CUSTOM ! " 
 
 Was St. John right ? I believe that in most instances he 
 was ; and perhaps the custom was not continued in my case 
 long enough for me to refute the maxim. But as yet, the very 
 gloss upon the god's wings was fresh as on the first day when I 
 had acknowledged his power. Still was Isora to me the light 
 and the music of existence ! still did my heart thrill and leap 
 within me when her silver and fond voice made the air a bless- 
 ing. Still would I hang over her, when her beautiful features 
 lay hushed in sleep, and watch the varying hues of her cheek ; 
 and fancy, while she slept, that in each low, sweet breath that 
 my lips drew from hers, was a whisper of tenderness and en- 
 dearment ! Still when I was absent from her, my soul seemed 
 to mourn a separation from its better and dearer part, and the 
 joyous senses of existence saddened and shrunk into a single 
 want ! Still was her presence to my heart as a breathing at- 
 mosphere of poesy which circled and tinted all human things ; 
 still was my being filled with that delicious and vague melan- 
 choly which the very excess of rapture alone produces the 
 knowledge we dare not breathe to ourselves that the treasure 
 in which our heart is stored is not above the casualties of fate. 
 The sigh that mingles with the kiss, the tear that glistens in the 
 impassioned and yearning gaze, the deep tide in our spirit, 
 over which the moon and the stars have power ; the chain of 
 harmony within the thought, which has a mysterious link with 
 all that is fair, and pure, and bright in Nature, knitting as it 
 were loveliness with love ! all this, all that I cannot express 
 all that to the young for whom the real world has had few 
 spells, and the world of visions has been a home, who love at 
 last and for the first time, all that to them are known were 
 still mine. 
 
 In truth, Isora was one well calculated to sustain and to 
 rivet romance. The cast of her beauty was so dreamlike, and 
 yet so varying her temper was so little mingled with the com- 
 mon characteristics of woman ; it had so little of caprice, so 
 little of vanity, so utter an absence of all jealous and all angry 
 feeling ; it was so made up of tenderness and devotion, and 
 yet so imaginative and fairy-like in its fondness, that it was dif- 
 ficult to bear only the sentiments of earth, for one who had so 
 little of earth's clay. She was more like the women whom one 
 imagines are the creations of poetry, and yet of whom no poe- 
 try, save that of Shakspeare's, reminds us ; and to this day, 
 when I go into the world, I never see aught of our own kind
 
 DEVEfcEUX. 189 
 
 which recalls her, or even one of her features, to my memory. 
 But when I am alone with Nature, methinks a sweet sound or a 
 new-born flower has something of familiar power over those 
 stored and deep impressions which do make her image, and it 
 brings her more vividly before my eyes than any shape or face 
 of her own sex, however beautiful it may be. 
 
 There was also another trait in her character which, though 
 arising in her weakness, not her virtues, yet perpetuated the 
 more dreamlike and imaginary qualities of our passion ; this 
 was a melancholy superstition, developing itself in forebodings 
 and omens which interested, because they were steeped at once 
 in the poetry and in the deep sincerity of her nature. She 
 was impressed with a strong and uncontrollable feeling that 
 her fate was predestined to a dark course and an early end ; 
 and she drew from all things around her something to feed the 
 pensive character of her thoughts. The stillness of noon the 
 holy and eloquent repose of twilight, its rosy sky, and its soft 
 air, its shadows and its dews, had equally for her heart a whis- 
 per and a spell. The wan stars, where, from the eldest time, man 
 has shaped out a chart of the undiscoverable future ; the mys- 
 terious moon, to which the great ocean ministers from its 
 untrodden shrines ; the winds, which traverse the vast air, pil- 
 grims from an eternal home to an impenetrated bourne; the illim- 
 itable Heavens, on which none ever gazed without a vague crav- 
 ing for something that the earth cannot give, and a vague sense 
 of a former existence in which that something was enjoyed ; 
 the holy night that solemn and circling sleep, which seems, in 
 its repose, to image our death, and in its living worlds to 
 shadow forth the immortal realms which only through that 
 death we can survey, all had, for the deep heart of Isora, a 
 language of omen and of doom. Often would we wander 
 alone, and for hours together, by the quiet and wild woods and 
 streams that surrounded her retreat, and which we both loved 
 so well ; and often, when the night closed over us, with my 
 arm around her, and our lips so near that our atmosphere was 
 our mutual breath, would she utter, in that voice which "made 
 the soul plant itself in the ears," the predictions which had 
 nursed themselves at her heart. 
 
 I remember one evening, in especial ! The rich twilight had 
 gathered over us, and we sat by a slender and soft rivulet, 
 overshadowed by some stunted yet aged trees. We had both, 
 before she spoke, been silent for several minutes ; and only 
 when, at rare intervals, the birds sent from the copse that backed 
 us a solitary and vesper note of music, was the stillness around
 
 106 DEVEREUX. 
 
 us broken. Before us, on the opposite bank of the stream, lay 
 a valley, in which shadow and wood concealed all trace of man's 
 dwellings, save at one far spot, where, from a single hut, rose 
 a curling and thin vapor, like a spirit released from earth, and 
 losing gradually its earthier particles, as it blends itself with 
 the loftier atmosphere of Heaven. 
 
 It was then that Isora, clinging closer to me, whispered her 
 forebodings of death. "You will remember," said she, smiling 
 faintly, "you will remember me, in the lofty and bright career 
 which yet awaits you, and I scarcely know whether I would not 
 sooner have that memory free as it will be from all recol- 
 lection of my failings and faults, and all that I have cost you, 
 than incur the chance of your future coldness or decrease of 
 love." 
 
 And when Isora turned, and saw that the tears stood in my 
 eyes, she kissed them away, and said, after a pause: 
 
 " It matters not, my own guardian angel, what becomes of 
 me : and now that I am near you, it is wicked to let my folly 
 cost you a single pang. But why should you grieve at my fore- 
 bodings ? there is nothing painful or harsh in them to me, and 
 I interpret them thus : ' if my life passes away before the com- 
 mon date, perhaps it will be a sacrifice to yours." And it will, 
 Morton it will. The love I bear to you I can but feebly ex- 
 press now ; all of us wish to prove our feelings, and I would 
 give one proof of mine for you. It seems to me that I was 
 made only for one purpose to love you ; and I would fain 
 hope that my death may be some sort of sacrifice to you some 
 token of the ruling passion and the whole object of my life." 
 
 As Isora said this, the light of the moon, which had just 
 risen, shone full upon her cheek, flushed as it was with a deeper 
 tint than it usually wore ; and in her eye her features her 
 forehead the lofty nature of her love seemed to have stamped 
 the divine expression of itself. 
 
 Have I lingered too long on these passages of life, they 
 draw near to a close and a more adventurous and stirring 
 period of manhood will succeed. Ah, little could they, who in 
 after years beheld in me but the careless yet stern soldier the 
 companion alternately so light and so moodily reserved little 
 could they tell how soft, and weak, and doting my heart was 
 once!
 
 DEVEREUX. ipl 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 An Unexpected Meeting. Conjecture and Anticipation. 
 
 THE day for the public solemnization of our marriage was at 
 length appointed. In fact, the plan for the future that ap- 
 peared to me most promising was to proffer my services to some 
 foreign Court, and that of Russia held out to me the greatest 
 temptation. I was therefore anxious, as soon as possible, to 
 conclude the rite of a second or public nuptials, and I pur- 
 posed leaving the country within a week afterward. My little 
 lawyer assured me that my suit would go on quite as well in 
 my absence, and whenever my presence was necessary he would 
 be sure to inform me of it. I did not doubt him in the least 
 it is a charming thing to have confidence in one's man of business. 
 
 Of Montreuil I now saw nothing ; but I accidentally heard 
 that he was on a visit to Gerald, and that the latter had already 
 made the old walls ring with premature hospitality. As for 
 Aubrey, I was in perfect ignorance of his movements ; and the 
 unsatisfactory shortness of his last letter, and the wild expres- 
 sions so breathing of fanaticism in the postscript, had given me 
 much anxiety and alarm on his account. I longed above all to 
 see him, to talk with him over old times and our future plans, 
 and to learn whether no new bias could be given to a tempera- 
 ment which seemed to lean so strongly towards a self-punishing 
 superstition. It was about a week before the day fixed for my pub- 
 lic nuptials, that I received at last from him the following letter: 
 '* Mv DEAREST BROTHER : 
 
 " I have been long absent from home absent on affairs on 
 which we will talk hereafter. I have not forgotten you, though 
 I have been silent, and the news of my poor uncle's death has 
 shocked me greatly. On my arrival here I learnt your disap- 
 pointment and your recourse to law. I am not so much sur- 
 prised, though I am as much grieved, as yourself, for I will tell 
 you now what seemed to me unimportant before. On receiv- 
 ing your letter, requesting consent to your designed marriage, 
 my uncle seemed greatly displeased as well as vexed, and after- 
 wards he heard much that displeased him more ; from what 
 quarter came his news I know not, and he only spoke of it in 
 innuendos and angry insinuations. As far as I was able, I en- 
 deavored to learn his meaning, but could not, and to my praises 
 of you I thought latterly he seemed to lend but a cold ear ; he 
 told me at last, when I was about to leave him, that you had 
 acted ungratefully to him, and that he should alter his will. I 
 scarcely thought of this speech at the time, or rather I consid-
 
 192 DEVEREUX. 
 
 ered it as the threat of a momentary anger. Possibly, however, 
 it was the prelude to that disposition of property which has so 
 wounded you, I observe too that the will bears date about 
 that period. I mention this fact to you you can draw from 
 it what inference you will ; but I do solemnly believe that Ger- 
 ald is innocent of any fraud towards you. 
 
 "I am all anxiety to hear whether your love continues. I 
 beseech you to write to me instantly and inform me on that 
 head as on all others. We shall meet soon. 
 
 " Your ever affectionate Brother, 
 
 " AUBREY DEVEREUX." 
 
 There was something in this letter that vexed and displeased 
 me: I thought it breathed a tone of unkindness and indifference 
 which my present circumstances rendered peculiarly inexcus- 
 able. So far, therefore, from answering it immediately, I re- 
 solved not to reply to it till after the solemnization of my mar- 
 riage. The anecdote of my uncle startled me a little when I 
 coupled it with the words my uncle had used toward myself on 
 his death-bed; viz, in hinting that he had heard some things 
 unfavorable to Ishra, unnecessary then to repeat; but still if my 
 uncle had altered his intentions towards me, would he not have 
 mentioned the change and its reasons ? Would he have written 
 to me with such kindness, or received me with such affection ? 
 I could not believe that he would : and my opinions of the fraud 
 and the perpetrator were not a whit changed by Aubrey's epistle. 
 It was clear, however, that he had joined the party against me: 
 and as my love for him was exceedingly great, I was much 
 wounded by the idea. 
 
 " All leave me," said I, " upon this reverse, all but Isora ! " 
 and I thought with renewed satisfaction on the step which was 
 about to ensure to her a secure home and an honorable station. 
 My fears lest Isora should again be molested by her persecutor 
 were now pretty well at rest; having no doubt in my own mind 
 as to that persecutor's identity, I imagined that in his new ac- 
 quisition of wealth and pomp, a boyish and unreturned love 
 would easily be relinquished; and that, perhaps, he would scarcely 
 regret my obtaining the prize himself had sought for, when in 
 my altered fortunes it would be followed by such worldly de- 
 preciation. In short, I looked upon him as possessing a char- 
 acteristic common to most bad men, who are never so influenced 
 by love as they are by hatred ; and imagined therefore, that if 
 he had lost the object of the love, he could console himself by 
 exulting over any decline of prosperity in the object of the hate 
 
 As the appointed day drew near, Isora's despondency seemed
 
 DEVEREUX. 193 
 
 to vanish, and she listened, with her usual eagerness in whatever 
 interested me, to my continental schemes of enterprise. I re- 
 solved that our second wedding, though public, should be modest 
 and unostentatious, suitable rather to our fortunes than our 
 birth. St. John, and a few old friends of the family, constituted 
 all the party I invited, and I requested them to keep my mar- 
 riage secret until the very day of celebrating it arrived. I did 
 this from adesireof avoiding compliments intended as sarcasms 
 and visits rather of curiosity, than friendship. On flew the days, 
 and it was now the one preceding my wedding. I was dress- 
 ing to go out upon a matter of business connected with the 
 ceremony, and I then, as I received my hat from Desmarais, 
 for the first time thought it requisite to acquaint that accom- 
 plished gentleman with the rite of the morrow. Too well bred 
 was Monsieur Desmarais to testify any other sentiment than 
 pleasure at the news; and he received my orders and directions 
 for the next day with more than the graceful urbanity which 
 made one always feel quite honored by his attentions. 
 
 " And how goes on the philosophy ? " said I, " faith, since I 
 am about to be married, I shall be likely to require its conso- 
 lations." 
 
 " Indeed, Monsieur," answered Desmarais, with that expres- 
 sion of self-conceit which was so curiously interwoven with the 
 obsequiousness of his address, " indeed, Monsieur, I have been 
 so occupied of late in preparing a little powder very essential 
 to dress, that I have not had time for any graver, though not 
 perhaps more important, avocations." 
 
 " Powder and what is it?" 
 
 "Will Monsieur condescend to notice its effect ?" answered 
 Desmarais, producing a pair of gloves which were tinted of the 
 most delicate flesh-color; the coloring was so nice that, when 
 the gloves were on, it would have been scarcely possible, at any 
 distance, to distinguish them from the naked flesh. 
 
 1 'Tis a rare invention," said I. 
 
 "Monsieur is very good, but I flatter myself it is so," rejoined 
 Desmarais; and he forthwith ran on far more earnestly on the 
 merits of his powder than I have ever heard him descant on the 
 beauties of Fatalism. I cut him short in the midst of his har- 
 angue; too much eloquence in any line is displeasing in one's 
 dependent. 
 
 I had just concluded my business abroad, and was returning 
 homeward with downcast eyes, and in a very abstracted mood, 
 when I was suddenly startled by a loud voice that exqlaimed in 
 a tone of surprise: " What! Count Devereux how fortunate! "
 
 194 DEVEREUX. 
 
 I looked up, and saw a little, dark man, shabbily dressed; his 
 face did not seem unfamiliar to me, but I could not at first re- 
 member where I had seen it my look, I suppose, testified my 
 want of memory, for lie said, with a low bow 
 
 "You have forgotten me, Count, and I don't wonder at it; so 
 please you, I am the person who once brought you a letter from 
 France to Devereux Court." 
 
 At this, I recognized the bearer of that epistle which had 
 embroiled me with the Abbe* Montreuil. I was too glad of the 
 meeting to show any coolness in my reception of the gentleman, 
 and, to speak candidly, I never saw a gentleman less troubled 
 with mauvaise honte. 
 
 " Sir! " said he, lowering his voice to a whisper, " it is most 
 fortunate that I should thus have met you; I only came to town 
 this morning, and for the sole purpose of seeking you out. I 
 am charged with a packet, which I believe will be of the greatest 
 importance to your interests. But," he added, looking round, 
 "the streets are no proper place for my communication; par- 
 bleu, there are those about who hear whispers through stone 
 walls suffer me to call upon you to-morrow." 
 
 " To-morrow ! it is a day of great business with me, but I can 
 possibly spare you a few moments, if that will suffice; or, on the day 
 after, your own pleasure maybe the sole limit of our interview." 
 
 " Parbleu, Monsieur, you are very obliging very; but I will 
 tell you in one word who I am, and what is my business. My 
 name is Marie Oswald; I was born in France, and I am the 
 half-brother of that Oswald who drew up your uncle's will." 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " I exclaimed, " is it possible that you know 
 anything of that affair?" 
 
 "Hush yes, all! my poor brother is just dead ; and, in a 
 word, I am charged with a packet given me by him on his death- 
 bed. Now, will you see me if I bring it to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Certainly; can I not see you to-night ?" 
 
 " To-night ? No, not well; parbleu ! I want a little consider- 
 ation as to the reward due to me for my eminent services to 
 your lordship. No: let it be to-morrow." 
 
 "Well! at what hour ! I fear it must be in the evening." 
 
 " Seven, sil vous plait, Monsieur." 
 
 " Enough ! be it so." 
 
 And Mr. Marie Oswald, who seemed, during the whole of this 
 short conference, to have been under some great apprehension 
 of being seen or overheard, bowed, and vanished in an instant, 
 leaving my mind in a most motley state of incoherent, unsatis- 
 factory, yet sanguine conjecture.
 
 DEVEREUX. 195 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Events of a Single Night. Moments make the Hues in which Years 
 
 are colored. 
 
 MEN of the old age ! what wonder that in the fondness of a 
 dim faith, and in the vague guesses which, from the frail ark 
 of reason, we send to hover over a dark and unfathomable 
 abyss, what wonder that ye should have wasted hope and life 
 in striving to penetrate the future ! What wonder that ye 
 should have given a language to the stars, and to the night a 
 spell, and gleaned from the uncomprehended earth an answer 
 to the enigmas of Fate ! We are like the sleepers who, walking 
 under the influence of a dream, wander by the verge of a pre- 
 cipice, while, in their own deluded vision, they perchance be- 
 lieve themselves surrounded by bowers of roses, and accom- 
 panied by those they love. Or rather like the blind man, who 
 can retrace every step of the path he has once trodden, but who 
 can guess not a single inch of that which he has not yet tra- 
 velled, our reason can re-guide us over the roads of past experi- 
 ence with a sure and unerring wisdom, even while it recoils, 
 baffled and bewildered, before the blackness of the very mo- 
 ment whose boundaries we are about to enter. 
 
 The few friends I had invited to my wedding were still with 
 me, when otic of my servants, not Desmarais, informed me that 
 Mr. Oswald waited for me. I went out to him. 
 
 " Parbleu! " said he, rubbing his hands, " I perceive it is a 
 joyous time with you, and I don't wonder you can only spare 
 me a few moments." 
 
 The estates of Devereux were not to be risked for a trifle, 
 but I thought Mr. Marie Oswald exceeding impertinent. " Sir," 
 said I very gravely, " pray be seated : and now to business. 
 In the first place, may I ask to whom I am beholden for send- 
 ing you with that letter you gave me at Devereux Court? and 
 secondly, what that letter contained ? for I never read it." 
 
 " Sir," answered the man, " the history of the letter is per- 
 fectly distinct from that of the will, and the former (to discuss 
 the least important first) is briefly this. You have heard, sir, of 
 the quarrels between Jesuit and Jansenist ?" 
 
 "I have." 
 
 " Well but first, Count, let me speak of myself. There were 
 three young men of the same age, born in the same village in 
 France, of obscure birth each,and each desirous of getting on 
 in the world. Two were deuced clever fellows : the third noth- 
 ing particular. One of the two at present shall be nameless ;
 
 196 DEVEREUX. 
 
 the third, 'who was nothing particular' (in his own opinion, at 
 least, though his friends may think differently), was Marie 
 Oswald. We soon separated : I went to Paris, was employed 
 in different occupations, and at last became secretary, and (why 
 should I disavow it ?) valet to a lady of quality, and a violent 
 politician. She was a furious Jansenist ; of course I adopted 
 her opinions. About this time, there was much talk among the 
 Jesuits, of the great genius and deep learning of a young mem- 
 ber of the order Julian Montreuil. Though not residing in 
 the country, he had sent one or two books to France, which had 
 been published and had created a great sensation. Well, sir, 
 my mistress was the greatest intriguante of her party : she was 
 very rich, and tolerably liberal ; and, among other packets of 
 which a messenger from England was carefully robbed, between 
 Calais and Abbeville (you understand me, sir, carefully robbed: 
 parbleu ! I wish I were robbed in the same manner every day 
 in my life !) was one from the said Julian Montreuil to a politi- 
 cal friend of his. Among other letters in this packet all of 
 importance was one descriptive of the English family with 
 whom he resided. It hit them all, I am told, off to a hair ; 
 and it described, in particular, one, the supposed inheritor of 
 the estates, a certain Morton, Count Devereux. Since you say 
 you did not read the letter, I spare your blushes, sir, and I 
 don't dwell upon what he said of your talent, energy, ambition, 
 etc. I will only tell you that he dilated far more upon your 
 prospects than your powers ; and that he expressly stated what 
 was his object in staying in your family and cultivating your 
 friendship he expressly stated that ^30,000 a year would be 
 particularly serviceable to a certain political cause which he had 
 strongly at heart." 
 
 " I understand you," said I ; "the Chevalier's ?" 
 
 " Exactly. ' This sponge,' said Montreuil, I remember the 
 yery phrase ' this sponge will be well filled, and I am handling 
 it softly now, in order to squeeze its juices hereafter according 
 to the uses of the party we have so strongly at heart." " 
 
 " It was not a metaphor very flattering to my understanding," 
 said I. 
 
 '* True, sir. Well, as soon as my mistress learnt this, she re- 
 membered that your father, the Marshal, had been one of her 
 plus chers amis in a word, if scandal says true, he had been 
 the cher ami. However, she was instantly resolved to open your 
 eyes, and ruin the maudit ftfsui/e : she enclosed the letter in 
 an envelope, and sent me to England with it. I came I gave 
 it you and I discovered, in that moment, when the Abbe" en-
 
 DEVEREUX. 197 
 
 tered, that this Julian Montreuil was an old acquaintance of 
 my own was one of the two young men who I told you were 
 such deuced clever fellows. Like many other adventurers, he 
 had changed his name on entering the world, and I had never 
 till now suspected that Julian Montreuil was Bertrand Collinot. 
 Well, when I saw what I had done, I was exceedingly sorry, for 
 I had liked my companion well enough not to wish to hurt him; 
 besides, I was a little afraid of him. I took horse, and went 
 about some other business I had to execute, nor did I visit that 
 part of the country again, till a week ago (now I come to the 
 other business), when I was summoned to the death-bed of my 
 half-brother, the attorney, peace be with him ! He suffered 
 much from hypochondria in his dying moments I believe it 
 is the way with people of his profession and he gave me a 
 sealed packet, with a last injunction to place it in your hands, 
 and your hands only. Scarce was he dead (do not think I 
 am unfeeling, sir, I had seen very little of him, and he was 
 only my half-brother, my father having married for a second 
 wife a foreign lady, who kept an inn, by whom he was blessed 
 with myself) scarce, I say, was he dead when I hurried up to 
 town ; Providence threw you in my way, and you shall have 
 the document upon two conditions." 
 
 " Which are, first to reward you ; secondly, to " 
 
 " To promise you will not open the packet for seven days." 
 
 " The devil ! and why ? " 
 
 "I will tell you candidly : one of the papers in the .packet 
 I believe to be my brother's written confession nay, I know 
 it is and it will criminate one I have a love for, and who, I 
 am resolved, shall have a chance of escape." 
 
 " Who is that one? Montreuil?" 
 
 " No I do not refer to him ; but I cannot tell you more. I 
 require the promise, Count it is indispensable. If you don't 
 give it me, parbleu, you shall not have the packet." 
 
 There was something so cool, so confident, and so impudent 
 about this man that I did not well know whether to give way 
 to laughter or to indignation. Neither, however, would have 
 been politic in my situation ; and, as I said before, the estates 
 of Devereux were not to be risked for a trifle. 
 
 " Pray," said I, however, Avith a shrewdness which I think 
 did me credit " pray, Mr. Marie Oswald, do you expect the 
 reward before the packet is opened ? " 
 
 "By no means," answered the gentleman who in his own 
 opinion was nothing particular; "by no means; nor until you 
 and your lawyers are satisfied that the papers enclosed in the
 
 198 DEVEREUX. 
 
 packet are sufficient fully to restore you to the heritage of 
 Devereux Court and its demesnes." 
 
 There was something fair in this ; and as the only penalty to 
 me, incurred by the stipulated condition, seemed to be the 
 granting escape to the criminals, I did not think it incumbent 
 upon me to lose my cause from the desire of a prosecution. 
 Besides, at that time, I felt too happy to be revengeful ; and 
 so, after a moment's consideration. I acceded to the proposal, 
 and gave my honor as a gentleman, Mr. Oswald obligingly dis- 
 pensed with an oath that I would not open the packet till the 
 end of the seventh day. Mr. Oswald then drew forth a piece 
 of paper, on which sundry characters were inscribed, the pur- 
 port of which was that if, through the papers given me by 
 Marie Oswald, my lawyers were convinced that I could become 
 master of my uncle's property, now enjoyed by Gerald 
 Devereux, I should bestow on the said Marie ^5000 : half on 
 obtaining this legal opinion, half on obtaining possession of the 
 property. I could not resist a smile, when I observed that 
 the word of a gentleman was enough surety for the safety of 
 the man he had a love for, but that Mr. Oswald required a 
 written bond for the safety of his reward. One is ready enough 
 to trust one's friends to the conscience of another, but as long 
 as a law can be had instead, one is rarely so credulous in 
 respect to one's money. 
 
 " The reward shall be doubled if I succeed," said I, signing 
 the paper ; and Oswald then produced a packet, on which was 
 writ, in a trembling hand " For Count Devereux private 
 and with haste." As soon as he had given me this precious 
 charge, and reminded me again of my promise, Oswald with- 
 drew. I placed the packet in my bosom, and returned to my 
 guests. 
 
 Never had my spirit been so light as it was that evening. 
 Indeed the good people I had assembled thought matrimony 
 never made a man so little serious before. They did not how- 
 ever stay long, and the moment they were gone, I hastened to 
 my own sleeping apartment, to secure the treasure I had 
 acquired. A small escritoire stood in this room, and in it I 
 was accustomed to keep whatever I considered most precious. 
 With many a wistful look and murmur at my promise, I con- 
 signed the packet to one of the drawers of this escritoire. As 
 I was locking the drawer, the sweet voice of Desmarais accosted 
 me. Would, Monsieur, he asked, suffer him to visit a friend 
 that evening in order to celebrate so joyful an event in 
 Monsieur's destiny? It was not often that he was addicted to
 
 DEVEREUX. 199 
 
 vitigar merriment, but on such an occasion he owned that he 
 was tempted to transgress his customary habits, and he felt 
 that Monsieur, with his usual good taste, would feel offended 
 if his servant, within Monsieur's own house, suffered joy to 
 pass the limits of discretion, and enter the confines of noise and 
 inebriety, especially as Monsieur had so positively interdicted 
 all outward sign of extra hilarity. He implored mille pardons 
 for the presumption of his request. 
 
 " It is made with your usual discretion there are five guineas 
 for you : go and get drunk with your friend, and be merry 
 instead of wise. But, tell me, is it not beneath a philosopher 
 to be moved by anything, especially anything that Occurs to 
 another much less to get drunk upon it ?" 
 
 " Pardon me, Monsieur," answered Desmarais, bowing to the 
 ground ; " one ought to get drunk sometimes, because the next 
 morning one is sure to be thoughtful ; and, moreover, the 
 practical philosopher ought to indulge every emotion in order 
 to judge how that emotion would affect another; at least, this 
 is my opinion." 
 
 " Well, go." 
 
 " My most grateful thanks be with Monsieur ; Monsieur's 
 nightly toilet is entirely prepared." 
 
 And away went Desmarais, with- the light, yet slow, step with 
 which he was accustomed to combine elegance with dignity. 
 
 I now passed into the room I had prepared for Isora's 
 boudoir. I found her leaning by the window, and I perceived 
 that she had been in tears. As I paused to contemplate her 
 figure, so touchingly, yet so unconsciously mournful in its 
 beautiful and still posture, a more joyous sensation than was 
 wont to mingle with my tenderness for her swelled at my heart. 
 " Yes," thought I, " you are no longer the solitary exile, or the 
 persecuted daughter of a noble but ruined race ; you are not 
 even the bride of a man who must seek in foreign climes, 
 through danger and through hardship, to repair a broken for- 
 tune and establish an adventurer's name ! At last the clouds 
 have rolled from the bright star of your fate wealth, and 
 pomp, and all that awaits the haughtiest of England's matrons 
 shall be yours." And at these thoughts, Fortune seemed to be 
 a gift a thousand times more precious than much as my 
 luxuries prized it it had ever seemed to me before. 
 
 I drew near and laid my hand upon Jsora's shoulder and 
 kissed her cheek. She did not turn round, but strove, by 
 bending over my hand and pressing it to her lips, to conceal 
 that she had been weeping. I thought it kinder to favor the
 
 sco OEVEREUX. 
 
 artifice than to complain of it. I remained silent for some 
 moments, and I then gave vent to the sanguine expectations 
 for the future which my new treasure entitled me to form. I 
 had already narrated to her the adventure of the day before I 
 now repeated the purport of my last interview with Oswald ; 
 and, growing more and more elated as I proceeded, I dwelt at 
 last upon the description of my inheritance, as glowingly as if 
 I had already recovered it. I painted to her imagination its 
 rich woods and its glassy lake, and the fitful and wandering 
 brook that, through brake and shade, went bounding on its wild 
 way ; I told her of my early roamings, and dilated with a boy's 
 rapture upon my favorite haunts. I brought visibly before her 
 glistening and eager eyes the thick copse where, hour after 
 hour, in vague verse and still vaguer dreams, I had so often 
 whiled away the day ; the old tree which I had climbed to watch 
 the birds in their glad mirth, or to listen unseen to the melancholy 
 sound of the forest deer ; the antique gallery and the vast hall 
 which, by the dim twilights, I had paced with a religious awe, 
 and looked upon the pictured forms of my bold fathers, and 
 mused high and ardently upon my destiny to be ; the old gray 
 tower which I had consecrated to myself, and the unwitnessed 
 path which led to the yellow beach, and the wide gladness of 
 the solitary sea ; the little arbor which my earliest ambition 
 had reared, that looked out upon the joyous flowers and the 
 merry fountain, and, through the ivy and the jessamine, wooed 
 the voice of the bird, and the murmur of the summer bee ; and, 
 when I had exhausted my description, I turned to Isora, and 
 said in a lower tone, " And I shall visit these once more, and 
 with you." 
 
 Isora sighed faintly, and it was not till I had pressed her to 
 speak that she said : 
 
 " I wish I could deceive myself, Morton, but I cannot I 
 cannot root from my heart an impression that I shall never 
 again quit this dull city, with its gloomy walls and its heavy air. 
 A voice within me seems to say ' Behold from this very win- 
 dow the boundaries of your living wanderings ! ' ' 
 
 Isora's words froze all my previous exaltation. " It is in 
 vain," said I, after chiding her for her despondency, " it is in 
 vain to tell me that you have for this gloomy notion no other 
 reason than that of a vague presentiment. It is time now that 
 I should press you to a greater confidence upon all points con- 
 sistent with your oath to our mutual enemy than you have 
 hitherto given me. Speak, dearest, have you not some yet un- 
 Tevealed causes for alarm ? "
 
 DEVEREUX. 201 
 
 Jt was but for a moment that Isora hesitated before she 
 answered with that quick tone which indicates that we force 
 words against the will. 
 
 " Yes, Morton, I will tell you now, though I would not before 
 the event of this day. On the last day that I saw that fearful 
 man, he said, ' I warn you, Isora D'Alvarez, that my love is 
 far fiercer than hatred ; I warn you that your bridals with 
 Morton Devereux shall be stained with blood. Become his 
 wife, and you perish ! Yes, though I suffer hell's tortures for- 
 ever and forever from that hour, my own hand shall strike you 
 to the heart !' Morton, these words have thrilled through me 
 again and again, as if again they were breathed in my very ear; 
 and I have often started at night and thought the very knife 
 glittered at my breast. So long as our wedding was concealed, 
 and concealed so closely, I was enabled to quiet my fears till 
 they scarcely seemed to exist. But when our nuptials were to 
 be made public, when I knew that they were to reach the ears 
 of that fierce and unaccountable being, I thought I heard my 
 doom pronounced. This, mine own love, must excuse your 
 Isora, if she seemed ungrateful for your generous eagerness to 
 announce our union. And perhaps she would not have ac- 
 ceded to it so easily as she has done were it not that, in the 
 first place, she felt it was beneath your wife to suffer any 
 terror so purely selfish to make her shrink from the proud 
 happiness of being yours in the light of day ; and if she had 
 not felt (here Isora hid her blushing face in my bosom) that 
 she was fated to give birth to another, and that the announce- 
 ment of our wedded love had become necessary to your honor 
 as to mine !" 
 
 Though I was in reality awed even to terror by learning 
 from Isora's lip so just a cause for her forebodings though I 
 shuddered with a horror surpassing even my wrath, when I 
 heard a threat so breathing of deadly and determined passions 
 yet I concealed my emotions, and only thought of cheering 
 and comforting Isora. I represented to her how guarded and 
 vigilant should ever henceforth be the protection of her hus- 
 band ; that nothing should again separate him from her side ; 
 that the extreme malice and fierce persecution of this man 
 were sufficient even to absolve her conscience from the oath of 
 concealment she had taken ; that I would procure from the 
 sacred head of our church her own absolution from that vow; 
 that the moment concealment was over, I could take steps to 
 prevent the execution of my rival's threats ; that, however near 
 to me he might be in blood, no consequences arising from a
 
 202 DEVEREUX. 
 
 dispute between us could be so dreadful as the least evil to 
 Isora ; and, moreover, to appease her fears, that I would sol- 
 emnly promise he should never sustain personal assault or 
 harm from my hand ; in short, I said all that my anxiety could 
 dictate, and at last I succeeded in quieting her fears, and she 
 smiled as brightly as the first time 1 had seen her in the little 
 cottage of her father. She seemed, however, averse to an 
 absolution from her oath, for she was especially scrupulous as 
 to the sanctity of those religious obligations; but I secretly 
 resolved that her safety absolutely required it, and that at all 
 events I would procure absolution from my own promise to her. 
 
 At last Isora, turning from that topic, so darkly interesting, 
 pointed to the heavens, which, with their thousand eyes of 
 light, looked down upon us. " Tell me, love," said she play- 
 fully, as her arm embraced me yet more closely, " if, among 
 yonder stars we could chose a home, which should we select ?" 
 
 I pointed to one which lay to the left of the moon, and which, 
 though not larger, seemed to burn with an intenser lustre than 
 the rest. Since that night it has ever been to me a fountain of 
 deep and passionate thought, a well wherein fears and hopes 
 are buried, a mirror in which, in stormy times, I have fancied 
 to read my destiny, and to find some mysterious omen of my 
 intended deeds, a haven which I believe others have reached 
 before me, and a home immortal and unchanging, where, when 
 my wearied and fettered soul is escaped, as a bird, it shall flee 
 away, and have its rest at last. 
 
 "What think you of my choice ?" said I. Isora looked up- 
 ward, but did not answer ; and as I gazed upon her (while the 
 pale light of heaven streamed quietly upon her face) with her 
 dark eyes, where the tear yet lingered, though rather to soften 
 than to dim, with her noble, yet tender features, over which 
 hung a melancholy calm, with her lips apart, and her rich locks 
 wreathing over her marble brow, and contrasted by a single 
 white rose (that rose I have now I would not lose one with- 
 ered leaf of it for a kingdom !) her beauty never seemed to 
 me of so rare an order, nor did my soul ever yearn towards her 
 with so deep a love. 
 
 It was past midnight. All was hushed in our bridal chamber. 
 The single lamp, which hung above, burnt still and clear ; and 
 through the half-closed curtains of the window the moonlight 
 looked in upon our couch, quiet, and pure, and holy, as if it 
 were charged with blessings. 
 
 "Hush!" said Isora gently; "do you not hear a noise 
 below ! "
 
 DEVEREUX. 203 
 
 "Not a breath," said I ; "I hear not a breath, save yours." 
 
 " It was my fancy, then ! " said Isora, " and it has ceased 
 now"; and she clung closer to my breast and fell asleep. I 
 looked on her peaceful and childish countenance, with that 
 concentrated and full delight with which we clasp all that the 
 universe holds dear to us, and feel as if the universe held 
 nought beside and thus sleep also crept upon me. 
 
 I awoke suddenly ; I felt Isora trembling palpably by my 
 side. Before I could speak to her, I saw standing at a liltle 
 distance from the bed, a man wrapt in a long dark cloak and 
 masked ; but his eyes shown through the mask, and they glared 
 full upon me. He stood with his arms folded, and perfectly 
 motionless ; but at the other end of the room, before the escri- 
 toire in which I had locked the important packet, stood an- 
 other man, also masked, and wrapped in a disguising cloak of 
 similar hue and fashion. This man, as if alarmed, turned 
 suddenly, and I perceived then that the escritoire was already 
 opened, and that the packet was in his hand. I tore myself 
 from Isora's clasp I stretched my hand to the table by my 
 bedside, upon which I had left my sword, it was gone ! No 
 matter ! I was young, strong, fierce, and the stake at hazard 
 was great. I sprung from the bed, I precipitated myself upon 
 the man who held the packet. With one hand I grasped at the 
 important document, with the other I strove to tear the mask 
 from the robber's face. He endeavored rather to shake me off 
 than to attack me ; and it was not till I had nearly succeeded 
 in unmasking him that he drew forth a short poniard, and 
 stabbed me in the side. The blow, which seemed purposely 
 aimed to avoid a mortal part, staggered me, but only for an 
 instant. I renewed my gripe at the packet I tore it from the 
 robber's hand, and collecting my strength, now fast ebbing 
 away, for one effort, I bore my assailant to the ground, and fell 
 struggling with him. 
 
 But my blood flowed fast from my wound, and my antagonist, 
 if less sinewy than myself, had greatly the advantage in weight 
 and size. Now for one moment I was uppermost, but in the 
 next his knee was upon my chest, and his blade gleamed on 
 high in the pale light of the lamp and moon. I thought I be- 
 held my death would to God that I had ! With a piercing 
 cry, Isora sprang from the bed, flung herself before the lifted 
 blade of the robber, and arrested his arm. This man had, in 
 the whole contest, acted with a singular forbearance, he did so 
 now ; he paused for a moment and dropped his hand. Hither- 
 to the other man had not stirred from his mute position ; he
 
 2O4 DEVEREUX. 
 
 now moved one step towards us, brandishing a poniard like his 
 comrade's. Isora raised her hand supplicatingly towards him, 
 and cried out, " Spare him, spare him! Oh, mercy, mercy ! ' 
 With one stride the murderer was by my side ; he muttered some 
 words which passion seemed to render inarticulate ; and, half 
 pushing aside his comrade, his raised weapon flashed before 
 my eyes, now dim and reeling. I made a vain effort to rise 
 the blade descended Isora, unable to arrest it, threw herself 
 before it her blood, her heart's blood gushed over me I saw 
 and felt no more. 
 
 When I recovered my senses, my servants were round me; 
 a deep red, wet stain upon the sofa on which I was laid brought 
 the whole scene I had witnessed again before me terrible and 
 distinct. I sprang to my feet and asked for Isora; a low mur- 
 mur caught my ear I turned, and beheld a dark form stretched 
 on the bed, and surrounded, like myself, by gazers and menials ; 
 I tottered towards that bed my bridal bed with a fierce 
 gesture motioned the crowd away I heard my name breathed 
 audibly the next moment I was by Isora's side. All pain, all 
 weakness, all consciousness of my wound, of my very self, 
 were gone life seemed curdled into a single agonizing and 
 fearful thought. I fixed my eye upon hers ; and though there 
 the film was gathering dark and rapidly, I saw yet visible and 
 tmconquered the deep love of that faithful and warm heart 
 which had lavished its life for mine. 
 
 I threw my arms around her I pressed my lips wildly to 
 hers. " Speak speak ! " I cried, and my blood gushed over 
 her with the effort ; " in mercy speak ? " 
 
 Even in death and agony, the gentle being who had been as 
 wax unto my lightest wish struggled to obey me. " Do not 
 grieve for me," she said, in a tremulous and broken voice ; " it 
 is dearer to die for you than to live ! " 
 
 Those were her last words. I felt her breath abruptly cease. 
 The heart, pressed to mine, was still ! I started up in dismay 
 the light shone full upon her face. O God ! that I should live 
 to write that Isora was no more !
 
 DEVEREUX 20iJ 
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A Re-entrance into Life through the Ebon Gate. Affliction. 
 
 MONTHS passed away before my senses returned to me. I 
 rose from the bed of suffering and of madness, calm, collected, 
 immovable altered, but tranquil. All the vigilance of jus- 
 tice had been employed to discover the murderers, but in vain. 
 The packet was gone ; and directly I, who alone was able to 
 do so, recovered enough to state the loss of that document, 
 suspicion naturally rested on Gerald, as on one whom that loss 
 essentially benefited. He came publicly forward to anticipate 
 inquiry. He proved that he had not stirred from home during 
 the whole week in which the event had occurred. That seemed 
 likely enough to others; it is the tools that work, not the insti- 
 gator the bravo, not the employer ; but I, who saw in him 
 not only the robber, but that fearful rival who had long 
 threatened Isora that my bridals should be stained with blood, 
 was somewhat staggered by the undeniable proofs of his absence 
 from the scene of that night ; and I was still more bewildered 
 in conjecture by remembering that, so far as their disguises 
 and my own hurried and confused observation could allow me 
 to judge, the person of neither villain, still less that of Isora's 
 murderer, corresponded with the proportions and height of 
 Gerald. Still, however, whether mediately or immediately 
 whether as the executor or the designer not a doubt remained 
 on my mind that against his head was justice due. I directed 
 inquiry towards Montreuil he was abroad at the time of my 
 recovery ; but, immediately on his return, he came forward 
 boldly and at once to meet and even to court the inquiry I had 
 instituted ; he did more he demanded on what ground, 
 besides my own word, it rested that this packet had ever been 
 in my possession ; and to my surprise and perplexity, it was 
 utterly impossible to produce the smallest trace of Mr. Marie 
 Oswald. His half-brother, the attorney, had died, it is true, 
 just before the event of that night ; and it was also true that he 
 had seen Marie on his death-bed ; but no other corroboration 
 of my story could be substantiated, and no other information 
 of the man obtained ; and the partisans of Gerald were not
 
 206 DEVEREUX. 
 
 slow in hinting at the great interest I had in forging a tale res- 
 pecting a will, about the authenticity of which I was at law. 
 
 The robbers had entered the house by a back-door, which 
 was found open. No one had perceived their entrance or exit, 
 except Desmarais, who stated that he heard a cry that he, 
 having spent the greater part of the night abroad, had not been 
 in bed above an hour before he heard it that he rose and 
 hurried towards my room, whence the cry came that he met 
 two men masked on the stairs that he seized one, who struck 
 him in the breast with a poniard, dashed him to the ground, 
 and escaped that he then immediately alarmed the house, and, 
 the servants accompanying him, he proceeded, despite his 
 wound, to my apartment, where he found Isora and myself 
 bleeding and lifeless, with the escritoire broken open. 
 
 The only contradiction to this tale was, that the officers of 
 justice found the escritoire not broken open, but unlocked ; 
 and yet the key which belonged to it was found in a pocket- 
 book in my clothes, where Desmarais said, rightly, I always 
 kept it. How, then, had the escritoire been unlocked? it was 
 supposed by the master-keys peculiar to experienced burglars ; 
 this diverted suspicion into a new channel, and it was suggested 
 that the robbery and the murder had really been committed by 
 common house-breakers. It was then discovered that a large 
 purse of gold, and a diamond cross, which the escritoire con- 
 tained, were gone. And a few articles of ornamental bijouterie, 
 which I had retained from the wreck of my former profusion 
 in such baubles, and which were kept in a room below stairs, 
 were also missing. These circumstances immediately con- 
 firmed the opinion of those who threw the guilt upon vulgar 
 and mercenary villains, and a very probable and plausible 
 supposition was built on this hypothesis. Might not this 
 Oswald, at best an adventurer with an indifferent reputa- 
 tion, have forged this story of the packet in order to ob- 
 tain admission into the house, and reconnoitre, during the 
 confusion of a wedding, in what places the most portable 
 articles of value were stowed ? a thousand opportunities, in 
 the opening and shutting of the house-doors, would have 
 allowed an ingenious villain to glide in ; nay, he might have 
 secreted himself in my own room, and seen the place where I 
 had put the packet certain would he then be that I had 
 selected for the repository of a document I believed so impor- 
 tant, that place where all that I most valued was secured ; and 
 hence he would naturally resolve to break open the escritoire, 
 above all other places, which, to an uninformed robber, might
 
 MVEkEUX. 20? 
 
 have seemed not only less exposed to danger, but equally likely 
 to contain articles of value. The same confusion which 
 enabled him to enter and conceal himself would have also 
 enabled him to withdraw and introduce his accomplice. This 
 notion was rendered probable by his insisting so strongly on 
 my not opening the packet within a certain time ; had I opened 
 it immediately, I might have perceived that a deceit had been 
 practised, and not have hoarded it in that place of security 
 which it was the villain's object to discover. Hence, too, in 
 opening the escritoire, he would naturally retake the packet 
 (which other plunderers might not have cared to steal), as well 
 as things of more real price naturally retake it, in order that 
 his previous imposition might not be detected, and that sus- 
 picion might be cast upon those who would appear to have an 
 interest in stealing a packet which I believed to be so inestimably 
 important. 
 
 What gave a still greater color to this supposition was the 
 fact that none of the servants had seen Oswald leave the house, 
 though many had seen him enter. And what put his guilt beyond 
 a doubt in the opinion of many, was his sudden and mysterious 
 disappearance. To my mind, all those circumstances were not 
 conclusive. Both the men seemed taller than Oswald ; and I 
 knew that that confusion, which was so much insisted upon, had 
 not thanks to my singular fastidiousness in those matters 
 existed. I was also perfectly convinced that Oswald could not 
 have been hid in my room while I locked up the packet ; and 
 there was something in the behavior of the murderer utterly 
 unlike that of a common robber, actuated by common motives. 
 
 All these opposing arguments were, however, of a nature to 
 be deemed nugatory by the world, and on the only one of any 
 importance, in their estimation, viz., the height of Oswald being 
 different from that of the robbers, it was certainly very probable 
 that, in a scene so dreadful, so brief, so confused, I should 
 easily be mistaken. Having therefore once flowed into this 
 direction, public opinion soon settled into the full conviction 
 that Oswald was the real criminal, and against Oswald was the 
 whole strength of inquiry ultimately, but still vainly, bent. 
 Some few, it is true, of that kind class who love family mys- 
 teries, and will not easily forego the notion of a brother's guilt, 
 for that of a mere vulgar house-breaker t still shook their heads, 
 and talked of Gerald ; but the suspicion was vague and partial, 
 and it was only in the close gossip of private circles that it 
 was audibly vented. 
 
 I had formed an opinion by no means favorable to the inno-
 
 208 DEVEREUX. 
 
 cence of Mr. Jean Desmarais ; and I took especial care that 
 the Necessitarian, who would only have thought robbery and 
 murder pieces of ill-luck, should undergo a most rigorous ex- 
 amination. I remembered that he had seen me put the packet 
 into the escritoire ; and this circumstance was alone sufficient 
 to arouse my suspicion. Desmarais bared his breast gracefully 
 to the magistrate. "Would a man, sir," he said, "a man of my 
 youth, suffer such a scar as that, if he could help it ? " The 
 magistrate laughed : frivolity is often a rogue's best policy, if 
 he did but know it. One finds it very difficult to think a cox- 
 comb can commit robbery and murder. Howbeit Desmarais 
 came off triumphantly : and, immediately after this examina- 
 tion, which had been his second one, and instigated solely at 
 my desire, he came to me with a blush of virtuous indignation 
 on his thin cheeks. " He did not presume," he said, with a 
 bow profounder than ever, " to find fault with Monsieur le 
 Comte ; it was his fate to be the victim of ungrateful suspicion ; 
 but philosophical truths could not always conquer the feelings 
 of the man, and he came to request his dismissal." I gave it 
 him with pleasure. 
 
 I must now state my own feelings on the matter : but I shall 
 do so briefly. In my own mind, I repeat, I was fully impressed 
 with the conviction that Gerald was the real, and the head 
 criminal ; and thrice did I resolve to repair to Devereux 
 Court, where he still resided, to lie in wait for him, to reproach 
 him with his guilt, and at the sword's point in deadly combat 
 to seek its earthly expiation. I spare the reader a narration of 
 the terrible struggles which nature, conscience, all scruples 
 and prepossessions of education and of blood, held with this 
 resolution, the unholiness of which I endeavored to clothe with 
 the name of justice to Isora. Suffice it to say that this resolu- 
 tion I forewent at last : and I did so more from a feeling that, 
 despite my own conviction of Gerald's guilt, one rational doubt 
 rested upon the circumstance that the murderer seemed to my 
 eyes of an inferior height to Gerald, and that the person whom 
 I had pursued on the night I had received that wound which 
 brought Isora to my bed-side, and who, it was natural to be- 
 lieve, was my rival, appeared to me not only also slighter and 
 shorter than Gerald, but of a size that.seemed to tally with the 
 murderer's. 
 
 This solitary circumstance, which contradicted my other 
 impressions, was, I say, more effectual in making me dismiss 
 the thought of personal revenge on Gerald, than the motives 
 which virtue and religion should have dictated. The deep
 
 200 
 
 desire of vengeance is the calmest of all the passions, and it is 
 the one which most demands certainty to the reason, before it 
 releases its emotions, and obeys their dictates. The blow which 
 was to do justice to Isora, I had resolved should not be dealt, 
 till I had obtained the most utter certainty that it fell upon the 
 true criminal. And thus, though I cherished through all time, 
 and through all change, the burning wish for retribution, I was 
 doomed to cherish it in secret, and not for years and years to 
 behold a hope of attaining it. Once only I vented my feelings 
 upon Gerald. I could not rest, or sleep, or execute the world's 
 objects, till I had done so; but when they were thus once 
 vented methought I could wait the will of time with a more 
 settled patience, and I re-entered upon the common career of 
 life more externally fitted to fulfil its duties and its aims. 
 
 That single indulgence of emotion followed immediately 
 after my resolution of not forcing Gerald into bodily contest. 
 I left my sword, lest I might be tempted to forget my deter- 
 mination. I rode to Devereux Court I entered Gerald's cham- 
 ber, while my horse stood unstalled at the gate. I said but few 
 words, but each word was a volume. I told him to enjoy the 
 fortune he had acquired by fraud, and the conscience he had 
 stained with murder. " Enjoy them while you may," I said, 
 " but know that sooner or later shall come a day, when the blood 
 that cries from earth shall be heard in Heaven and your blood 
 shall appease it. Know, if I seem to disobey the voice at my 
 heart, I hear it night and day and I only live to fulfil at one 
 time its commands." 
 
 I left him stunned and horror-stricken. I flung myself on 
 my horse, and cast not a look behind as I rode from the towers 
 and domains of which I had been despoiled. Never from that 
 time would I trust myself to meet or see the despoiler. Once, 
 directly after I had thus braved him in his usurped hall, he 
 wrote to me. I returned the letter unopened. Enough of this ; 
 the reader will now perceive what was the real nature of my 
 feelings of revenge ; and will appreciate the reasons which, 
 throughout this history, will cause me never or rarely to recur 
 to those feelings again, until at least he will perceive a just hope 
 of their consummation. 
 
 I went with a quiet air and a set brow into the world. It 
 was a time of great political excitement. Though my creed 
 forbade me the open senate, it could not deprive me of the 
 veiled intrigue. St. John found ample employment for my 
 ambition, and I entered into the toils and objects of my race 
 with a seeming avidity, more eager and engrossing than their
 
 2io DEVEREUX. 
 
 own. In what ensues, you will perceive a great change in the 
 character of my memoirs. Hitherto, I chiefly portrayed to you 
 myself. I bared open to you my heart and temper my pas- 
 sions, and the thoughts which belong to our passions. I shall 
 now rather bring before you the natures and the minds of others. 
 The lover and the dreamer are no more ! The satirist and the 
 observer the derider of human follies, participating while he 
 derides the worldly and keen actor in the human drama, 
 these are what the district of my history on which you enter 
 will portray me. From whatever pangs to me the change may 
 have been wrought, you will be the gainer by that change. The 
 gaudy dissipation of courts ; the vicissitudes and the vanities 
 of those who haunt them ; the glittering jest, and the light 
 strain ; the passing irony, or the close reflection ; the charac- 
 ters of the great ; the colloquies of wit ; these are what delight 
 the temper and amuse the leisure more than the solemn narra- 
 tive of fated love. As the monster of the Nile is found beneath 
 the sunniest banks, and in the most freshening wave, the stream 
 may seem to wander on in melody and mirth the ripple and 
 the beam ; but who shall tell what lurks, dark, and fearful, and 
 ever vigilant, below ! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ambitious Projects. 
 
 IT is not my intention to write a political history, instead of 
 a private biography. No doubt, in the next century, there will 
 be volumes enough written in celebration of that era which my 
 contemporaries are pleased to term the greatest that in modern 
 times has ever existed. Besides, in the private and more concealed 
 intrigues with which I was engaged with St. John, there was 
 something which regard for others would compel me to preserve 
 in silence. I shall therefore briefly state that, in 1712, St. John 
 dignified the peerage by that title which his exile and his genius 
 have rendered so illustrious. 
 
 I was with him on the day this honor was publicly announced. 
 I found him walking to and fro in his room, with his arms folded, 
 and with a very peculiar compression of his nether lip, which 
 was a custom he had when anything greatly irritated or dis- 
 turbed him. 
 
 "Well," said he, stopping abruptly as he saw me, "well, con- 
 sidering the peacock Harley brought so. bright a plume to his
 
 DEVEREUX. 2lt 
 
 own nest, we must admire the generosity which spared this gay 
 dunghill feather to mine!" 
 
 " How ! " said I, though I knew the cause of his angry meta- 
 phor. St. John used metaphors in speech scarcely less than 
 in writing. 
 
 " How ! " cried the new peer, eagerly, and with one of those 
 flashing looks which made his expression of indignation the most 
 powerful I ever saw. " How ! Was the sacred promise granted 
 to me of my own collateral earldom, to be violated ; and while 
 the weight the toil the difficulty the odium, of affairs, from 
 which Harley, the despotic dullard, shrunk alike in imbecility 
 and fear, had been left exclusively to my share, an insult in the 
 shape of an honor, to be left exclusively to my reward ? You 
 know my disposition is not to over-rate the mere baubles of am- 
 bition you know I care little for titles and for orders in them- 
 selves ; but the most worthless thing becomes of consequence, 
 if made a symbol of what is of value, or designed as the token 
 of an affront. Listen : a collateral earldom falls vacant it is 
 partly promised me. Suddenly I am dragged from the House 
 of Commons where I am all powerful ; I am given not this 
 earldom, which, as belonging to my house, would alone have 
 induced me to consent to a removal from a sphere where my 
 enemies allow 1 had greater influence than any single commoner 
 in the kingdom I am given, not this, but a miserable compro- 
 mise of distinction a new and an inferior rank given it against 
 my will thrust into the Upper House, to defend what this 
 pompous driveller, Oxford, is forced to forsake ; and not only 
 exposed to all the obloquy of a most infuriate party, opposed to 
 me, but mortified by an intentional affront from the party 
 which, heart and soul, I have supported. You know that my 
 birth is to the full as noble as Harley's you know that my in- 
 fluence in the Lower House is far greater you know that my 
 name in the country, nay, throughout Europe, is far more pop- 
 ular you know that the labor allotted to me has been far more 
 weighty you know that the late Peace of Utrecht is entirely 
 my framing that the foes to the measure direct all their venom 
 against me that the friends of the measure heap upon me all 
 the honor : when, therefore, this exact time is chosen for break- 
 ing a promise formerly made to me when a pretended honor, 
 known to be most unpalatable to me, is thrust upon me when, 
 at this very time, too, six vacant ribbons of the garter flaunt 
 me one resting on the knee of this Harley, who was able to 
 obtain an earldom for himself the others given to men of far 
 inferior pretensions, though not inferior rank, to my own my-
 
 212 DEVEREIJX, 
 
 self markedly, glaringly passed by, how can I avoid feeling that 
 things, despicable in themselves, are become of a vital power, 
 from the evident intention that they should be insults to me ! 
 the insects we despise as they buzz around us become danger- 
 ous when they settle on ourselves and we feel their sting ! But," 
 added Bolingbroke, suddenly relapsing into a smile, " I have 
 long wanted a nickname, I have now found one for myself. You 
 know Oxford is called 'The Dragon'; well, henceforth call me 
 ' St. George '; for, as sure as I live, will I overthrow the Dragon. 
 I say this in jest, but I mean it in earnest. And now that I have 
 discharged my bile, let us talk of this wonderful poem, which, 
 though I have read it a hundred times, I am never wearied of 
 admiring." 
 
 "Ah the Rape of the Lock ! It is indeed beautiful, but I 
 am not fond of poetry now. By the way, how is it that all our 
 modern poets speak to the taste, the mind, the judgment, and 
 never to \\\z feelings ? Are they right in doing so?" 
 
 " My friend, we are now in a polished age. What have feel- 
 ings to do with civilization ?" 
 
 " Why, more than you will allow. Perhaps the greater our 
 civilization, the more numerous our feelings. Our animal pas- 
 sions lose in excess, but our mental gain ; and it is to the mental 
 that poetry should speak. Our English muse, even in this 
 wonderful poem, seems to me to be growing, like our English 
 beauties, too glitteringly artificial it wears rouge and a hoop." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! yes, they ornament now, rather than create cut 
 drapery, rather than marble. Our poems remind me of the an- 
 cient statues. Phidias made them, and Bubo and Bombax 
 dre~sed them in purple. But this does not apply to young 
 Pope, who has shown in this very poem that he can work the 
 quarry as well as choose the gems. But see, the carriage awaits us. 
 I have worlds to do, first there is Swift to see next, there is 
 some exquisite Burgundy to taste then, too, there is the new 
 actress; and, by the by, you must tell me what you think of Bent- 
 ley's Horace : we will drive first to my bookseller's to see it 
 Swift shall wait Heavens ! how he would rage if he heard 
 me. I was going to say what a pity it is that that man should 
 have so much littleness of vanity ; but I should have uttered a 
 very foolish sentiment if I had ! " 
 
 "And why? " 
 
 "Because, if he had not so much littleness perhaps he would 
 not be so great : what, but vanity, makes a man write and speak 
 and slave, and become famous ? Alas ! " and here St. John's 
 C9untenance changed from gaiety to thought ; " 'tis a melan-
 
 DEVEREUX. 213 
 
 choly thing in human nature that so little is good and noble, 
 Loth in itself and in its source ! Our very worst passions will 
 often produce sublimer effects than our best. Phidias (we will 
 apply to him for another illustration,) made the wonderful statue 
 of Minerva for his country ; but, in order to avenge himself on 
 that country, he eclipsed it in the far more wonderful statue of 
 the Jupiter Olympius. Thus, from a vicious feeling emanated 
 a greater glory than from an exalted principle ; and the artist 
 was less celebrated for the monument of his patriotism than for 
 that of his revenge ! But allons, mon cher, we grow wise and 
 dull. Let us go to choose our Burgundy and our comrades to 
 share it." 
 
 However, with his characteristic affectation of bounding am- 
 bition, and consequently hope, to no one object in particular, 
 and of mingling affairs of light importance with those of the 
 most weighty, Lord Bolingbroke might pretend not to recur to, 
 or to dwell upon, his causes of resentment from that time they 
 never ceased to influence him to a great, and for a statesman an 
 unpardonable, degree. We cannot, however, blame politicians 
 for their hatred, until, without hating anybody, we have for a 
 long time been politicians ourselves ; strong minds have strong 
 passions, and men of strong passions must hate as well as love. 
 
 The two years passed, on my part, in perpetual intrigues of 
 diplomacy, combined with an unceasing, though secret, en- 
 deavour to penetrate the mystery which hung over the events 
 of that dreadful night. All, however, was in vain. I know not 
 what the English police may be hereafter, but in my time its 
 officers seem to be chosen, like honest Dogberry's companions, 
 among "the most senseless and fit men." They are, however, 
 to the full, as much knaves as fools ; and perhaps a wiser pos- 
 terity will scarcely believe that, when things of the greatest value 
 are stolen, the owners, on applying to the chief magistrate, will 
 often be told that no redress can be given there, while one of 
 the officers will engage to get back the goods, upon paying the 
 thieves a certain sum in exchange if this is refused your ef- 
 fects are gone forever ! A pretty state of internal government. 
 
 It was about a year after the murder that my mother informed 
 me of an event which tore from my heart its last private tie, viz., 
 the death of Aubrey. The last letter I had received from him 
 has been placed before the reader ; it was written at Devereux 
 Court, just before he left it forever. Montreuil had been with 
 him during the illness which proved fatal, and which occurred 
 in Ireland. He died of consumption ; and when I heard from 
 my mother that Montreuil dwelt most glowingly upon the de
 
 2i4 DEVEkEtlX. 
 
 votion he had manifested during the last months of his life, I 
 could not help fearing that the morbidity of his superstition had 
 done the work of physical disease. On this fatal news, my 
 mother retired from Devereux Court to a company of ladies of 
 our faith, who resided together, and practised the most ascetic 
 rules of a nunnery, though they gave not to their house that ec- 
 clesiastical name. My mother had long meditated this project, 
 and it was now a melancholy pleasure to put it into execution. 
 From that period I rarely heard from her, and by little and 
 little she so shrunk from all worldly objects that my visits, and 
 I believe even those of Gerald, became unwelcome and dis- 
 tasteful. 
 
 As to my lawsuit, it went on gloriously, according to the as- 
 sertions of my brisk little lawyer, who had declared so emphat- 
 ically that he liked making quick work of a suit. And, at last, 
 what with bribery and feeing, and pushing, a day was fixed for 
 the final adjustment of my claim it came the cause was heard 
 and lost. I should have been ruined, but for one circumstance; 
 the old lady, my father's godmother, who had witnessed my first 
 and concealed marriage, left me a pretty estate near Epsom. I 
 turned it into gold, and it was fortunate that I did so soon, as 
 the reader is about to see. 
 
 The Queen died and a cloud already began to look menac- 
 ing to the eyes of the Viscount Bolingbroke, and therefore to 
 those of the Count Devereux. "We will weather out the 
 shower," said Bolingbroke. 
 
 " Could not you," said I, "make our friend Oxford the Tala- 
 pat ? "* and Bolingbroke laughed. All men find wit in the jests 
 broken on their enemies ! 
 
 One morning, however, I received a laconic note from him, 
 which, notwithstanding its shortness and seeming gayety, I knew 
 well signified that something, not calculated for laughter, had 
 occurred. I went, and found that his new majesty had deprived 
 him of the seals and secured his papers. We looked very blank 
 at each other. At last, Bolingbroke smiled. I must say that, 
 culpable as he was in some points as a politician culpable, not 
 from being ambitious (for I would not give much for the states- 
 man who is otherwise), but from not having inseparably linked 
 his ambition to the welfare of his country, rather than to that 
 of a party for, despite of what has been said of him, his am- 
 bition was never selfish culpable as he was when glory allured
 
 DEVEREUX. 215 
 
 him, he was most admirable when danger assailed him ! * and, 
 by the shade of that Tully whom he so idolized, his philosophy 
 was the most conveniently worn of any person's I ever met. 
 When it would have been in the way at the supper of an act- 
 tress in the levees of a court in the boudoir of a beauty in 
 the arena of a senate in the intrigue of the cabinet, you would 
 not have observed a seam of the good old garment. But di- 
 rectly it was wanted in the hour of pain in the day of peril 
 in the suspense of exile in (worst of al!) the torpor of tran- 
 quility, my extraordinary friend unfolded it piece by piece 
 wrapped himself up in it sat down defied the world, and ut- 
 tered the most beautiful sentiments upon the comfort and lux- 
 ury of his raiment, that can possibly be imagined. It used to 
 remind me, that same philosophy of his, of the enchanted tent 
 in the Arabian Tale, which one moment lay wrapped in a nut- 
 shell, and the next covered an army. 
 
 Bolingbroke smiled, and quoted Cicero, and after an hour's 
 conversation, which on his part was by no means like that of a 
 person whose very head was in no enviable state of safety, he 
 slid at once from a sarcasm upon Sieele into a discussion as to 
 the best measures to be adopted. Let me be brief on this 
 point ! Throughout the whole of that short session, he behaved 
 in a manner more delicately and profoundly wise than, I think, 
 the whole of his previous administration can equal. He sus- 
 tained with the most unflagging, the most unwearied, dexterity, 
 the sinking spirits of his associates. AVithout an act, or the 
 shadow of an act, that could be called time-serving, he laid 
 himself out to conciliate the King, and to propitiate Parliament; 
 with a dignified prudence which, while it seemed above petty 
 
 * I know well that it has been said otherwise, and that Bolingbroke has been accused of 
 timidity for not staying in England, and making Mr. Robert Walpole a present of his head. 
 The elegant author of " De Vere," has fallen into a very great, though a very hackneyed er- 
 ror, in lauding Oxford's political character, and condemning Bolingbroke's, because the for- 
 mer awaited a trial and the latter shunned it. A very little reflection might, perhaps, have 
 taught th accomplished novelist that there could be no comparison between the two cases, 
 because there was no comparison between the relative danger of Oxford and Bolingbroke. 
 Oxford, as their subsequent impeachment proved, was f:ir more numerously and power- 
 fully supported than his illustrious enemy ; and there is really no earthly cause for doubt- 
 ing the truth of Bolingbroke's assertion, viz., that " He had received repeated and certain 
 information that a resolution was taken, by those who had power to execute it, to pursue 
 him to the scaffold." There are certain situations in which a brave and a good man should 
 willingly surrender life ; but I humbly opine that there may sometimes exist a situation in 
 which he should preserve it : and if ever man was placed in that latter situation, it was Lord 
 Bolingbroke. To choose unnecessarily to put one's head under the axe, without benefiting 
 any but one's enemies by the act, is, in my eyes, the proof of a fool, not a hero ; and to at- 
 tack a man for not placing his head in that agreeable and most useful predicament for pre- 
 ferring, in short, to live for a world, rather than to perish by a faction, appears to be a mode 
 of arguing that has a wonderful resemblance to nonsense. When Lord Bolingbroke was im- 
 peached, two men only out of those numerous retainers in the Lower House who had been 
 wont so loudly to applaud the secretary of state, in his prosecution of those very measures 
 for which he was now to be condemned two men only (General Ross and Mr. HungrfordJ 
 uttered a single syllable in defence of the minister disgraced, Ep.
 
 2l6 DEVEREUX. 
 
 pique, was well calculated to remove the appearance of that 
 disaffection with which he was charged, and discriminated 
 justly between the King and the new administration, he lent his 
 talents to the assistance of the monarch, by whom his impeach- 
 ment was already resolved on, and aided in the settlement of 
 the civil list, while he was in full expectation of a criminal 
 accusation. 
 
 The new Parliament met, and all doubt was over. An im- 
 peachment of the late administration was decided upon. I was 
 settling bills with my little lawyer one morning, when Boling- 
 broke entered my room. He took a chair, nodded to me not 
 to dismiss my assistant, joined our conversation, and when con- 
 versation was merged in accounts, he took up a book of songs, 
 and amused himself with it till my business was over and my 
 disciple of Coke retired. He then said, very slowly, and with 
 a slight yawn " You have never been at Paris, I think ? " 
 
 "Never you are enchanted with that gay city." 
 
 "Yes, but when I was last there, the good people flattered 
 my vanity enough to bribe my taste. I shall be able to form a 
 more unbiased and impartial judgment in a few days." 
 
 " A few days ! " 
 
 " Ay, my dear Count : does it startle you ? I wonder whether 
 the pretty Dt Tencin will be as kind to me as she was, and 
 whether tout le monde (that most exquisite phrase for five 
 hundred people,) will rise now at the Opera on my entrance. 
 Do you think that a banished minister can have any, the 
 smallest, resemblance to what he was when in power ? By gum- 
 dragon, as our friend Swift so euphoniously and elegantly 
 says, or swears, by gumdragon, I think not ! What altered 
 Satan so after his fall ? whatgavehim hornsand atail ? nothing 
 but his disgrace. Oh ! years, and disease, plague, pestilence, 
 and famine, never alter a man so much as the loss of power." 
 
 " You say wisely ; but what am I to gather from your words ? 
 is it all over with us in real earnest? " 
 
 "Us ! with me it is indeed all over you may stay here for 
 ever. / must fly a packet boat to Calais, or a room in the 
 Tower 1 must choose between the two. I had some thoughts 
 of remaining, and confronting my trial, but it would be folly 
 there is a difference between Oxford and me. He has friends, 
 though out of power ; I have none. Jf they impeach him 
 he will escape ; if they impeach me, they will either shut me up 
 like a rat in a cage, for twenty years, till, old and forgotten, 
 I tear my heart out with my confinement, or they will bring me 
 at once to the block. NO, no I must keep myself for another
 
 DEVEREUX. 217 
 
 day ; and, while they banish me, I will leave the seeds of the 
 true cause to grow up till my return. Wise and exquisite policy 
 of my foes ' Frustra Cassium amovisti, si gliscere et vigere 
 Brutorum emulos passurus es.' * But I have no time to lose 
 farewell, my friend God bless you you are saved from these 
 storms ; and even intolerance, which prevented the exercise of 
 youj genius, preserves you now from the danger of having 
 applied that genius to the welfare of your country : Heaven 
 knows, whatever my faults, I have sacrificed what I loved 
 better than all things study and pleasure to her cause. In 
 her wars I served even my enemy Marlborough, in order to 
 serve her ; her peace I effected, and I suffer for it. Be it so, 
 I am 
 
 4 Fidens animi atque in utrumque paratus.' f 
 Once more I embrace you farewell." 
 
 " Nay," said I, " listen to me, you shall not go alone. France 
 is already, in reality, my native country ; there did I receive 
 my birth, it is no hardship to return to my natalc solum it is 
 an honor to return in the company of Henry St. John. I will 
 have no refusal ; my law case is over, my papers are few, my 
 money I will manage to transfer. Remember the anecdote you 
 told me, yesterday, of Anaxagoras, who, when asked where his 
 country was, pointed with his finger to heaven. It is applica- 
 ble, I hope, as well to me as to yourself; to me, uncelebrated 
 and obscure, to you, the senator and the statesman." 
 
 In vain Bolingbroke endeavored to dissuade me from this 
 resolution ; he was the only friend fate had left me, and I was 
 resolved that misfortune should not part us. At last he em- 
 braced me tenderly, and consented to what he could not resist. 
 "But you cannot," he said, "quit England to-morrow night, as 
 I must." 
 
 " Pardon me," I answered, " the briefer the preparation, the 
 greater the excitement, and what in life is equal to that? " 
 
 " True," answered Bolingbroke ; " To some natures, too rest- 
 less to be happy, excitement can compensate for all ; compen- 
 sate for years wasted, and hopes scattered compensate for 
 bitter regret at talents perverted and passions unrestrained. 
 But we will talk philosophically when we have more leisure. 
 You will dine with me to-morrow ; we will go to the play 
 together I promised poor Lucy that I would see her at the 
 theater, and I cannot break my word and an hour afterwards 
 
 * Vainly have you banished Cassius, if you shall suffer the rivals of the Brutuses Jo 
 spread themselves and flourish. 
 
 t Confident of soul and prepared for either fortune,
 
 2lS DEVERKUX. 
 
 we will commence our excursion to Paris. And now I will 
 explain to you the plan I have arranged for our escape." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The real Actors Spectators of the false ones. 
 
 IT was a brilliant night at the theatre. The boxes were crowd- 
 ed to excess. Every eye was directed towards Lord Boling- 
 broke, who, with his usual dignified and consummate grace of 
 manner, conversed with the various loiterers with whom, from 
 time to time, his box was filled. 
 
 " Look yonder," said a very young man, of singular personal 
 beauty, "look yonder, my lord, what a panoply of smiles the 
 Duchess wears to-night, and how triumphantly she directs those 
 eyes, which they say were once so beautiful, to your box." 
 
 " Ah," said Bolingbroke, " her grace does me too much honor ; 
 I must not neglect to acknowledge her courtesy "; and, leaning 
 over the box, Bolingbroke watched his opportunity till the 
 Duchess of Marlborough, who sat opposite him, and who was 
 talking with great and evidently joyous vivacity to a tall, thin 
 man beside her, directed her attention, and that of her whole 
 party, in a fixed and concentrated stare, to the imperilled min- 
 ister. With a dignified smile Lord Bolingbroke then put his 
 hand to his heart, and bowed profoundly ; the Duchess looked 
 a little abashed, but returned the courtesy quickly and slightly, 
 and renewed her conversation. 
 
 " Faith, my lord," cried the young gentleman who had before 
 spoken, " you managed that well ! No reproach is like that 
 which we clothe in a smile, and present with a bow." 
 
 " I am happy," said Lord Bolingbroke, "that my conduct re- 
 ceives the grave support of a son of my political opponent." 
 
 " Grave support, my Lord ! you are mistaken never apply 
 the epithet grave to anything belonging to Philip Wharton. 
 But, in sober earnest, I have sat fong enough with you to terrify 
 all my friends, and must now show my worshipful face in another 
 part of the house. Count Devereux, will you come with me 
 to the Duchess's?" 
 
 " What ! the Duchess's immediately after Lord Boling- 
 broke's ! the Whig after the Tory it would be as trying to 
 one's assurance as a change from the cold bath to the hot to 
 one's constitution." 
 
 " Well, and what so delightful as a trial in which one triumphs ?
 
 DEVEREUX. 219 
 
 and a change in which one does not lose even one's counte- 
 nance?" 
 
 "Take care, my lord," said Bolingbroke, laughing; "those 
 are dangerous sentiments for a man like you, to whom the 
 hopes of two great parties are directed, to express so openly, 
 even on a trifle, and in a jest." 
 
 "'Tis for that reason I utter them. I like being the object 
 of hope and fear to men, since my miserable fortune made me 
 marry at fourteen, and cease to be aught but a wedded thing 
 to the women. But, sup with me at the Bedford you, my lord, 
 and the Count." 
 
 " And you will ask Walpole, Addison, and Steele * to join 
 us ; eh ? " said Bolingbroke, " No, we have other engagements 
 for to-night ; but we shall meet again soon." 
 
 And the eccentric youth nodded his adieu, disappeared, and 
 a minute afterwards was seated by the side of the Duchess of 
 Marlborough. 
 
 " There goes a boy," said Bolingbroke, " who, at the age of 
 fifteen, has in him the power to be the greatest man of his day, 
 and in all probability will only be the most singular. An ob- 
 stinate man is sure of doing well ; a wavering or a whimsical one 
 (which is the same thing) is as uncertain, even in his elevation, 
 as a shuttlecock. But look to the box at the right do you see 
 the beautiful Lady Mary?" 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Trefusis, who was with us, "she has only 
 just come to town. 'Tis said she and Ned Montague live like 
 doves." 
 
 " How !" said Lord Bolingbroke ; "that quick, restless eye 
 seems to have very little of the dove in it." 
 
 " But how beautiful she is ! " said Trefusis, admiringly. 
 " What a pity that those exquisite hands should be so dirty ! Jt 
 reminds me" (Trefusis loved a coarse anecdote) "of her answer 
 to old Madame de Noailles, who made exactly the same remark 
 to her. ' Do you call my hands dirty ? ' cried Lady Mary, hold- 
 ing them up with the most innocent naiveti, 'Ah, Madame, si 
 vous pouviez voir mes pieds ! " 
 
 " Fi done!" said I, turning away ; " but who is that very de- 
 formed man behind her, he with the bright black eye ? " 
 
 " Know you not ? " said Bolingbroke ; " Tell it not in Gath ! 
 'tis a rising sun, whom I have already learned to worship 
 the young author of the ' Essay on Criticism,' and the ' Rape of 
 the Lock.' Egad, the little poet seems to eclipse us with the 
 women as much as with the men. Do you mark how eagerly 
 
 * All political opponents of Lord Bolingbroke.
 
 220 DEVEREUX. 
 
 Lady Mary listens to him, even though the tall gentleman in 
 black, who in vain attempts to win her attentions, is thought 
 the handsomest gallant in London? Ah, Genius is paid by 
 smiles from all females but Fortune ; little, methinks, does that 
 young poet, in his first intoxication of flattery and fame, guess 
 what a lot of contest and strife is in store for him. The very 
 breath which a literary man respires is hot with hatred, and the 
 youthful proselyte enters that career which seems to him so 
 glittering, even as Dame Pliant's brother in the Alchemist en- 
 tered town not to be fed with luxury, and diet on pleasure, 
 but ' to learn to quarrel and live by his wits.' " 
 
 The play was now nearly over. With great gravity Lord 
 Bolingbroke summoned one of the principal actors to his box, 
 and bespoke a play for the next week ; leaning then on my arm, 
 he left the theatre. We hastened to his home, put on our dis- 
 guises, and, without any adventure worth recounting, effected 
 our escape, and landed safely at Calais. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Paris. A Female Politician, and an Ecclesiastical One. Sundry other 
 
 Matters. 
 
 THE ex-minister was received both at Calais and at Paris 
 with the most gratifying honors he was then entirely the man 
 to captivate the French. The beauty of his person, the grace 
 of his manner, his consummate taste in all things, the exceed- 
 ing variety and sparkling vivacity of his conversation, enchanted 
 them. In later life he has grown more reserved and profound, 
 even in habitual intercourse, and attention is now fixed to the 
 solidity of the diamond, as at that time one was too dazzled to 
 think of anything but its brilliancy. 
 
 While Bolingbroke was receiving visits of state, I busied 
 myself in inquiring after a certain Madame de Balzac. The 
 reader will remember that the envelope of that letter which 
 Oswald had brought to me .at Devereux Court was signed by 
 the letters C. de B. Now, when Oswald disappeared, after that 
 dreadful night to which even now I can scarcely bring myself 
 to allude, these initials occurred to my remembrance, and 
 Oswald having said they belonged to a lady formerly intimate 
 with my father, I inquired of my mother if she could guess to 
 what French lady such initials would apply. She, with an evident 
 pang of jealousy, mentioned a Madame de Balzac ; and to this
 
 DEVEREUX. 221 
 
 lady I now resolved to address myself, with the faint hope of 
 learning from her some intelligence respecting Oswald. It was 
 not difficult to find out the abode of one who in her day had 
 played no inconsiderable rdle in that Comedy of Errors, the 
 Great World. She was still living at Paris ; what French- 
 woman would, if she could help it, live any where else ? " There 
 are a hundred gates," said the witty Madame de Choisi to me, 
 "which lead into Paris, but only two roads out of it, the 
 convent, or (odious word !) the grave." 
 
 I hastened to Madame Balzac's hotel. I was ushered through 
 three magnificent apartments into one, which to my eyes seemed 
 to contain a throne: upon a nearer inspection I discovered it 
 was a bed. Upon a large chair, by a very bad fire it was in 
 the month of March sat a tall, handsome woman, excessively 
 painted, and dressed in a manner which to my taste, accustomed 
 to English finery, seemed singularly plain. I had sent in the 
 morning to request permission to wait on her, so that she was 
 prepared for my visit. She rose, offered me her cheek, kissed 
 mine, shed several tears, and in short testified a great deal of 
 kindness towards me. Old ladies, who have flirted with our 
 fathers, always seem to claim a sort of property in the sons ! 
 
 Before she resumed her seat she held me out at arm's length. 
 "You have a family likeness to your brave father," said she, 
 with a little disappointment ; "but " 
 
 " Madame de Balzac would add," interrupted I, filling up 
 the sentence which I saw her bienveillance had made her break 
 off, " Madame de Balzac would add that I am not so good-look- 
 ing. It is true ; the likeness is transmitted to me within rather 
 than without ; and if I have not my father's privilege to be 
 admired, I have at least his capacities to admire," and I bowed. 
 
 Madame de Balzac took three large pinches of snuff. "That 
 is very well said," said she gravely : "very well indeed ! not at 
 all like your father, though, who never paid a compliment in 
 his life. Your clothes, by the by, are in exquisite taste : I had 
 no idea that English people had arrived at such perfection in 
 the fine arts. Your face is a little too long ! You admire 
 Racine, of course? How do you like Paris?" 
 
 All this was not said gayly or quickly : Madame de Balzac 
 was by no means a gay or a quick person. She belonged to a 
 peculiar school of Frenchwomen, who affected a little languor, 
 a great deal of stiffness, an indifference to forms when forms 
 were to be used by themselves, and an unrelaxing demand of 
 forms when forms were to be observed to them by others. 
 Added to this, they talked plainly upon all matters, without
 
 222 DEVEREUX. 
 
 everenteringupon sentiment. This was the school she belonged 
 to ; but she possessed the traits of the individual as well as of 
 the species. She was keen, ambitious, worldly, not unaffec' 
 tionate, nor unkind ; veryproud, a little of the devotee because 
 it was the fashion to be so an enthusiastic admirer of military 
 glory, and a most prying, searching, intriguing schemer of 
 politics without the slightest talent for the science. 
 
 "Like Paris! " said I, answering only the last question, and 
 that not with the most scrupulous regard to truth. "Can 
 Madame de Balzac think of Paris, and not conceive the trans- 
 port which must inspire a person entering it for the first time? 
 But I had something more endearing than a stranger's interest 
 to attach me to it ; I longed to express to my father's friend 
 my gratitude for the interest which I venture to believe she on 
 one occasion manifested towards me." 
 
 "Ah ! you mean my caution to you against that terrible De 
 Montreuil. Yes, I trust I was of service to you there" 
 
 And Madame de Balzac then proceeded to favor me with the 
 whole history of the manner in which she had obtained the 
 letter she had sent me, accompanied by a thosand anathemas 
 against those atroces J/suites, and a thousand eulogies on her 
 own genius and virtues. I brought her from this subject, so 
 interesting to herself, as soon as decorum would allow me : 
 and I then made inquiry if she knew aught of Oswald, or could 
 suggest any mode of obtaining intelligence respecting him. 
 Madame de Balzac hated plain, blunt, blank questions, and she 
 always travelled through a wilderness of parentheses, before 
 she answered them. But at last I did ascertain her answer, 
 and found it utterly unsatisfactory. She had never seen nor 
 heard anything of Oswald since he had left her charged with 
 her commission to me. I then questioned her respecting the 
 character of the man, and found Mr. Marie Oswald had little 
 to plume himself upon in that respect. He seemed, however, 
 from her account of him, to be more a rogue than a villain ; 
 and, from two or three stories of his cowardice, which Madame 
 de Balzac related, he appeared to me utterly incapable of a 
 design so daring and systematic as that of which it pleased all 
 persons who troubled themselves about my affairs, to suspect 
 him. 
 
 Finding, at last, that no further information was to be gained 
 on this point, I turned the conversation to Montreuil. I found, 
 from Madame de Balzac's very abuse of him, that he enjoyed a 
 great reputation in the country, and a great favor at court 
 He had been early befriended by Father la Chaise, and he was
 
 DEVEREUX. 223 
 
 now especially trusted and esteemed by the successor of that 
 Jesuit, Le Tellier ; Le Tellier, that rigid and bigoted servant 
 of Loyola the sovereign of the king himself the destroyer of 
 the Port Royal, and the mock and terror of the be-devilled and 
 persecuted Jansenists. Besides this, I learnt what has been 
 before pretty clearly evident viz., that Montreuil was greatly 
 in the confidence of the Chevalier, and that he was supposed 
 already to have rendered essential service to the Stuart cause. 
 His reputation had increased with every year, and was as great 
 for private sanctity as for political talent. 
 
 When this information, given in a very different spirit from 
 that in which I retail it, was over, Madame de Balzac ob- 
 served : " Doubtless you will obtain a private audience with 
 the King?" 
 
 " Is it possible, in his present age and infirmities ?" 
 
 " It ought to be, to the son of the brave Marshal Devereux." 
 
 " I shall be happy to receive Madame's instructions how to 
 obtain the honor : her name would, I feel, be a greater pass- 
 port to the royal presence than that of a deceased soldier ; and 
 Venus's cestus may obtain that grace which would never be 
 accorded to the truncheon of Mars ! " 
 
 Was there ever so natural and so easy a compliment ? My 
 Venus of fifty smiled. 
 
 "You are mistaken, Count," said she; "I have no interest 
 at court : the Jesuits forbid that to a Jansenist : but I will 
 speak this very day to the Bishop of Frejus : he is related to 
 me, and will obtain so slight a boon for you with ease. He 
 has just left his bishopric : you know how he hated it. Noth- 
 ing could be pleasanter than his signing himself, in a letter to 
 Cardinal Quirini ' Fleuri, e'vfyue 4e Frejus par rindignaiion 
 divine.' The King does not like him much ; but he is a good 
 man on the whole, though Jesuitical ; he shall introduce 
 you." 
 
 I expressed my gratitude for the favor, and hinted that pos- 
 sibly the relations of my father's first wife, the haughty and 
 ancient house of La Tremouille, might save the Bishop of 
 Frejus from the pain of exerting himself on my behalf. 
 
 " You are very much mistaken," answered Madame de Bal- 
 zac : " priests point the road to court, as well as to heaven ; 
 and warriors and nobles have as little to do with the former as 
 they have with the latter, the unlucky Due de Villars only 
 excepted a man whose ill fortune is enough to destroy all the 
 laurels of France. Ma foi ! I believe the poor Duke might 
 rival in luck that Italian poet who said, in a fit of despair, that
 
 224 DEVEREUX. 
 
 if he had been bred a hatter, men would have been born with- 
 out heads." 
 
 And Madame de Balzac chuckled over this joke till, seeing 
 that no farther news was to be gleaned from her, I made my 
 adieu, and my departure. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the kindness manifested towards me 
 by my father's early connections. The circumstance of my 
 accompanying Bolingbroke, joined to my age, and an address 
 which, if not animated nor gay, had not been acquired without 
 some youthful cultivation of the graces, gave me a sort of eclat 
 as well as consideration. And Bolingbroke, who was only 
 jealous of superiors in power, and who had no equals in any- 
 thing else, added greatly to my reputation by his panegyrics. 
 
 Every one sought me and the attention of society at Paris 
 would, to most, be worth a little trouble to repay. Perhaps, if 
 I had liked it, I might have been the rage ; but that vanity was 
 over. I contented myself with being admitted into society as an 
 observer, without a single wish to become the observed. When 
 one has once outlived the ambition of fashion I know not a 
 greater affliction than an over-attention ; and the Spectator did 
 just what I should have done in a similar case, when he left his 
 lodgings " because he was asked every morning how he had 
 slept." In the immediate vicinity of the court, the King's 
 devotion, age, and misfortunes threw a damp over society ; but 
 there were still some sparkling circles, who put the King out of 
 the mode, and declared that the defeats of his generals made 
 capital subjects for epigrams. What a delicate and subtle air 
 did hang over those soirtfes, where all that were bright and 
 lovely, and noble and gay, and witty and wise, were assembled 
 in one brilliant cluster ! Imperfect as my rehearsals must be, 
 I think the few pages I shall devote to a description of these 
 glittering conversations must still retain something of that origi- 
 nal piquancy which the soirees of no other capital could rival 
 or appreciate. 
 
 One morning, about a week after my interview with Madame 
 de Balzac, I received a note from her, requesting me to visit 
 her that day, and appointing the hour. 
 
 Accordingly I repaired to the house of the fair politician. 
 I found her with a man in a clerical garb, and of a benevolent 
 and prepossessing countenance. She introduced him to me as 
 the Bishop of Frejus, and he received me with an air very 
 uncommon to his countrymen, viz., with an ease that seemed 
 to result from real good nature, rather than artificial grace. 
 
 "I shall feel," said he, quietly, and without the least appear-
 
 DEVEREUX. 225 
 
 ance of paying a compliment, " very glad to mention your wish 
 to his Majesty ; and I have not the least doubt but that he will 
 admit to his presence one who had such hereditary claims on 
 his notice. Madame de Maintenon, by the way, has charged 
 me to present you to her, whenever you will give me the oppor- 
 tunity. She knew your admirable mother well, and, for her 
 sake, wishes once to see you. You know, perhaps, Monsieur, 
 that the extreme retirement of her life renders this message 
 from Madame de Maintenon an unusual and rare honor." 
 
 I expressed my thanks ; the bishop received them with a 
 paternal rather than a courtier-like air, and appointed a day for 
 me to attend him to the palace. We then conversed a short 
 time upon indifferent matters, which, I observed, the good 
 bishop took especial pains to preserve clear from French poli- 
 tics. He asked me, however, two or three questions about the 
 state of parties in England about finance and the national 
 debt about Ormond and Oxford ; and appeared to give the 
 most close attention to my replies. He smiled once or twice, 
 when his relation, Madame de Balzac, broke out into sarcasms 
 against the Jesuits, which had nothing to do with the subjects 
 in question. 
 
 " Aji, ma chere cousine" said he, "you flatter me by showing 
 that you like me not as the politician, but the private relation 
 not as the Bishop of Frejus, but as Andre de Fleuri." 
 
 Madame de Balzac smiled, and answered by a compliment. 
 She was a politician for the kingdom, it is true, but she was also 
 a politician for herself. She was far from exclaiming with Pin- 
 dar, " Thy business, O my city, I prefer willingly to my own." 
 Ah, there is a nice distinction between politics and policy, and 
 Madame de Balzac knew it. The distinction is this : Politics 
 is the art of being wise for others ! Policy is the art of being 
 wise for oneself. 
 
 From Madame de Balzac's I went to Bolingbroke. "I have 
 just been offered the place of Secretary of State, by the Eng- 
 lish king on this side of the water," said he ; " I do not, how- 
 ever, yet like to commit myself so fully. And, indeed, I am not 
 unwilling to have a little relaxation of pleasure, after all these 
 dull and dusty travails of state. What say you to Boulainvil- 
 liers to-night you are asked?" 
 
 " Yes ! all the wits are to be there Anthony Hamilton and 
 Fontenelle young Arouet Chaulieu, that charming old man. 
 Let us go and polish away the wrinkles of our hearts. What 
 cosmetics are to the face, wit is to the temper ; and, after all, 
 there is no wisdom like that which teaches us to forget."
 
 22 DEVEREUX. 
 
 "Come then," said Bolingbroke, rising, "we will lock up 
 these papers, and take a melancholy drive, in order that we may 
 enjoy mirth the better by and by." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 A Meeting of Wits. Conversation gone out to Supper in her Dress of 
 Velvet and Jewels. 
 
 BOULAINVILLIERS! Comte de St. Saire ! What will our great 
 grandchildren think of that name ! Fame is indeed a riddle ! 
 At the time I refer to, wit learning grace all things that 
 charm and enlighten were supposed to center in one word 
 Boulainvilliers ! The good count had many rivals, it is true, 
 but he had that exquisite tact peculiar to his countrymen, of 
 making the very reputation of those rivals contribute to his 
 own. And while he assembled them around him, the lustre of 
 their bans mots, though it emanated from themselves, was re- 
 flected upon him. 
 
 It was a pleasant, though not a costly, apartment, in which 
 we found our host. The room was sufficiently full of people 
 to allow scope and variety to one group of talkers, without 
 being full enough to permit those little knots and coteries which 
 are the destruction of literary society. An old man of about 
 seventy, of a sharp, shrewd, yet polished and courtly expression 
 of countenance, of a great gayety of manner, which was now 
 and then rather displeasingly contrasted by an abrupt affecta- 
 tion of dignity, that, however, rarely lasted above a minute, 
 and never withstood the shock of a bon mot, was the first person 
 who accosted us. This old man was the wreck of the once 
 celebrated Anthony, Count Hamilton ! 
 
 "Well, my lord," said he to Bolingbroke, "how do you like 
 the weather at Paris ? it is a little better than the merciless 
 air of London is it not? 'Slife ! even in June one could 
 not go open-breasted in those regions of cold and catarrh a 
 very great misfortune, let me tell you, my lord, if one's cambric 
 happened to be of a very delicate and brilliant texture, and one 
 wished to penetrate the inward folds of a lady's heart, by 
 developing to the best advantage the exterior folds that cov- 
 ered his own." 
 
 "It is the first time," answered Bolingbroke, "that I ever 
 heard so accomplished a courtier as Count Hamilton repine, 
 with sincerity, that he could not bare his bosom to inspection."
 
 DEVEREUX. 227 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Boulainvilliers, " but vanity makes a man show 
 much that discretion would conceal." 
 
 "Au diable with your discretion ! " said Hamilton, " 'tis a vul- 
 gar virtue. Vanity is a truly aristocratic quality, and every 
 way fitted to a gentleman. Should I ever have been renowned 
 for my exquisite lace and web-like cambric, if 1 had not been 
 vain ? Never, mon cher ! I should have gone into a convent 
 and worn sackcloth, and, from Count Antoine, I should have 
 thickened into Saint Anthony." 
 
 " Nay," cried Lord Bolingbroke, " there is as much scope 
 for vanity in sackcloth as there is in cambric ; for vanity is like 
 the Irish ogling master in the Spectator, and if it teaches the 
 playhouse to ogle by candle-light, it also teaches the church to 
 ogle by day ! But, pardon me, Monsieur Chaulieu, how well 
 you look ! I see that the myrtle sheds its verdure, not 
 only over your poetry, but the poet. And it is right that, 
 to the modern Anacreon, who has bequeathed to Time a 
 treasure it will never forego, Time itself should be gentle in 
 return." 
 
 " Milord," answered Chaulieu, an old man who, though con- 
 siderably past seventy, was animated, in appearance and man- 
 ner, with a vivacity and life that would have done honor to a 
 youth " Milord, it was beautifully said by the Emperor Julian, 
 that Justice retained the Graces in her vestibule. I see, now, 
 that he should have substituted the word Wisdom for that of 
 Justice." 
 
 " Come," cried Anthony Hamilton, " this will never do. 
 Compliments are the dullest things imaginable. For Heaven's 
 sake, let us leave panegyric to blockheads, and say something 
 bitter to one another, or we shall die of ennui," 
 
 '' Right," said Boulainvilliers : " Let us pick out some poor 
 devil to begin with. Absent or present ? Decide which." 
 
 "Oh, absent," cried Chaulieu ; " 'tis a thousand times more 
 piquant to slander than to rally ! Let us commence with his 
 Majesty : Count Devereux, have you seen Madame Maintenon 
 and her devout infant since your arrival ? " 
 
 " No ! the priests must be petitioned before the miracle is 
 made public." 
 
 " What ! " cried Chaulieu, " would you insinuate that his 
 Majesty's piety is really nothing less than a miracle?" 
 
 "Impossible!" said Boulainvilliers, gravely, "piety is as 
 natural to kings as flattery to their courtiers : are we not told 
 that they are made in God's own image ? " 
 
 " If that were true," said Count Hamilton, somewhat pro
 
 228 DEVEREUX. 
 
 fanely "if that were true, I should no longer defy the impos- 
 sibility of Atheism ! " 
 
 " Fie, Count Hamilton," said an old gentleman, in whom I 
 recognized the great Huet, " fie wit should beware how it 
 uses wings its province is earth, not heaven." 
 
 "Nobody can better tell what wit is not than the learned 
 Abbe" Huet ! " answered Hamilton with a mock air of respect. 
 
 " Psha ! " cried Chaulieu, " I thought when we once gave the 
 rein to satire it would carry us pele-ntele against one another. 
 But, in order to sweeten that drop of lemon-juice for you my 
 dear Huet, let me turn to Milord Bolingbroke, and ask him 
 whether England can produce a scholar equal to Peter Huet, 
 who in twenty years wrote notes to sixty-two volumes of Class- 
 ics,* for the sake of a prince who never read a line in one of 
 them ?" 
 
 "We have some scholars," answered Bolingbroke ; "but we 
 certainly have no Huet. It is strange enough, but learning 
 seems to me like a circle ; it grows weaker the more it spreads. 
 We now see many people capable of reading commentaries, but 
 very few indeed capable of writing them." 
 
 " True," answered Huet ; and in his reply he introduced the 
 celebrated illustration which is at this day mentioned among 
 his most felicitous Ions mots. " Scholarship, formerly the most 
 difficult and unaided enterprise of Genius, has now been made, 
 by the very toils of the first mariners, but an easy and common- 
 place voyage of leisure. .But who would compare the great 
 men, whose very difficulties not only proved their ardor, but 
 brought them the patience and the courage which alone are the 
 parents of a genuine triumph, to the indolent loiterers of the 
 present day, who, having little of difficulty to conquer, have 
 nothing of glory to attain ? For my part, there seems to me 
 the same difference between a scholar of our days and one of 
 the past as there is between Christopher Columbus and the 
 master of a packet-boat from Calais to Dover ! " 
 
 "But," cried Anthony Hamilton, taking a pinch of snuff with 
 the air of a man about to utter a witty thing "but what have 
 we we spirits of the world, not imps of the closet," and he 
 glanced at Huet-" to do with scholarship ? All the waters of 
 Castaly, which we want to pour into our brain, are such as will 
 flow the readiest to our tongue." 
 
 " In short, then," said I, " you would assert that all a friend 
 cares for in one's head is the quantity of talk in it ? " 
 
 " Precisely my dear Count," said Hamilton seriously ; " and 
 
 * The Delphin Classics.
 
 DEVEREUX. 229 
 
 to that maxim I will add another, applicable to the opposite 
 sex. All that a mistress cares for in one's heart is the quantity 
 of love in it." 
 
 " What ! are generosity, courage, honor, to go for nothing 
 with our mistress, then?" cried Chaulieu. 
 
 " No ; for she will believe, if you are a passionate lover, that 
 you have all those virtues ; and if not, she will never believe 
 that you have one." 
 
 " An ! it was a pretty court of love in which the friend and 
 biographer of Count Grammont learned the art ! " said Boling- 
 broke. 
 
 " We believed so at the time, my lord ; but there are as many 
 changes in the fashion of making love as there are in that of 
 making dresses. Honor me, Count Devereux, by using my 
 snuff-box, and then looking at the lid." 
 
 " It is the picture of Charles the Second, which adorns it 
 is it not ? " 
 
 " No, Count Devereux, it is the diamonds which adorn it. 
 His Majesty's face I thought very beautiful while he was living ; 
 but now, on my conscience, I consider it the ugliest phiz I ever 
 beheld. But I directed your notice to the picture because we 
 were talking of love ; and Old Rowley believed that he could 
 make it better than any one else. All his courtiers had the 
 same opinion of themselves ; and I dare say the beaux g at fons 
 of Queen Anne's reign would say that not one of King Charley's 
 gang knew what love was. Oh ! 'tis a strange circle of revolu- 
 tions, that love ! Like the earth, it always changes, and yet 
 always has the same materials." 
 
 " L' Amour V amour toujours ratnour, with Count Anthony 
 Hamilton !" said Boulainvilliers. " He is always on that sub- 
 ject ; and sacrc bleu ! when he was younger, I am told he was 
 like Cacus, the son of Vulcan, and breathed nothing but flames." 
 
 " You flatter me," said Hamilton. "Solve me now a knotty 
 riddle, niy Lord Bolingbroke. Why does a young man think 
 it the greatest compliment to be thought wise, while an old man 
 thinks it the greatest compliment to be told he has been foolish?" 
 
 "Is love foolish, then ? " said Lord Bolingbroke. 
 
 " Can you doubt it ?" answered Hamilton ; "it makes a man 
 think more of another than himself! I know not a greater 
 proof of folly ! " 
 
 "Ah mon aimable ami" cried Chaulieu; "you are the 
 wickedest witty person I know. I cannot help loving your 
 language, while I hate your sentiments." 
 
 " My language is my own my sentiments are those of all
 
 230 
 
 DEVEREUX. 
 
 men," answered Hamilton ; "but are we not, by the by, to have 
 young Arouet here to-night ? What a charming person he is ! " 
 
 "Yes," said Boulainvilliers. "He said he should be late 
 and I expect Fontenelle, too, but he will not come before sup- 
 per. I found Fontenelle this morning conversing with my cook 
 on the best manner of dressing asparagus. I asked him, the 
 other day, what writer, ancient or modern, had ever given him 
 the most sensible pleasure ? After a little pause, the excellent 
 old man said ' Daphnus ' ' Uaphnus ! ' repeated I, ' who the 
 devil is he ? ' ' Why,' answered Fontenelle, with tears of grati- 
 tude in his benevolent eyes, ' I had some hypochondriacal ideas 
 that suppers were unwholesome ; and Daphnus is an ancient 
 physician, who asserts the contrary ; and declares, think, my 
 friend what a charming theory ! that the moon is a great 
 assistant of the digestion ! ' " 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " laughed the Abbe de Chaulieu. " How like 
 Fontenelle ! what an anomalous creature 'tis ! He has the 
 most kindness and the least feeling of any man I ever knew. 
 Let Hamilton find a pithier description for him if he can !" 
 
 Whatever reply the friend ofthe preux Grammont might have 
 made was prevented by the entrance of a young man of about 
 twenty-one. 
 
 In person he was tall, slight, and very thin. There was a 
 certain affectation of polite address in his manner and mien 
 which did not quite become him ; and though he was received 
 by the old wits with great cordiality, and on a footing of per- 
 fect equality, yet the inexpressible air which denotes birth was 
 both pretended to and wanting. This, perhaps, was however 
 owing to the ordinary inexperience of youth; which, if not 
 awkwardly bashful, is generally awkward in its assurance. 
 Whatever its cause, the impression vanished directly he entered 
 into conversation. I do not think I ever encountered a man so 
 brilliantly, yet so easily, witty. He had but little of the studied 
 allusion the antithetical point the classic metaphor, which 
 chiefly characterize the wits of my day. On the contrary, it 
 was an exceeding and naive simplicity, which gave such un- 
 rivalled charm and piquancy to his conversation. And while I 
 have not scrupled to stamp on my pages some faint imitation 
 of the peculiar dialogue of other eminent characters, I must 
 confess myself utterly unable to convey the smallest idea of his 
 method of making "words irresistible. Contenting my efforts, 
 therefore, with describing his personal appearance interesting, 
 because that of the most striking literary character it has been 
 my lot to meet I shall omit his share in the remainder of the
 
 DEVEREUX. 2;$t 
 
 conversation I am rehearsing, and beg the reader to recall that 
 passage in Tacitus, in which the great historian says, that in 
 the funeral of Junia, "the images of Brutus and Cassias out- 
 shone all the rest, from the very circumstance of their being 
 the sole ones excluded from the rite." 
 
 The countenance, then, of Marie Frangois Arouet (since so 
 celebrated under the name of Voltaire) was plain in feature, 
 but singularly striking in effect ; its vivacity was the very per- 
 fection of what Steele once happily called "physiognomical 
 eloquence." His eyes were blue, fiery rather than bright, and 
 so restless that they never dwelt in the same place for a 
 moment ; * his mouth was at once the worst and the most 
 peculiar feature of his face : it betokened humor, it is true ; 
 but it also betrayed malignancy nor did it ever smile without 
 sarcasm. Though flattering to those present, his words against 
 the absent, uttered by that bitter and curling lip, mingled with 
 your pleasure at their wit a little fear at their causticity. I 
 believe no one, be he as bold, as callous, or as faultless as 
 human nature can be, could be one hour with that man and not 
 feel apprehension. Ridicule, so lavish, yet so true to the mark 
 so wanton, yet so seemingly just so bright, that while it wan- 
 dered round its target, in apparent, though terrible playfulness, 
 it burned into the spot, and engraved there a brand and a token 
 indelible and perpetual, this no man could witness, when 
 darted towards another, and feel safe for himself. The very 
 caprice and levity of the jester seemed more perilous, because 
 less to be calculated upon, than a systematic principle of bit- 
 terness or satire. Bolingbroke compared him, not unaptly, to 
 a child who has possessed himself of Jupiter's bolts, and who 
 makes use of those bolts in sport, which a God would only have 
 used in wrath. 
 
 Arouet's forehead was not remarkable for height, but it was 
 nobly and grandly formed, and, contradicting that of the mouth, 
 wore a benevolent expression. Though so young, there was 
 already a wrinkle on the surface of the front, and a prominence 
 on the eyebrow, which showed that the wit and the fancy of his 
 conversation were, if not regulated, at least contrasted, by more 
 thoughtful and lofty characteristics of mind. At the time I write, 
 this man has obtained a high throne among the powers of the 
 lettered world. What he may yet be, it is in vain to guess : he 
 
 *The reader -vill remember that this is a description of Voltaire As a very young man. I 
 do not know any where a more impressive, almost a more ghastly, contrast, than that which 
 the pictures of Voltaire, grown olil, present to Largilliere's picture of him at the age of 
 twenty-four ; and he was somewhat younger than twenty-four at the time of which the 
 Count now speaks. ED.
 
 232 DEVEREUX. 
 
 may be all that is great and good, or the reverse ; but I cannot 
 but believe that his career is only begun. Such men are born 
 monarchs of the mind ; they may be benefactors or tyrants : in 
 either case, they are greater than the kings of the physical empire, 
 because they defy armies and laugh at the intrigues of state. 
 From themselves only come the balance of their power, thelav.'s 
 of their government, and the boundaries of their realm. 
 
 We sat down to supper. " Count Hamilton," said Boulain- 
 rilliers, " are we not a merry set for such old fellows ? Why, 
 excepting Arouet, Milord Bolingbroke, and Count Dcvereux, 
 there is scarcely one of us under seventy. Where, but at Paris, 
 would you see bans vivants of our age ? Vivent lajuie la baga- 
 telle ! r amour ! " 
 
 " Et le vin de Champagne" cried Chaulieu, filling his glass; 
 " but what is there strange in our merriment ? Philemon, the 
 comic poet, laughed at ninety-seven. May we all do the same ! " 
 
 "You forget," cried Bolingbroke "that Philemon died of the 
 laughing." 
 
 " Yes," said Hamilton ; " but, if I remember right, it was at 
 seeing an ass eat figs. Let us vow, therefore, never to keep 
 company with asses ! " 
 
 " Bravo, Count," said Boulainvilliers, "you have put the true 
 moral on the story. Let us swear, by the ghost of Philemon, 
 that we will never laugh at an ass's jokes practical or verbal." 
 
 " Then we must always be serious, except when we are with each 
 other," cried Chaulieu. "Oh, I would sooner take my chance 
 of dying prematurely at ninety-seven than consent to such a 
 vow ! " 
 
 " Fontenelle," cried our host " you are melancholy. What 
 is the matter?" 
 
 " I mourn for the weakness of human nature," answered 
 Fontenelle, with an air of patriarchal philanthropy. " I told 
 your cook three times about the asparagus : and now taste it. 
 I told him not to put too much sugar, and he has put none. 
 Thus it is with mankind ever in extremes and consequently 
 ever in error ! Thus it was that Luther said, so felicitously and 
 so truly, that the human mind was like a drunken peasant on 
 horseback prop it on one side, and it falls on the other." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " cried Chaulieu, " who would have thought 
 one could have found so much morality in a plate of asparagus \ 
 Taste this salsifis." 
 
 " Pray, Hamilton," said Hnet, " whaty> de mot was that 
 you made yesterday at Madame d'Epernonville's which gained 
 you such applause ? "
 
 DEVEREUX. 233 
 
 " Ah, repeat it, Count," cried Boukiinvilliers; " 'twas the most 
 classical thing I have heard for a long time." 
 
 ''Why," said Hamilton, laying down his knife and fork, and 
 preparing himself by a large draught of the champagne "why 
 Madame d'Epernonville appeared without her tour j you know, 
 Lord Bolingbroke, that tour is the polite name for false hair. 
 ' Ah, sacre ! ' cried her brother, courteously, ' ma saur, que 
 vous etes laide aujounfhui vous navezpas votretourT 'Voild, 
 pourquoi die nest pas si-bdle (Cybele)? " answered I. 
 
 " Excellent ! famous ! " cried we all, except Huet, who seemed 
 to regard the punster with a very disrespectful eye. Hamilton 
 saw it. " You do not think, Monsieur Huet, that there is wit in 
 these jeux de mots perhaps you do not admire wit at all?" 
 
 " Yes, I admire wit as I do the wind. When it shakes the 
 trees, it is fine ; when it cools the wave it is refreshing; when it 
 steals over flowers, it is enchanting ; but when, Monsieur Hamil- 
 ton, it whistles through the key-hole, it is unpleasant." 
 
 " The very worst illustration I ever heard," said Hamilton, 
 coolly. " Keep to your classics, my dear Abbe. When Jupiter 
 edited t' e work of Peter Huet, he did with wit as Peter Huet 
 did with Lucan, when he edited the classics he was afraid it 
 might do mischief, and so left it out altogether." 
 
 " Let us drink ! " cried Chaulieu ; " let us drink ! " and the 
 conversation was turned again. 
 
 " What is that you say of Tacitus, Huet ? " said Boulainvilliers. 
 
 " That his wisdom arose from his malignancy," answered 
 Huet. " He is. a perfect penetrator * into human vices ; but 
 knows nothing of human virtues. Do you think that a good 
 man would dwell so constantly on what is evil ? Believe me 
 no ! A man cannot write much and well upon virtue without 
 being virtuous, nor enter minutely and profoundly into the 
 causes of vice without being vicious himself." 
 
 ''It is true," said Hamilton: "and your remark, which affects 
 to be so deep, is but a natural corollary from the hackneyed 
 maxim that from experience comes wisdom." 
 
 " But, for my part," said Boulainvilliers, " I think Tacitus 
 is not so invariably the analyzer of vice as you would make him. 
 Look at the Agricola and the Germania." 
 
 " Ah ! the Germany, above all things ! " cried Hamilton, 
 dropping a delicious morsel of sartglier in its way from hand to 
 mouth, in his hurry to speak. "Of course, the historian, Bou- 
 lainvilliers, advocates the Germany, from its mention of the 
 
 * A remark similar to this the reader will probably remember in the Huetiana, and will, I 
 hope, agree with me in thinking it showy and untrue. ED.
 
 234 DEVEREUX. 
 
 origin of the feudal system that incomparable bundle of excel- 
 lences, which Le Cointe de Boulainvilliers has declared to be le 
 chef d' on uv re de I'espiit humain : and which the same gentleman 
 regrets, in the most pathetic terms, no longer exists in order that 
 the seigneur may feed upon des gros morceaux de bxuf demi- 
 cru, may hang up half his peasants pour encourager les autres, 
 and ravish the daughters of thedefunct^wr leur donner qudque 
 consolation." 
 
 " Seriously, though," said the old Abbe de Chaulieu, with a 
 twinkling eye, " the last mentioned evil, my dear Hamilton, was 
 not without a little alloy of good." 
 
 "Yes," said Hamilton, " if it was only the daughters; but 
 perhaps the seigneur was not too scrupulous with regard to 
 the wives." 
 
 " Ah! shocking, shocking! " cried Chaulieu, solemnly. " Adul- 
 tery is, indeed, an atrocious crime. I am sure I would most 
 conscientiously cry out with the honest preacher 'Adultery, 
 my children, is the blackest of sins.' I do declare that I would 
 rather have ten virgins in love with me than one married 
 woman ! " 
 
 We all laughed at this enthusiastic burst of virtue from the 
 chaste Chaulieu. And Arouet turned our conversation towards 
 the ecclesiastical dissensions between Jesuits and Jansenists, 
 that then agitated the kingdom. " Those priests," said Boling- 
 broke, " remind me of the nurses of Jupiter they make a 
 great clamor, in order to drown the voice of their God." 
 
 " Bravissimo ! " cried Hamilton. " Is it not a pity, messieurs, 
 that my Lord Bolingbroke was not a Frenchman ? He is almost 
 clever enough to be one." 
 
 " If he would drink a little more, he would be," cried Chau- 
 lieu, who was now setting us all a glorious example. 
 
 "What say you, Morton?" exclaimed Bolingbroke; "must 
 we not drink these gentlemen under the table for the honor of 
 our country." 
 
 " A challenge ! a challenge ! " cried Chaulieu. " I march 
 first to the field !" 
 
 " Conquest or death ! " shouted Bolingbroke. And the rites 
 of Minerva were forsaken for those of Bacchus.
 
 DEVEREUX. 235 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A Court, Courtiers, and a King. 
 
 I THINK it was the second day after this " feast of reason " 
 that Lord Bolingbroke deemed it advisable to retire to Lyons 
 till his plans of conduct were ripened into decision. We took 
 an affectionate leave of each other ; but before we parted, and 
 after he had discussed his own projects of ambition, we talked 
 a little upon mine. Although I was a Catholic and a pupil of 
 Montreuil, although I had fled from England, and had nothing 
 to expect from the House of Hanover, I was by no means 
 favorably disposed towards the Chevalier and his cause. I 
 wonder if this avowal will seem odd to Englishmen of the next 
 century. To Englishmen of the present one, a Roman Catholic, 
 and a lover of priestcraft and tyranny, are two words for the 
 same thing ; as if we could not murmur at tithes and taxes 
 insecurity of property or arbitrary legislation, just as sourly as 
 any other Christian community. No ! I never loved the cause 
 of the Stuarts unfortunate, and therefore interesting, as the 
 Stuarts were ; by a very stupid, and yet uneffaceable confusion 
 of ideas, I confounded it with the cause of Montreuil, and I 
 hated the latter enough to dislike the former : I fancy all party 
 principles are formed much in the same manner. I frankly 
 told Bolingbroke my disinclination to the Chevalier. 
 
 "Between ourselves be it spoken," said he, " there is but 
 little to induce a wise man, \t\yonr circumstances, to join James 
 the Third. I would advise you rather to take advantage of 
 your father's reputation at the French court, and enter into the 
 same service he did. Things wear a dark face in England for 
 you, and a bright one everywhere else." 
 
 " I have already," said I, " in my own mind, perceived and 
 weighed the advantages of entering into the service of Louis. 
 But he is old he cannot live long. People now pay court to 
 parties not to the king. Which party, think you, is the best 
 that of Madame de Maintenon ? " 
 
 " Nay, I think not ; she is a cold friend, and never asks favors 
 of Louis for any of her family. A bold game might be played 
 by attaching yourself to the Duchesse d'Orleans (the Duke's 
 mother). She is at daggers-drawn with Maintenon, it is true, 
 and she is a violent, haughty, and coarse woman ; but she has 
 wit, talent, strength of mind, and will zealously serve any per- 
 son of high birth, who pays her respect. But she can do noth- 
 ing for you till the King's death, and then only on the chance
 
 236 DEVEREUX. 
 
 of her son's power. But let me see you say Fleuri, the 
 Bishop of Frejus, is to introduce you to Madame de Maintenon ? " 
 
 " Yes ; and has appointed the day after to-morrow for that 
 purpose." 
 
 "Well, then, make close friends with him you will not find 
 it difficult; he has a delightful address, and if you get hold of 
 his weak points, you may win his confidence. Mark me Fleuri 
 has no fau-x-btillant, no genius, indeed, of very prominent 
 order ; but he is one of those soft and smooth minds, which, in 
 a crisis like the present, when parties are contending, and princes 
 wrangling, always slip silently and unobtrusively into one of the 
 best places. Keep in with Frejus you cannot do wrong by 
 it although you must remember that at present he is in ill 
 odor with the King, and you need not go with him twice to Ver- 
 sailles. But, above all, when you are introduced to Louis, do 
 not forget that you cannot please him better than by appearing 
 awe-stricken." 
 
 Such was Bolingbroke's parting advice. The Bishop of 
 Frejus carried me with him (on the morning we had appointed) 
 to Versailles. What a magnificent work of royal imagination 
 is that palace ! I know not in any epic a grander idea than 
 terming the avenues which lead to it the roads "to Spain, to 
 Holland" etc. In London, they would have been the roads to 
 Chelsea and Pentonville ! 
 
 As we were driving slowly along in the bishop's carriage, I 
 had ample time for conversation with that personage, who has 
 since, as the Cardinal de Fleuri, risen to so high a pitch of 
 power. He certainly has in him very little of the great man ; 
 nor do I know any where so striking an instance of this truth 
 that in that game of honors which is played at courts, we obtain 
 success less by our talents than our tempers. He laughed, with 
 a graceful turn of badinage, at the political peculiarities of 
 Madame de Balzac : and said that it was not for the uppermost 
 party to feel resentment at the chafings of the under one. Sliding 
 from this topic, he then questioned me as to the gayeties I had 
 witnessed. I gave him a description of the party at Boulain- 
 villiers's. He seemed much interested in this, and showed more 
 shrewdness than I should have given him credit for, in discuss- 
 ing the various characters of the literati of the day. After 
 some general conversation on works of fiction, he artfully glided 
 into treating on those of statistics and politics, and I then 
 caught a sudden, but thorough, insight into the depths of his 
 policy. I saw that, while lie affected to be indifferent to the 
 difficulties and puzzles of state, he lost no opportunity of gain-
 
 DEVEREUX. 237 
 
 ing every particle of information respecting them ; and that he 
 made conversation, in which he was skilled, a vehicle for 
 acquiring that knowledge which he had not the force of mind 
 to create from his o\vn intellect, or to work out from the written 
 labors of others. If this made him a superficial statesman, it 
 made him a prompt one ; and there was never so lucky a 
 minister with so little trouble to himself.* 
 
 As we approached the end of our destination, we talked of 
 the King. On this subject he was jealously cautious. But I 
 gleaned from him, despite of his sagacity, that it was high time 
 to make all use of one's acquaintance with Madame de Main- 
 tenon that one could be enabled to do ; and that it was so 
 difficult to guess the exact places in which power would rest 
 after the death of the old King, 'that supineness and silence 
 made at present the most profound policy. 
 
 As we alighted from the carriage, and I first set my foot 
 within the palace, I could not but feel involuntarily, yet power- 
 fully, impressed with the sense of the spirit of the place. I was 
 in the precincts of that mighty court that had gathered into one 
 dazzling focus all the rays of genius which half a century had 
 emitted ; the court at which time had passed at once from the 
 morn of civilization into its full noon and glory ; the court of 
 Conde and Turenne of Villars and of Tourville ; the court 
 where, over the wit of Grammont, the profusion of Fouquet, 
 the fatal genius of Louvois (fatal to humanity and to France), 
 Love, real. Love, had not disdained to shed its pathos and its 
 truth, and to consecrate the hollow pageantries of royal pomp 
 with the tenderness, the beauty, and the repentance of La Val- 
 liere. Still over that scene hung the spells of a genius which, 
 if artificial and cold, was also vast, stately, and magnificent 
 a genius which had swelled in the rich music of Racine which 
 had raised the nobler spirit and the freer thought of Pierre 
 Corneille,f which had given edge to the polished weapon of 
 Boi'leau which had lavished over the bright page of Moliere 
 Moliere, more wonderful than all a knowledge of the humors 
 and the hearts of men, which no dramatist, save Shakspeare, 
 has surpassed. Within those walls still glowed, though now 
 waxing faint and dim, the fame of that monarch who had en- 
 joyed, at least till his later day, the fortune of Augustus, un- 
 sullied by the crimes of Octavius. Nine times, since the sun 
 
 * At his death appeared the following punning epigram : 
 " Floruit sine fructu ; 
 " Dejloruit sine luctu." 
 He flowered without fruit, and faded without regret. ED. 
 
 t Rigidly speaking, Corneille belongs to a period earlier than that of Louis XIV t 
 though he has been included in the era formed by that reign. Ep.
 
 238 DEYERKUX. 
 
 of that monarch rose, had the Papal Chair received a new occu- 
 pant ! Six sovereigns had reigned over the Ottoman hordes ! 
 The fourth emperor, since the birth of the same era, bore sway 
 over Germany ! Five czars, from Michael Romanoff to the 
 Great Peter, had held, over their enormous territory, the pre- 
 carious tenure of their iron power ! Six kings had borne the 
 painful cincture of the English crown ; * two of those kings had 
 been fugitives to that court to the son of the last it was an 
 asylum at that moment. 
 
 What wonderful changes had passed over the face of Europe 
 during that single reign ! In England only, what a vast leap 
 in the waste of events, from the reign of the first Charles to 
 that of George the First ! I still lingered I still gazed, as 
 these thoughts, linked to one another in an electric chain, 
 flashed over me ! I still paused on the threshold of those 
 stately halls which Nature herself had been conquered lo rear! 
 Where, through the whole earth, could I find so meet a symbol 
 for the character and the name which that sovereign would 
 leave to posterity, as this place itself afforded ? A gorgeous 
 monument of regal state raised from a desert crowded alike 
 with empty pageantries and illustrious names a prodigy of 
 elaborate artifice, grand in its whole effect, petty in its small 
 details ; a solitary oblat-ion to a splendid selfishness, and most 
 remarkable for the revenues which it exhausted, and the 
 poverty by which it is surrounded ! 
 
 Fleuri, with his usual urbanity an urbanity that, on a great 
 scale, would have been benevolence had hitherto indulged 
 me in my emotions ; he now laid his hand upon my arm, and 
 recalled me to myself. Before I could apologize for my ab- 
 straction, the bishop was accosted by an old man of evident 
 rank, but of a countenance more strikingly demonstrative of 
 the little cares of a mere courtier than any I ever beheld. 
 "What news, Monsieur le Marquis ?" said Fleuri, smiling. 
 
 "Oh! the greatest imaginable! the king talks of receiving 
 the Danish minister on Thursday, which, you know, is his day 
 of domestic business ! What can this portend? Besides," and 
 here the speaker's voice lowered into a whisper, "I am told by 
 the Due de la Rochefoucault that the King intends, out of all 
 ordinary rule and practice, to take physic to-morrow I 
 can't believe it no, I positively can't; but don't let this go 
 farther! " 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! " answered Fleuri, bowing, and the cour- 
 
 * Besides Cromwell ; vi*., Charles I., Charles II., Tames II.. William and Mary, Anne, 
 Ceorge I.
 
 DEVEREUX. 239 
 
 tier passed on to whisper his intelligence to others. "Who's 
 that gentleman," I asked. 
 
 " The Marquis de Dangeau," answered Fleuri ; "a noble- 
 man of great quality, who keeps a diary of all the King says and 
 does. It will perhaps be a posthumous publication, and will 
 show the world of what importance nothings can be made. I 
 dare say, Count, you have already, in England, seen enough of 
 a court to know that there are some people who are as human 
 echoes, and have no existence except in the noise occasioned 
 by another." 
 
 I took care that my answer should not be a witticism, lest 
 Fleuri should think I was attempting to rival him ; and so we 
 passed on in an excellent humor with each other. 
 
 We mounted the grand staircase, and came to an ante-cham- 
 ber, which, though costly and rich, was not remarkably con- 
 spicuous for splendor. Here the bishop requested me to wait 
 for a moment. Accordingly, I amused myself with looking 
 over some engravings of different saints. Meanwhile, my com- 
 panion passed through another door, and I was alone. 
 
 After an absence of nearly ten minutes, he returned. " Ma- 
 dame de Maintenon," said he, in a whisper, "is but poorly to- 
 day. However, she has eagerly consented to see you follow 
 me ! " 
 
 So saying, the ecclesiastical courtier passed on, with myself 
 at his heels. We came to the door of a second chamber, at 
 which Fleuri scraped gently. We were admitted, and found 
 therein three ladies, one of whom was reading, a second laugh- 
 ing, and a third yawning, and entered into another chamber, 
 where, alone, and seated by the window, in a large chair, with 
 one foot on a stool, in an attitude that rather reminded me of 
 my mother, and which seems to me a favorite position with all 
 devotees, we found an old woman without rouge, plainly dressed, 
 with spectacles on her nose r and a large book on a little table 
 before her. With a most profound salutation, Fre"jus approached, 
 and taking me by the hand, said, 
 
 " Will Madame suffer me to present to her the Count Dever- 
 eux ?" 
 
 Madame de Maintenon, with an air of great meekness and 
 humility, bowed a return to the salutation. " The son of Ma- 
 dame la Mare"chale de Devereux will always be most welcome to 
 me ! " Then, turning towards us, she pointed to two stools, 
 and, while we were seating ourselves, said 
 
 "And how did you leave my excellent friend ?" 
 
 " When, Madame, I last saw my mother, which is now nearly
 
 24 
 
 DEVEREUJi. 
 
 a year ago, she was in health, and consoling herself for the ad- 
 vance of years by that tendency to wean the thoughts from this 
 world which (in her own language) is the divinest comfort of 
 old age ! " 
 
 "Admirable woman ! " said Madame de Maintenon, casting 
 down her eyes; "such are, indeed, the sentiments in which I 
 recognize the Marechale. And how does her beauty wear? 
 Those golden locks, and blue eyes, and that snowy skin, are not 
 yet, I suppose, wholly changed for an adequate compensation 
 of the beauties within ! " 
 
 "Time, Madame, has been gentle with her ; and I have often 
 thought, though never, perhaps, more strongly than at this mo- 
 ment, that there is in those divine studies, which bring calm and 
 light to the mind, something which preserves and embalms, as 
 it were, the beauty of the body." 
 
 A faint blush passed over the face of the devotee. No, no-^- 
 not even at eighty years of age is a compliment to a woman's 
 beauty misplaced ! There was a slight pause. I thought that 
 respect forbade me to break it. 
 
 " His Majesty," said the bishop, in the tone of one who is 
 sensible that he encroaches a little, and does it with consequent 
 reverence " his Majesty, I hope, is well." 
 
 "God be thanked, yes, as well as we can expect. It is now 
 nearly the hour in which his Majesty awaits your personal in- 
 quiries." 
 
 Fleuri bowed as he answered 
 
 " The King then, will receive us to-day ? My young compan- 
 ion is very desirous to see the greatest monarch, and conse- 
 quently the greatest man, of the age." 
 
 " The desire is natural," said Madame de Maintenon : and 
 then, turning to me, she asked if I had yet seen King James the 
 Third. 
 
 I took care, in my answer, to express that even if I had re- 
 solved to make that stay in Paris which allowed me to pay my 
 respects to him at all, I should have deemed that both duty and 
 inclination led me, in the first instance, to offer my homage to 
 one who was both the benefactor of my father, and the monarch 
 whose realms afforded me protection. 
 
 "You have not, then," said Madame de Maintenon, "decided 
 on the length of your stay in France?" 
 
 "No," said I and my answer was regulated by my desire to 
 see ho\v far I might rely on the services of one who expressed 
 herself so warm a friend of that excellent woman, Madame la 
 Marechale " No, Madame. France is the country of my birth,
 
 DEVEREUX. S4I 
 
 if England is that of my parentage ; and could I hope for some 
 portion of that royal favor which my father enjoyed, I would 
 rather claim it as the home of my hopes than the refuge of my 
 exile. But" and I stopped short purposely. 
 
 The old lady looked at me very earnestly through her specta- 
 cles for one moment, and then, hemming twice with a little em- 
 barrassment, again remarked to the bishop, that the time for 
 seeing the King was nearly arrived. Fleuri, whose policy at that 
 period was very like that of the concealed queen, and who was, 
 besides, far from desirous of introducing any new claimants on 
 Madame de Maintenon's official favor, though he might not ob- 
 ject to introduce them to her private friendship, was not slow 
 in taking the hint. He rose, and I was forced to follow his 
 example. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon thought she might safely indulge in 
 a little cordiality when I was just on the point of leaving her, 
 and accordingly,blest me and gave me her hand, which I kissed 
 very devoutly. An extremely pretty hand it was, too, notwith- 
 standing the good queen's age. We then retired, and, repassing 
 the three ladies who were now all yawning, repaired to the King's 
 apartments. 
 
 "What think you of Madame ?" asked Fleuri. 
 
 "What can I think of her," said Incautiously, "but that great- 
 ness seems in her to take its noblest form that of simplicity ? " 
 
 " True," rejoined Fleuri, " never was there so meek a mind 
 joined to so lowly a carriage ? Do you remark any trace of 
 former beauty?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed, there is much that is soft in her countenance, 
 and much that is still regular in her features ; but what struck 
 me most was the pensive and even sad tranquillity that rests 
 upon her face when she is silent." 
 
 "The expression betrays the mind," answered Fleuri; "and 
 the curse of the great is ennui." 
 
 " Of the great in station," said I, " but not necessarily of the 
 great in mind. I have heard that the Bishop of Frejus, not- 
 withstanding his rank and celebrity, employs every hour to 
 the advantage of others, and consequently without tedium to 
 himself." 
 
 " Aha ! " said Fleuri, smiling. gently, and patting my cheek : 
 " see, now, if the air of palaces is not absolutely prolific of 
 pretty speeches." And, before I could answer, we were in the 
 apartments of the King. 
 
 Leaving me awhile to cool my heels in a gallery, filled with 
 the butterflies who bask in the royal sunshine, Fre"jus then dis-
 
 242 DEVEREUX. 
 
 appeared among the crowd ; he was scarcely gone when I 
 agreeably surprised by seeing Count Hamilton approach to- 
 wards me. 
 
 " Mort diable ! " said he, shaking me by the hand, ^ V Anglaise; 
 " I am really delighted to see any one here who does not insult 
 my sins with his superior excellence. Eh, now, look round 
 this apartment for a moment ! Whether would you believe 
 yourself at the court of a great king, or the levee of a Roman 
 cardinal? Whom see you chiefly ? Gallant soldiers, with worn 
 brows and glittering weeds ; wise statesmen, with ruin to Austria 
 and defiance to Rome in every wrinkle ; gay nobles in costly 
 robes, and with the bearing that so nicely teaches mirth to be 
 dignified and dignity to be merry ? No ! cassock and hat, 
 rosary and gown, decking sly, demure, hypocritical faces, flit, 
 and stalk, and sadden round us. It seems to me," continued 
 the witty Count, in a lower whisper, "as if the old King, having 
 fairly buried his glory at Ramilies and Blenheim, had sum- 
 moned all these good gentry to sing psalms over it ! But are 
 you waiting for a private audience ? " 
 
 "Yes, under the auspices of the Bishop of Frejus." 
 " You might have chosen a better guide the King has been 
 too much teased about him," rejoined Hamilton, "and now 
 that we are talking of him, I will show you a singular instance 
 of what good manners can do at court, in preference to good 
 abilities. You observe yon quiet, modest-looking man, with a 
 sensible countenance, and a clerical garb ; you observe how he 
 edges away when any one approaches to accost him ; and how, 
 trom his extreme dis-esteem of himself, he seems to inspire 
 every one with the same sentiment. Well, that man is a name- 
 sake of Fleuri's, the Prior of Argenteuil ; he has come here, I 
 suppose, for some particular and temporary purpose, since, in 
 reality, he has left the court. Well, that worthy priest do re- 
 mark his bow ; did you ever see anything so awkward ? is one 
 of the most learned divines that the church can boast of ; he is 
 as immeasurably superior to the smooth-faced Bishop of Frejus 
 as Louis the Fourteenth is to my old friend Charles the Second. 
 He has had equal opportunities with the said bishop ; been 
 preceptor to the princes of Conti, and the Count de Verman- 
 dois ; and yet, I. will wager that he lives and dies a tutor a 
 bookworm and a prior ; while t'other Fleuri, without a par- 
 ticle of merit, but of the most superficial order, governs already 
 kings through their mistresses, kingdoms through the kings, and 
 rnay, for aught I know, expand into a prime minister, and ripen 
 into a cardinal."
 
 DEVEREUX. 243 
 
 "Nay," said I, smiling, "there is little chance of so exalted 
 a lot for the worthy bishop." 
 
 "Pardon me," interrupted Flamilton, "I am an old courtier, 
 and look steadily on the game I no longer play. Suppleness, 
 united with art, may do anything in a court like this ; and the 
 smooth and unelevated craft of a Fleuri may win even to the 
 same height as the deep wiles of the glittering Mazarin, or the 
 superb genius of the imperious Richelieu." 
 
 "Hist !" said I, "the bishop has reappeared. Who is that 
 old priest, with a fine countenance, and an address that will, at 
 least, please you better than that of the Prior of Argenteuil, who 
 has just stopped our episcopal courtier?" 
 
 "What! do you not know ? It is the most celebrated preacher 
 of the day the great Massillon. It is said that that handsome 
 person goes a great way towards winning converts among the 
 court ladies ; it is certain, at least, that when Massillon first 
 entered the profession, he was to the soul something like the 
 spear of Achilles to the body ; and though very efficacious in 
 healing the wounds of conscience, was equally ready, in the 
 first instance, to inflict them." 
 
 " Ah ! " said I, " see the malice of wit ; and see, above all, 
 how much more ready one is to mention a man's frailties than 
 to enlarge upon his virtues." 
 
 "To be sure," answered Hamilton coolly, and patting his 
 snuff-box " to be sure, we old people like history better than 
 fiction ; and frailty is certain, while virtue is always doubtful." 
 
 " Don't judge of all people," said I, " by your experience 
 among the courtiers of Charles the Second." 
 
 " Right," said Hamilton. " Providence never assembled so 
 many rascals together before, without hanging them. And he 
 would indeed be a bad judge of human nature who estimated 
 the characters of men in general by the heroes of Newgate and 
 the victims of Tyburn. Butyour bishop approaches. Adieu!" 
 
 "What!" said Fleuri, joining me and saluting Hamilton, 
 who had just turned to depart, "what, Count Antoine ! Does 
 anything but whim bring you here to-day ?" 
 
 " No," answered Hamilton ; " I am only here for the same 
 purpose as the poor go to the temples of Caitan to inhale the 
 steam of those good things which I see the priests devour." 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " laughed the good-natured bishop, not in 
 the least disconcerted ; and Count Hamilton, congratulating 
 himself on his ban mot, turned away. 
 
 " I have spoken to his Most Christian Majesty," said the 
 bishop ; " he is willing, as he before ordained, to admit you to
 
 244 DEVEREUX. 
 
 his presence. The Due de Maine is with the King, as also 
 some other members of the royal family ; but you will consider 
 this a private audience." 
 
 I expressed my gratitude we moved on the doors of an 
 apartment were thrown open and I saw myself in the presence 
 of Louis XIV. 
 
 The room was partially darkened. In the centre of it, on a 
 large sofa, reclined the King ; he was dressed (although this, if 
 I may so speak, I rather remembered than noted) in a coat of 
 black velvet, slightly embroidered ; his vest was of white satin ; 
 he wore no jewels nor orders, for it was only on grand or gala 
 days that he displayed personal pomp. At some little distance 
 from him stood three members of the royal family them I 
 never regarded all my attention was bent upon the King. My 
 temperament is not that on which greatness, or indeed any ex- 
 ternal circumstances, makes much impression, but, as following, 
 at a little distance, the Bishop of Frejus, I approached the 
 royal person, I must confess that Bolingbroke had scarcely 
 need to have cautioned me not to appear too self-possessed. 
 Perhaps, had I seen that great monarch in his beaux jours in 
 the plenitude of his power his glory the dazzling and meri- 
 dian splendor of his person, his court, and his renown, pride 
 might have made me more on my guard against too deep, or at 
 least too apparent, an impression ; but the many reverses of 
 that magnificent sovereign reverses in which he had shown 
 himself more great than in all his p'revious triumphs and earlier 
 successes ; his age his infirmities the very clouds round the 
 setting sun the very howls of joy at the expiring lion all were 
 calculated, in my mind, to deepen respect into reverence, and 
 tincture reverence itself with awe. I saw before me not only 
 the majesty of Louis-le-Grand, but that of misfortune, of weak- 
 ness, of infirmity, and of age ; and I forgot at once, in that re- 
 flection, what otherwise w'ould have blunted my sentiments of 
 deference, viz., the crimes of his ministers, and the exactions of 
 his reign ! Endeavoring to collect my mind from an embarrass- 
 ment which surprised myself, I lifted my eyes towards the King, 
 and saw a countenance where the trace of the superb beauty, 
 for which his manhood had been celebrated, still lingered, 
 broken, not destroyed, and borrowing a dignity even more im- 
 posing from the marks of encroaching years, and from the evi- 
 dent exhaustion of suffering and disease. 
 
 Fleuri said, in a low tone, something which my ear did not 
 catch. There was a pause only a moment's pause ; and then, 
 in a voice, the music of which I had hitherto deemed exagger.
 
 DEVEREtfX. 245 
 
 ated, the King spoke; and in that voice there was something so 
 kind and encouraging that I felt reassured at once. Perhaps 
 its tone was not the least conciliating from the evident effect 
 which the royal presence had produced upon me. 
 
 " You have given us, Count Devereux," said the King, "a 
 pleasure which we are glad, in person, to acknowledge to you. 
 And it has seemed to us fitting that the country in which your 
 brave father acquired his fame should also be the asylum of 
 his son." 
 
 " Sire," answered I, " Sire, it shall not be my fault if that 
 country is not henceforth my own ; and, in inheriting my 
 father's name, I inherit also his gratitude and his ambition." 
 
 " It is well said, sir," said the King ; and I once more raised 
 my eyes, and perceived that his were bent upon me. " It is well 
 said," he repeated, after a short pause ; "and in granting to you 
 this audience, we were not unwilling to hope that you were de- 
 sirous to attach yourself to our court. The times do not require " 
 (here I thought the old King's voice was not quite so firm as 
 before) " the manifestation of your zeal in the same career as 
 that in which your father gained laurels to France and to 
 himself. But we will not neglect to find employment for your 
 abilities, if not for your sword." 
 
 " That sword which was given to me, Sire," said I, "by your 
 Majesty, shall be ever drawn (against all nations but one) at 
 your command ; and, in being your Majesty's petitioner for 
 future favors, I only seek some channel through which to 
 evince my gratitude for the past." 
 
 " We do not doubt," said Louis, " that whatever be the num- 
 ber of the ungrateful we may make by testifying our good plea- 
 sure o.n your behalf, jw/ will not be among the number." The 
 king here made a slight, but courteous inclination, and turned 
 round. The observant Bishop of Frjus, who had retired to a 
 little distance, and who knew that the King never liked talking 
 more than he could help it, gave me a signal. I obeyed, and 
 backed, with all due deference, out of the royal presence. 
 
 So closed my interview with Louis XIV. Although his 
 Majesty did not indulge in prolixity, I spoke of him for a long 
 time afterwards as the most eloquent of men. Believe me, there 
 is no orator like a king ; one word from a royal mouth stirs the 
 heart more than Demosthenes could have done. There was a 
 deep moral in that custom of the ancients, by which the God- 
 dess of Persuasion was always represented with a diadem onhef 
 head.
 
 246 DfcVEREttX. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Reflections A Soiree The appearance of one important in the History" 
 A Conversation with Madame de Balzac highly satisfactory and cheer- 
 ing A Rencontre with a curious old Soldier The extinction of a once 
 great Luminary. 
 
 I HAD now been several weeks at Paris ; I had neither eagerly 
 sought, nor sedulously avoided, its gayeties. It is not that one 
 violent sorrow leaves us without power of enjoyment- it only 
 lessens the power, and deadens the enjoyment ; it does not take 
 away from us the objects of life it only forestalls the more 
 indifferent calmness of age. The blood no longer flows in an 
 irregular, but delicious, course of vivid and wild emotion ; the 
 step no longer spurns the earth ; nor does the ambition wander, 
 insatiable, yet undefined, over the million paths of existence ; 
 but we lose not our old capacities they are quieted, not 
 extinct. The heart can never utterly and long be dormant ; 
 trifles may not charm it any more, nor levities delight ; but its 
 pulse has not yet ceased to beat. We survey the scene that 
 moves around, with a gaze no longer distracted by every hope 
 that flutters by ; and it is therefore that we find ourselves more 
 calculated than before for the graver occupations of our race. 
 The overflowing temperament is checked to its proper level, 
 the ambition bounded to its prudent and lawful goal. The 
 earth is no longer so green, nor the heaven so blue, nor the 
 fancy that stirs within us so rich in its creations ; but we look 
 more narrowly on the living crowd, and more rationally on the 
 aims of men. The misfortune which has changed us has only 
 adapted us the better to a climate in which misfortune is a 
 portion of the air. The grief, that has thralled our spirit to a 
 more narrow and dark cell, has also been a chain that has 
 linked us to mankind with a strength of which we dreamt not 
 in the day of a wilder freedom and more luxuriant aspirings. 
 In later life, a new spirit, partaking of that which was our ear- 
 liest, returns to us. The solitude which delighte'd us in youth, 
 but which, when the thoughts that make solitude a fairy-land 
 are darkened by affliction, becomes a fearful and sombre void, 
 resumes its old spell, as the more morbid and urgent memory 
 of that affliction crumbles away by time. Content is a hermit ; 
 but so also is Apathy. Youth love the solitary couch, which it 
 surrounds with dreams. Age, or Experience (which is the 
 mind's age) loves the same couch for the rest which it affords ; 
 but the wide interval between is that of exertion, of labor, and
 
 DEVEREUX. 247 
 
 labor among"men. The woe which makesour//<w/j -less social, 
 often makes our habits more so. The thoughts, which in calm 
 would have shunned the world, are driven upon it by the tem- 
 pest, even as the birds which forsake the habitable land can, so 
 long as the wind sleeps, and the thunder rests within its cloud, 
 become the constant and solitary brooders over the waste sea : 
 but the moment the storm awakes, and the blast pursues them, 
 they fly, by an overpowering instinct, to some wandering bark, 
 some vestige of human and social life ; and exchange, even for 
 danger from the hands of men, the desert of an angry Heaven, 
 and the solitude of a storm. 
 
 I heard no more, either of Madame de Maintenon or the King. 
 Meanwhile, my flight and friendship with Lord Bolingbroke 
 had given me a consequence in the eyes of the exiled prince, 
 which I should not otherwise have enjoyed ; and I was honored 
 by very flattering overtures to enter actively into his service. I 
 have before said that I felt no enthusiasm in his cause, and I was 
 far from feeling it for his person. My ambition rather directed 
 its hopes towards a career in the service of France. France 
 was the country of my birth, and the country of my father's fame, 
 There no withering remembrances awaited me no private re- 
 grets were associated with its scenes and no public penalties with 
 its political institutions. And, although I had not yet received 
 any token of Louis's remembrance, in the ordinary routine of 
 court favors, expectation as yet would have been premature ; be- 
 sides, his royal fidelity to his word was proverbial ; and, sooner or 
 later, I indulged the hope to profit by the sort of promise he had 
 insinuated to me. I declined, therefore, with all due respect, 
 the offers of the Chevalier, and continued to live the life of idle- 
 ness and expectation, until Lord Bolingbroke returned to Paris, 
 and accepted the office of secretary of state in the service of the 
 Chevalier. As he has publicly declared his reasons, in this step, 
 I do not mean to favor the world with his private conversations 
 on the same subject. 
 
 A day or two after his return, I went with him to a party 
 given by a member of the royal family. The first person by 
 whom we were accosted and I rejoiced at it, for we could not 
 have been accosted by a more amusing one was Count Anthony 
 Hamilton. 
 
 " Ah ! my Lord Bolingbroke," said he, sauntering up to us ; 
 "howareyou? delighted to see you again. Do look at Madame 
 la Duchesse d'Orleans ? Saw you ever such a creature ? 
 Whither are you moving, my lord ? Ah ! see him, Count, see him, 
 gliding off to that pretty duchess, of course ; well, he has a
 
 248 DEVERF.UX. 
 
 beautiful bow.it must be owned why, you are not going too? 
 what would the world say if Count Anthony Hamilton were seen 
 left to himself? No, no, come and sit down by Madame de 
 Cornuel she longs to be introduced to you, and is one of the 
 wittiest women in Europe." 
 
 " With all my heart ! provided she employs her wit ill natured- 
 ly, and uses it in ridiculing other people, not praising herself." 
 
 " Oh ! nobody can be more satirical ; indeed, what difference 
 is there between wit and satire ? Come, Count ! " 
 
 And Hamilton introduced me forthwith to Madame de Cor- 
 nuel. She received me very politely ; and, turning to two or three 
 people who formed the circle round her, said, with the greatest 
 composure, " Messieurs, oblige me by seeking some other object 
 of attraction ; I wish to have a private conference with my 
 new friend." 
 
 " I may stay," said Hamilton. 
 
 " Ah ! certainly ; you are never in the way." 
 
 " In that respect, Madame," said Hamilton, taking snuff, and 
 bowing very low, " in that respect I must strongly remind you 
 of your excellent husband." 
 
 " Fie ! " cried Madame de Cornuel ; then, turning to me, she 
 said, "Ah! Monsieur if you could 'have come to Paris some 
 years ago, you would have been enchanted with us we are sadly 
 changed. Imagine the fine old King, thinking it wicked, not to 
 hear plays, but to hear flayers act them, and so making the royal 
 family a company of comedians. MonDieu! how villainously 
 they perform ! but do you know why I wished to be introduced 
 to you ?" 
 
 "Yes ! in order to have a new listener ; old listeners must be 
 almost as tedious as old news." 
 
 " Very shrewdly said, and not far from the truth. The fact is, 
 that I wanted to talk about all these fine people present, to some 
 one for whose ear my anecdotes would have the charm of novelty. 
 Let us begin with Louis Armand, Prince of Conti you see him?" 
 
 " What, that short-sighted, stout, and rather handsome man, 
 with a cast of countenance somewhat like the pictures of Henri 
 Quatre, who is laughing so merrily?" 
 
 "O del! how droll ! No, that handsome man is no less a 
 person than the Due d 'Orleans. You see a little ugly thing, like 
 an anatomized ape there, see hehasjust thrown clown a chair, 
 and, in stooping to pick it up, has almost fallen over the Dutch 
 ambassadress that is Louis Armand, Prince of Conti. Do 
 you know what the Due d'Orleans said to him the other day? 
 ' Mon bon a mi,' he said, pointing to the prince's limbs (did you
 
 DEVEREUX. 249 
 
 ever see such limbs out of a menagerie, by-the-by?) ' Mon bon 
 ami, it is a fine thing for you that the Psalmist has assured us 
 " that the Lord delighted! not in any man's legs.'" Nay, don't 
 laugh, it is quite true !" 
 
 It was now for Count Hamilton to lake up the ball of satire ; 
 he was [not a whit more merciful than the kind Madame deCor- 
 nuel. "The Prince," said he, " has so exquisite an awkward- 
 ness, that, whenever the King hears a noise, and inquires the 
 cause, the invariable answer is, that 'the Prince of Conti has 
 just tumbled down ! ' But, tell me, what do you think of Madame 
 d'Aumont? She is in the English head-dress, and looks tristc 
 a la mo rt ." 
 
 "She is rather pretty, to my taste." 
 
 " Yes," cried Madame de Cornuel, interrupting the gentle 
 Antoine (it did one's heart good to see how strenuously each 
 of them tried to talk more scandal than the other), "yes, she is 
 thought very pretty ; but I think her very like a fricandeau 
 white, soft, and insipid. She is always in tears," added the good- 
 natured Cornuel, " after her prayers, both at morning and even- 
 ing. I asked why ; and she answered, pretty simpleton, that 
 she was always forced to pray to be made good, and she feared 
 Heaven would take her at her word ! However, she has many 
 worshippers, and they call her the evening star." 
 
 "They should rather call her the Hyades ! " said Hamilton, 
 " if it be true that she sheds tears every morning and night, and 
 her rising and setting are thus always attended by rain." 
 
 " Bravo, Count Antoine ! she shall be so called in future," 
 said Madame de Cornuel. " But now, Monsieur Devereux, turn 
 your eyes to that hideous old woman." 
 
 "What! the Duchesse d'Orleans?" 
 
 ' The same. She is in full dress to-night; but in the day- 
 time you generally see her in a riding-habit and a man's wig ; 
 she is " 
 
 "Hist!" interrupted Hamilton "do you not tremble to think 
 what she would do if she overheard you ? she is such a terrible 
 creature at fighting ! You have no conception, Count, what an 
 arm she has. She know her ugliness, and laughs at it, as all 
 the rest of the world does. The king took her hand one day, 
 and said, smiling, ' What could Nature have meant when she 
 gave this hand to a German princess instead of a Dutch peasant?' 
 'Sire,' said the Duchesse, very gravely, 'Nature gave this hand 
 to a German princess for the purpose of boxing the ears of her 
 ladies in waiting ! ' ' 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " said Madame de Cornuel ; " one is never
 
 250 
 
 DEVEREUX. 
 
 at a loss for jokes upon a woman who eats salade an lard, and 
 declares that, whenever she is unhappy, her only consolation 
 is ham and sausages ! Her son treats her with the greatest 
 respect, and consults her in all his amours, for which she pro- 
 fesses the greatest horror, and which she retails to her cor- 
 respondents all over the world, in letters as long as her pedigree. 
 But you are looking at her son, is he not of a good mien ?" 
 
 " Yes, pretty well ; but does not exhibit to advantage by the 
 side of Lord Bolingbroke, with whom he is now talking. 1'ray, 
 who is the third personage that has just joined them ? " 
 
 "Oh, the wretch! it is the Abbe Dubois; a living proof of 
 the folly of the French proverb, which says that Mercurys 
 should not be made du bois. Never was there a Mercury equal 
 to the Abbe but, do look at that old man to the left he is one 
 of the most remarkable persons of the age." 
 
 "What ! he with the small features, and comely countenance, 
 considering his years?" 
 
 " The same," said Hamilton ; " it is the notorious Choisi. 
 You know that he is the modern Tiresias, and has been a wo- 
 man as well as man." 
 
 " How do you mean ? " 
 
 "Ah, you may well ask!" cried Madame de Cornuel. 
 " Why, he lived for many years in the disguise of a woman, 
 and had all sorts of curious adventures." 
 
 " Mori diablc ! " cried Hamilton: "it was entering your 
 ranks, Madame, as a spy. I hear he makes but a sorry report 
 of what he saw there." 
 
 " Come, Count Antoine," cried the lively de Cornuel, " we 
 must not turn our weapons against each other ; and when you 
 attack a woman's sex, you attack her individually. But what 
 makes you look so intently, Count Devereux, at that ugly 
 priest ? " 
 
 The person thus flatteringly designated was Montreuil ; he 
 had just caught my eye, among a group of men who were con- 
 versing eagerly. 
 
 " Hush, Madame ! " said I, " spare me for a moment " ; and 
 I rose, and mingled with the Abbe's companions. "So, you 
 have only arrived to-day," I heard one of them say to him. 
 
 " No, I could not dispatch my business before." 
 
 " And how are matters in England ?" 
 
 " Ripe ! if the life of his Majesty (of France) be spared a 
 year longer, we will send the Elector of Hanover back to his 
 principality." 
 
 "Hist!" said the companion, and looked towards me. Mon-
 
 DKVEREUX. 251 
 
 treuil ceased abruptly our eyes met his fell. I affected to 
 look among the group as if I had expected to find there some 
 one I knew, and then, turning away, I seated myself alone and 
 apart. There, unobserved, I kept my looks on Montreuil. I 
 remarked that, from time to time, his keen dark eye glanced 
 toward me, with a look rather expressive of vigilance than any- 
 thing else. Soon afterwards his little knot dispersed ; I saw 
 him converse for a few moments with Dubois, who received 
 him, I thought, distantly; and then he was engaged in a long 
 conference with the Bishop of Frejus, whom, till then, I had 
 not perceived among the crowd. 
 
 As I was loitering on the staircase, where I saw Montreuil 
 depart with the bishop, in the carriage of the latter, Hamilton, 
 accosting me, insisted on my accompanying him to Chaulieu's, 
 where a late supper awaited the sons of wine and wit. How- 
 ever, to the good Count's great astonishment, I preferred soli- 
 tude and reflection, for that night, to anything else. 
 
 Montreuil's visit to the French capital boded me no good. 
 He possessed great influence with Fleuri, and was in high es- 
 teem with Madame de Maintenon, and, in effect, very shortly 
 after his return to Paris, the Bishop- of Frejus looked upon me 
 with a most cool sort of benignancy ; and Madame de Mainte- 
 non told her friend, the Duchesse de St. Simon, that it was a 
 great pity a young nobleman of my birth and prepossessing 
 appearance (ay ! my prepossessing appearance would never 
 have occurred to the devotee, if I had not seemed so sen- 
 sible of Jier own) should not only be addicted to the wild- 
 est dissipation, but, worse still, to Jansenistical tenets. After 
 this, there was no hope for me, save in the King's word, which 
 his increasing infirmities/naturally engrossing his attention, pre- 
 vented my hoping too sanguinely would dwell very acutely on 
 his remembrance. I believe, however, so religiously scrupu- 
 lous was Louis upon a point of honor, that, had he lived, I 
 should have had nothing to complain of. As it was but I 
 anticipate ! Montreuil disappeared from Paris, almost as sud- 
 denly as he had appeared there. And, as drowning men catch 
 at a straw, so, finding my affairs at a very low ebb, I thought 
 I would take advice, even from Madame de Balzac. 
 
 I accordingly repaired to her hotel. She was at home, and, 
 fortunately, alone. 
 
 " You are welcome, won fds" said she : "suffer me to give 
 you that title you are welcome it is some days since I saw 
 you." 
 
 " I have numbered them, I assure you, Madame," said I,
 
 52 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " and they have crept with a dull pace ; but you know that 
 business has claims as well as pleasure ! " 
 
 "True!" said Madame de Balzac pompously; "I myself 
 find the weight of politics a little insupportable, though so used 
 to it ; to your young brain I can readily imagine how irksome 
 it must be ! " 
 
 " Would, Madame, that I could obtain your experience by 
 contagion : as it is I fear that I have profited little by my visit 
 to his Majesty. Madame de Maintenon will not see me, and 
 the Bishop of Frejus (excellent man!) has been seized with a sud- 
 den paralysis of memory, whenever I present myself in his way." 
 
 " That party will never do I thought not," said Madame 
 de Balzac, who was a wonderful imitator of the fly on the 
 wheel ; " my celebrity, and the knowledge that / loved you for 
 your father's sake, were, I fear, sufficient to destroy your in- 
 terest with the Jesuits and their tools. Well, well, we must re- 
 pair the mischief we have occasioned you. What place would 
 suit you best ? " 
 
 " Why, anything 'diplomatic. I would rather travel, at my 
 age, than remain in luxury and indolence even at Paris ! " 
 
 " Ah, nothing like diplomacy ! " said Madame de Balzac, with 
 the air of a Richelieu, and emptying her snuff-box at a pinch ; 
 " but have you, my son, the requisite qualities for that science, 
 as well as the tastes ? Are you capable of intrigue ? Can you 
 say one thing and mean another ? Are you aware of the im- 
 mense consequence of a look or a bow? Can you live like a 
 spider, in the centre of an inexplicable net inexplicable as 
 well as dangerous to all but the weaver ? That, my son, is 
 the art of politics that is to be a diplomatist ! " 
 
 " Perhaps, to one less penetrating than Madame de Balzac," 
 answered I, "I might, upon trial, not appear utterly ignorant of 
 the noble art of state duplicity which she has so eloquently 
 depicted." 
 
 " Possibly ! " said the good lady ; "it must indeed be a pro- 
 found dissimulator to deceive me" 
 
 " But what would you advise me to do in the present crisis ? 
 What party to adopt what individual to flatter ? " 
 
 Nothing, I already discovered, and have already observed, 
 did the inestimable Madame de Balzac dislike more than a 
 downright question she never answered it. 
 
 " Why, really/' said she, preparing herself for along speech, 
 " I am quite glad you consult me, and I will give you the best 
 advice in my power. Econtez done you have seen the Due 
 de Maine?"
 
 DEVEREUX. 253 
 
 "Certainly!" 
 
 " Hum ! ha ! it would be wise to follow him ; but you take 
 me you understand. Then, you know, my son, there is the 
 Due d'Orleans fond of pleasure full of talent but you 
 know there is a little what do you call it you understand. 
 As for the Due de Bourbon, 'tis quite a simpleton neverthe- 
 less we must consider nothing like consideration believe me, 
 no diplomatist ever hurries. As for Madame de Maintenon 
 you know, and I know too, that the Duchesse d'Orleans calls 
 her an old hag but then a word to the wise Eh ? what 
 shall we say to Madame the Duchesse herself? what a fat 
 woman she is but excessively clever such a letter-writer ! 
 Well you see, my dear young friend, that it is a very difficult 
 matter to decide upon but you must already be fully aware 
 what plan I should advise." ( . 
 
 "Already, Madame ! " 
 
 "To be sure! What have I been saying to you all this 
 time ? did you not hear me ? Shall I repeat my advice ? " 
 
 " Oh, no ! I perfectly comprehend you now ; you would ad- 
 vise me in short to to do as well as I can." 
 
 " You have said it, my son. I thought you would under- 
 stand me on a little reflection." 
 
 " To be sure to be sure," said I. 
 
 And three ladies being announced, my conference with 
 Madame de Balzac ended. 
 
 I now resolved to wait a little till the tides of power seemed 
 somewhat more settled, and I could ascertain in what quarter 
 to point my bark of enterprise. I gave myself rather more 
 eagerly to society, in proportion as my political schemes were 
 suffered to remain torpid. My mind could not remain quiet, 
 without preying on itself ; and no evil appeared to me so great 
 as tranquillity. Thus the spring and earlier summer passed 
 on, till, in August, the riots preceding the Rebellion broke 
 out in Scotland. At this time I saw but little of Lord Boling- 
 broke in private ; though, with his characteristic affectation, 
 he took care that the load of business, with which he was really 
 oppressed, should not prevent his enjoyment of all gayeties in 
 public. And my indifference to the cause of the Chevalier, in 
 which he was so warmly engaged, threw a natural restraint 
 upon our conversation, and produced an involuntary coldness 
 in our intercourse so impossible is it for men to be private 
 friends who differ on a public matter. 
 
 One evening I was engaged to meet a large party, at a 
 country-house about forty miles from Paris. I went, and stayed
 
 254 DEVEREUX. 
 
 some days. My horses had accompanied me ; and, when 1 
 left the chateau, I resolved to make the journey to Paris on 
 horseback. Accordingly, I ordered my carriage to follow me. 
 and attended by a single groom commenced my expedition. 
 It was a beautiful still morning the first day of the first month 
 of autumn. I had proceeded about ten miles, when I fell in 
 with an old French officer. I remember though I never saw 
 him but that once I remember his face as if I had encountered 
 it yesterday. It was thin and long, and yellow enough to have 
 served as a caricature, rather than a portrait, of Don Quixote. 
 He had a hook nose, and a long, sharp chin ; and all the lines, 
 wrinkles, curves and furrows, of which the human visage is 
 capable, seemed to have met in his cheeks. Nevertheless, his 
 eye was bright and keen his look alert and his whole bear- 
 ing firm, gallant, and soldier-like. He was attired in a sort of 
 military undress wore a mustachio, which, though thin and 
 gray, was carefully curled; and at the summit of a very re- 
 spectable wig was perched a small cocked-hat, adorned with a 
 black feather. He rode very upright in his saddle ; and his 
 horse, a steady, stalwart quadruped of the Norman breed, with 
 a terribly long tail, and a prodigious breadth of chest, yut one 
 stately leg before another in a kind of trot, which, though it 
 seemed, from its height of action, and the proud look of the 
 steed, a pretension to motion more than ordinarily brisk, was, 
 in fact, a little slower than a common walk. 
 
 This noble cavalier seemed sufficiently an object of curiosity 
 to my horse to induce the animal to testify his surprise by shy- 
 ing, very jealously and very vehemently, in passing him. This 
 ill- breed ing on his part was indignantly returned on the part 
 of the Norman charger, who, uttering a sort of squeak, and 
 shaking his long mane and head, commenced a series of curvets 
 and capers which cost the old Frenchman no little trouble to 
 appease. In the midst of these equine freaks, the horse came 
 so near me as to splash my nether garment, with a liberality as 
 little ornamental as it was pleasurable. 
 
 The old Frenchman, seeing this, took off his cocked hat very 
 politely, and apologized for the accident. I replied with equal 
 courtesy ; and, as our horses slid into quiet, their riders slid 
 into conversation. It was begun and chiefly sustained by my 
 new comrade ; for I am little addicted to commence unneces- 
 sary socialities myself, though I should think very meanly of 
 my pretensions to the name of a gentleman and a courtier, if I 
 did not return them when offered, even by a beggar. 
 
 "It is a fine horse of yours, Monsieur," said the old French-
 
 DEVEREUX. 255 
 
 man, "but I cannot believe pardon me for saying so that 
 your slight English steeds are so well adapted to the purposes 
 of Avar as our strong chargers such as mine for example." 
 
 " It is very possible, Monsieur," said I. " Has the horse you 
 now ride done service in the field as well as on the road ? " 
 
 "Ah! le pauvre petit mignon no!" (petit, indeed this 
 little darling was seventeen hands high at the very least) "no, 
 Monsieur ; it is but a young creature this his grandfather 
 served me well ! " 
 
 " I need not ask you, Monsieur, if you have borne arms the 
 soldier is stamped upon you ! " 
 
 "Sir, you flatter me highly !" said the old gentleman, blush- 
 ing to the very tip of his long lean ears, and bowing as low as 
 if I had called him a Conde ; "I have followed the profession 
 of arms for more than fifty years." 
 
 " Fifty years 'tis a long time ! " 
 
 "A long time," rejoined my companion, "along time to look 
 back upon with regret." 
 
 " Regret ! by Heaven I should think the remembrance of 
 fifty years' excitement and glory would be a remembrance of 
 triumph." 
 
 The old man turned round on his saddle, and looked at me 
 for some moments very wistfully " You are young, sir," he 
 said, " and at your years I should have thought with you 
 but " (then abruptly changing his voice he continued) " Tri- 
 umph, did you say ? sir, I have had three sons ; they are dead 
 they died in battle I did not weep I did not shed a tear, 
 sir not a tear ! But I will tell you when I did weep. I came 
 back, an old man, to the home I had left as a young one. I 
 saw the country a desert. I saw that the noblesse had become 
 tyrants the peasants had become slaves such slaves savage 
 from despair even when they were most gay, most fearfully 
 gay, from constitution. . Sir, I saw the priest rack and grind, 
 and the seigneur exact and pillage, and the tax-gatherer squeeze 
 out the little the other oppressors had left : anger, discontent, 
 wretchedness, famine, a terrible separation between one order 
 of people and another an incredible indifference to the mis- 
 eries of their depotism caused, on the part of the aristocracy 
 a sullen and vindictive hatred for the perpetration of those 
 miseries on the part of the people all places sold even all 
 honors priced, at the court, which was become a public mar- 
 ket a province of peasants of living men bartered for a few 
 livres, and literally passed from one hand to another to be 
 squeezed and drained anew by each new possessor in a word,
 
 256 DEVEREUX. 
 
 sir, an abandoned court, an unredeemed noblesse unredeemed, 
 sir, by a single benefit which, in other countries, even the most 
 feudal, the vassal obtains from the master a peasantry fam- 
 ished a nation loaded with debt, which it sought to pay by 
 tears, these are what I saw these are the consequences of 
 that heartless and miserable vanity, from -which arose wars 
 neither useful nor honorable these are the real components 
 of that triumph, as you term it, which you wonder that I 
 regret." 
 
 Now, although it was impossible to live at the court of Louis 
 XIV. in his latter days, and not feel, from the general discon- 
 tent that prevailed even there, what a dark truth the old soldier's 
 speech contained yet I was somewhat surprised by an enthusi- 
 asm so little military in a person whose bearing and air were 
 so conspicuously martial. 
 
 " You draw a melancholy picture," said I ; " and the wretch- 
 ed state of culture which the lands that we now pass through 
 exhibit, is a witness how little exaggeration there is in your 
 coloring. However, these are but the ordinary evils of war, 
 and, if your country endures them, do not forget that she has 
 also inflicted them. Remember what France did to Holland, 
 and own that it is but a retribution that France should now 
 find that the injury we do to others is (among nations as well 
 as individuals) injury to ourselves." 
 
 My old Frenchman curled his moustaches with the finger 
 and thumb of his left hand ; this was rather too subtle a dis- 
 tinction for him. 
 
 "That may be true enough, Monsieur," said he; "but, mor- 
 bleu, those maudits Dutchmen deserved what they sustained at 
 our hands. No, sir, no I am not so base as to forget the 
 glory my country acquired, though I weep for her wounds." 
 
 " I do not quite understand you, sir," said I ; "did you not 
 just now confess that the wars you had witnessed were neither 
 honorable nor useful ? What glory, then, was to be acquired 
 in a war of that character, even though it was so delightfully 
 animated by cutting the throats of ' those maudits Dutchmen ' ? " 
 
 "Sir," answered the Frenchman, drawing himself up, "you 
 do not understand me. When we punished Holland, we did 
 rightly. We conquered !" 
 
 "Whether you conquered, or not (for the good folk of Hol- 
 land are not so sure of the fact)," answered I, "that war was 
 the most unjust in which your king was ever engaged ; but 
 pray, tell me, sir, what war it is that you lament." 
 
 The Frenchman frowned whistled put out his under lip, in
 
 DEVEREUX. 257 
 
 a sort of angry embarrassment and then, spurring his great 
 horse into a curvet, said, 
 
 " That last war with the English ! " 
 
 "Faith," said /, "that was the justest of all." 
 
 " Just ! " cried the Frenchman, halting abruptly, and darting 
 at me a glance of fire, "just ! no more, sir ! no more ! I was 
 at Blenheim, and at Ramiilies ! " 
 
 As the old warrior said the last words, his voice faltered ; 
 and though I could not help inly smiling at the confusion of 
 ideas, by which wars were just or unjust, according as they 
 were fortunate or not, yet I respected his feelings enough to 
 turn away my face, and remain silent. 
 
 " Yes," renewed my comrade, coloring with evident shame, 
 and drawing his cocked hat over his brows, "yes I received my 
 last wound at Ramiilies. 77ieu my eyes were opened to the 
 horrors of war ; then I saw and cursed the evils of ambition ; 
 then I resolved to retire from the armies of a king who had lost 
 forever his name, his glory, and his country." 
 
 Was there ever a better type of the French nation than this 
 old soldier? As long as fortune smiles on them, it is " Marchons 
 audiable!" and " Vive la gloire ! " Directly they get beat, it 
 is " Ma pauvre patrie ! " and "Lex calamite's aff reuses de la 
 guerre /" 
 
 "However," said I, "the old King is drawing near the end 
 of his days, and is said to express his repentance at the evils 
 his ambition has occasioned." 
 
 The old soldier shoved back his hat, and offered me his 
 snuff-box. I judged by this that he was a little mollified. 
 
 "Ah!" he renewed, after a pause, "Ah ! times are sadly 
 changed, since the year 1667; when the young King he 
 was young then took the field, in Flanders, under the great 
 Turenne. Sadistic! What a hero he looked upon his white 
 war-horse ! I would have gone ay, and the meanest and 
 backwardest soldier in the camp would have gone into the 
 very mouth of the cannon, for a look from that magnificent 
 countenance, or a word from that mouth which knew so well 
 what words were ! Sir, there Avas in the war of '72, when we 
 were at peace with Great Britain, an English gentleman, then 
 in the army, afterwards a marshal of France : I remember, as 
 if it were yesterday, how gallantly he behaved. The King sent 
 to compliment him after some signal proof of courage and con- 
 duct, and asked what reward he would have. 'Sire,' answered 
 the Englishman, 'give me the white plume you wore this day.' 
 From that moment the Englishman's fortune was made."
 
 258 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " The flattery went farther than the valor!" said I, smiling 
 as I recognized in the anecdote the first great step which 
 my father had made in the ascent of fortune. 
 
 " Sacristie! " cried the Frenchman, "it was no flattery then, 
 We so idolized the King, that mere truth would have seemed 
 disloyalty; and we no more thought that praise, however ex- 
 travagant, was adulation, when directed to him, than we should 
 have thought there was adulation in the praise we would have 
 given to our first mistress. But it is all changed now! Who 
 now cares for the old priest-ridden monarch ? " 
 
 And upon this the veteran, having conquered the momentary 
 enthusiasn which there membrance of the King's earlier glories 
 had excited, transferred all his genius of description to the op- 
 posite side of the question, and declaimed, with great energy, 
 upon the royal vices and errors, which were so charming in 
 prosperity, and were now so detestable in adversity. 
 
 While we were thus conversing we approached Versailles. 
 We thought the vicinity of the town seemed unusually deserted. 
 We entered the main street crowds were assembled a uni- 
 versal murmur was heard excitement sat on every countenance. 
 Here an old crone was endeavoring to explain something, evi- 
 dently beyond his comprehension, to a child of three years old; 
 who, with open mouth and fixed eyes, seemed to make up in 
 wonder for the want of intelligence ; there a group of old dis- 
 banded soldiers occupied the way, and seemed, from their mut- 
 tered conversations, to vent a sneer and a jest at a priest, who, 
 with downward countenance and melancholy air, was hurrying 
 along. 
 
 One young fellow was calling out " At least, it is a holyday, 
 and I shall go to Paris ! " and, as a contrast to him, an old 
 withered artisan, leaning on a gold-headed cane, with sharp 
 avarice eloquent in every line of his face, muttered out to a fel- 
 low miser " No business to-day no money, John no money ! " 
 One knot of women of all ages, close by which my horse passed, 
 was entirely occupied with a single topic, and that so vehe- 
 mently,that I heard the leading words of the discussion. " Mourn- 
 ing becoming what fashion? how long? O del ! " Thus 
 do follies weave themselves round the bier of death ! 
 
 " What is the news, gentlemen ? " said I. 
 
 "News what, you have not heard it? The King is dead J " 
 
 "Louis dead Louis the Great, dead!" cried my com- 
 panion. 
 
 " Louis the Great ! " said a sullen-looking man "Louis the 
 persecutor ! "
 
 DEVEREUX. 259 
 
 "Ah, he's a Huguenot ! " cried another with haggard cheeks 
 and hollow eyes, scowling at the last speaker. " Never mind 
 what lie says the King was right when he refused protection 
 to the Heretics but was he right when he levied such taxes 
 on the Catholics ?" 
 
 " Hush ! " said a third " hush it may be unsafe to speak 
 there are spies about ; for my part, I think it was all the fault 
 of the Noblesse." 
 
 " And the Favorites ! " cried a soldier fiercely. 
 
 " And the Harlots ! " cried a hag of eighty. 
 
 "And the Priests! " muttered the Huguenot. 
 
 " And the Tax-gatherers !" added the lean Catholic. 
 
 We rode slowly on. My comrade was evidently and power- 
 fully affected. 
 
 " So he is dead ! " said he. " Dead ! well well peace be 
 with him. He conquered in Holland he humbled Genoa 
 he dictated to Spain he commanded Conde and Turenne 
 he Bah ! What is all this?" (then, turning abruptly to 
 me, my companion cried) " I did not speak against the King, 
 did I, sir? " 
 
 " Not much." 
 
 " I am glad of that yes, very glad ! " And the old man 
 glared fiercely round on a troop of boys, who were audibly 
 abusing the dead lion. 
 
 " I would have bit out my tongue, rather than it had joined 
 in the base joy of these yelping curs. Heavens ! when I think 
 what shouts I have heard when the name of that man, then 
 deemed little less than a god, was but breathed ! and now 
 why do you look at me, sir? My eyes are moist I know it, 
 sir I know it. The old, battered, broken soldier, who made 
 his first campaigns, when that which is now dust was the idol 
 of France, and the pupil of Turenne the old soldier's eyes 
 shall not be dry, though there is not another tear shed in the 
 whole of this great empire." 
 
 " Your three sons ! " said I ; " you did not weep for them ? " 
 
 " No, sir I loved them when I was old ; but I loved Louis 
 when I was young ! " 
 
 " Your oppressed and pillaged country ! " said I " think of 
 that." 
 
 " No, sir, I will not think of it ! " cried the old warrior in a 
 passion. "I will not think of it to-day, at least." 
 
 "You are right, my brave friend; in the grave let us bury 
 even public wrongs but let us not bury their remembrance. 
 May the joy we read in every face that we pass joy at the
 
 2 6o DEVEREUX. 
 
 death of one whom idolatry once almost seemed to deem im- 
 mortal be a lesson to future kings ! " 
 
 My comrade did not immediately answer ; but, after a pause, 
 and we had turned our backs upon the town, he said : 
 
 " Toy sir you spoke of joy ! Yes, we are Frenchmen we 
 forewe our rulers easily for private vices and petty faults ; but 
 we never forgive them if they commit the greatest of faults, 
 and suffer a stain to rest upon " 
 
 " What ? " I asked, as my comrade broke oft. 
 
 "The national glory, Monsieur ! " said he. 
 
 " You have hit it," said I, smiling at the turgid sentiment 
 which was so really and deeply felt. " And had you written 
 folios upon the character of your countrymen, you could not 
 have expressed it better." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 In which there is reason to fear that Princes are not invariably free from 
 Human Peccadillos. 
 
 ON entering Paris, my veteran fellow-traveller took leave of 
 me, and I proceeded to my hotel. When the first excitement 
 of my thoughts was a little subsided, and after some feelings of 
 a more public nature, I began to consider what influence the 
 King's death was likely to have on my own fortunes : I coul 
 not but see, at a glance, that for the cause of the Chevalier, and 
 the destiny of his present exertions in Scotland, it was the most 
 fatal event that could have occurred. 
 
 The balance of power, in the contending factions of France, 
 would, I foresaw, lie entirely between the Duke of Orleans and 
 the legitimatized children of the late King; the latter, closely 
 leagued as they were with Madame de Maintenon, could not 
 be much disposed to consider the welfare of Count Devereux ; 
 and my wishes, therefore, naturally settled on the former, I 
 was not doomed to a long suspense. Every one knows, that 
 the very next day the Duke of Orleans appeared before Parliar- 
 ment, and was proclaimed Regent that the will of the late 
 king was set aside and that the Duke of Maine suddenly be- 
 came as low in power as he had always been despicable in 
 intellect. A little hubbub ensued people in general laughed 
 at the Regent's finesse and the more sagacious admired the - 
 courage and address of which the finesse was composed. The 
 Regent's mother wrote a letter of sixty-nine pages about it ; 
 and the Duchess of Maine boxed the. duke's ears; very heartily 
 
 -
 
 DEVEREUX. 261 
 
 for not being as clever as herself. All Paris teemed with joyous 
 forebodings ; and the Regent, whom every one, some time ago, 
 had suspected of poisoning his cousins, every one now declared 
 to be the most perfect prince that could possibly be imagined, 
 and the very picture of Henri Quatre, in goodness as well as in 
 physiognomy. Three days after this event, one happened to 
 myself, with which my public career may be said to commence. 
 
 I had spent the evening at a house in a distant part of Paris, 
 and, invited by the beauty of the night, had dismissed my car- 
 riage, and was walking home alone, and on foot. Occupied 
 with my reflections, and not very well acquainted with the 
 dangerous and dark streets of Paris, in which it was very rare 
 for those who have carriages to wander on foot, I insensibly 
 strayed from my proper direction. When I first discovered 
 this disagreeable fact, I was in a filthy and obscure lane rather 
 than street, which I did not remember having ever honored 
 with my presence before. While I was pausing in the vain 
 hope and anxious endeavor to shape out some imaginary chart 
 some " map of the mind," by which to direct my bewildered 
 course, I heard a confused noise proceed from another lane at 
 right angles with the one in which I then was. I listened the 
 sound became more distinct I recognized human voices in 
 loud and angry altercation a moment more, and there was a 
 scream. Though I did not attach much importance to the 
 circumstance, 1 thought I might as well approach nearer to the 
 quarter of noise. I walked to the door of the house from which 
 the scream proceeded ; it was very small, and mean. Just as 
 I neared it, a window was thrown open, and a voice cried 
 "Help ! help ! for God's sake, help ! " 
 
 " What's the matter ? " I asked. 
 
 "Whoever you are, save us!" cried the voice, " and that 
 instantly, or we shall be murdered": and, the moment after, 
 the voice ceased abruptly, and was succeeded by the clashing 
 of swords. 
 
 I beat loudly at the door I shouted out no answer ; the 
 scuffle within seemed to increase ; I saw a small blind alley to 
 the left ; one of the unfortunate women, to whom such places 
 are homes, was standing in it. 
 
 " What possibility is there of entering the house?" tasked. 
 
 "Oh!" said she, " it does not matter; it is not the first 
 time gentlemen have cut each other's throats there." 
 
 "What ! is it a house of bad repute? " 
 
 " Yes ; and where there are bullies who wear knives, and 
 take purses as well as ladies, who "
 
 262 DEVEKEUX. 
 
 "Good heavens!" cried I, interrupting her, "there is no 
 time to be lost. Is there no way of entrance but at this 
 door?" 
 
 " Yes, if you are bold enough to enter at another ! " 
 
 " Where ? " 
 
 " Down this alley." 
 
 Immediately I entered the alley the woman pointed to a 
 small, dark, narrow flight of stairs I ascended the sounds 
 increased in loudness. I mounted to the second flight alight 
 streamed from a door the clashing of swords was distinctly 
 audible within I broke open the door, and found myself a 
 witness and intruder in a scene at once ludicrous and fearful. 
 
 A table, covered with bottles and the remnants of a meal, 
 was in the centre of the room ; several articles of women's 
 dress were scattered over the floor ; two women of unequivocal 
 description were clinging to a man richly dressed, and who 
 having fortunately got behind an immense chair, that had been 
 overthrown, probably in the scuffle, managed to keep off with 
 awkward address a fierce-looking fellow, who had less scope 
 for the ability of his sword-arm, from the circumstance of his 
 attempting to pull away the chair with his left hand. When- 
 ever he stooped to effect this object, his antagonist thrust at 
 him very vigorously, and had it not been for the embarrassment 
 his female enemies occasioned him, the latter would, in all 
 probability, have dispatched or disabled his besieger. This 
 fortified gentleman, being backed by the window, I immediately 
 concluded to be the person who had called to me for assistance. 
 
 At the other corner of the apartment was another cavalier, 
 who used his sword with singular skill, but who, being hard 
 pressed by two lusty fellows, was forced to employ that skill 
 rather in defence than attack. Altogether, the disordered 
 appearance of the room, the broken bottles, the fumes with 
 which the hot atmosphere teemed, the evident profligacy of the 
 two women, the half -undressed guise of the cavaliers, and the 
 ruffian air and collected ferocity of the assailants, plainly denoted 
 that it was one of those perilous festivals of pleasure in which 
 imprudent gallants were often, in that day, betrayed by treacher- 
 ous Delilahs into the hands of Philistines, who, not contented 
 with stripping them for the sake of plunder, frequently mur- 
 dered them for the sake of secrecy. 
 
 Having taken a rapid, but satisfactory, survey of the scene, 
 I did not think it necessary to make any preparatory parley. 
 I threw myself upon the nearest bravo with so hearty a good 
 will that I ran him through the body before he had recovered
 
 DEVfcREUX. 263 
 
 his surprise at my appearance. This somewhat startled the 
 other two ; they drew back and demanded quarter. 
 
 " Quarter, indeed ! " cried the farther cavalier, releasing 
 himself from his astonished female assailants, and leaping 
 nimbly over his bulwark, into the centre of the room " quarter, 
 indeed, rascally ivrognes ! No ; it is our turn now ; and, by 
 Joseph of Arimathea ! you shall sup with Pilate to night." 
 So saying, he pressed his old assailant so fiercely that,. after a 
 short contest, the latter retreated till he had backed himself to 
 the door ; he then suddenly turned round, and vanished in a 
 twinkling. The third and remaining ruffian was far from 
 thinking himself a match for three men : he fell on his knees, 
 and implored mercy. However the ci-devant sustainer of the 
 besieged chair was but little disposed to afford him the clemency 
 he demanded, and approached the crestfallen bravo with so 
 grim an air of truculent delight, brandishing his sword, and 
 uttering the most terrible threats, that there would have been 
 small doubt of the final catastrophe of the trembling bully, had 
 not the other gallant thrown himself in the way of his friend. 
 
 " Put up thy sword," said he, laughing, and yet with an air 
 of command ; "we must not court crime, and then punish it." 
 Then, turning to the bully, he said. " Rise, Sir Rascal ! the 
 devil spares thee a little longer, and this gentleman will not 
 disobey his, as well as thy master's wishes. Begone ! " 
 
 The fellow wanted no second invitation : he sprang to his 
 legs, and to the door. The disappointed cavalier assisted his 
 descent down the stairs with a kick, that would have done the 
 work of the sword to any flesh not accustomed to similar 
 applications. Putting up his rapier, the milder gentleman then 
 turned to the ladies, who lay huddled together under shelter of 
 the chair which their intended victim had deserted. 
 
 " Ah, Mesdames," said he, gravely, and with a low bow, " I 
 am sorry for your disappointment. As long as you contented 
 yourselves with robbery, it were a shame to have interfered 
 with your innocent amusements ; but cold steel becomes serious. 
 Monsieur d'Argenson will favor you with some inquiries to- 
 morrow ; at present, I recommend you to empty what remains 
 in the bottle. Adieu ! Monsieur, to whom I am so greatly 
 indebted, honor me with your arm down these stairs. You " 
 (turning to his friend) "will follow us, and keep a sharp look 
 behind. Allans! Vive Henri Qtiaire ! " 
 
 As we descended the dark and rough stairs, my new com- 
 panion said, " What an excellent antidote to the effects of the 
 vin de champagne is this same fighting. I feel as if I had not
 
 264 DEVEREUX." 
 
 tasted a drop these six hours. What fortune brought you 
 hither, Monsieur?" addressing me. 
 
 We were now at the foot of the first flight of stairs, a high 
 and small window admitted the moonlight, and we saw each 
 others' faces clearly. 
 
 " That fortune," answered I, looking at my acquaintance 
 steadily, but with an expression of profound respect " that 
 fortune which watches over kingdoms, and which, I trust, may 
 in no place or circumstance be a deserter from your Highness." 
 
 " Highness ! " said my companion, coloring, and darting a 
 glance, first at his friend and then at me. "Hist sir, you 
 know me, then speak low you know, then, for whom you 
 have drawn your sword ? " 
 
 "Yes, so please your Highness. I have drawn it this night 
 for Philip of Orleans ; I trust yet, in another scene, and for 
 another cause, to draw it for the Regent of France ! " 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A Prince an Audience and a Secret Embassy. 
 
 THE Regent remained silent for a moment ; he then said in 
 an altered and grave voice, " C'est bien, Monsieur ! I thank you 
 for the distinction you have made. It were not amiss" (he 
 added, turning to his comrade) " that you would now and then 
 deign, henceforward, to make the same distinction. But this 
 is neither time nor place for parlance. On, gentlemen ! " 
 
 We left the house, passed into the street, and moved on 
 rapidly, and in silence, till the constitutional gaiety of the Duke, 
 recovering its ordinary tone, he said with a laugh 
 
 " Well, now, it is a little hard that a man who has been toil- 
 ing all day for the public good should feel ashamed of indulg- 
 ing for an hour or two at night in his private amusements ; but 
 so it is. ' Once grave, always grave ! ' is the maxim of the 
 world eh, Chatran ? " 
 
 The companion bowed. "Tis a very good saying, please 
 your royal Highness, and is intended to warn us from the sin 
 of ever being grave ! " 
 
 " Ha, ha ! you have a great turn for morality, my good 
 Chatran ! '' cried the Duke, "and would draw a rule for con- 
 duct out of the wickedest bon mot of Dubois. Monsieur, par- 
 don me, but I have seen you before : you are the Count " 
 
 "Devereux, Monseigneur."
 
 >EVEREUX. 265 
 
 "True, true! I have heard much of you : you are intimate 
 with Milord Bolingbroke. Would that I had fifty friends like 
 him." 
 
 " Monseigneur would have little trouble in his regency if his 
 wish were realized," said Chatran. 
 
 " Tantmieux, so long as I had little odium, as well as little 
 trouble a happiness which, thanks to you and Dubois, I am 
 not likely to enjoy But there is the carriage ! " 
 
 And the Duke pointed to a dark, plain carriage, which we 
 had suddenly come upon. 
 
 " Count Devereux," said the merry Regent, "you will enter ; 
 my duty requires that, at this seductive hour, I should see 
 a young gentleman of your dangerous age safely lodged at his 
 hotel ! " 
 
 We entered, Chatran gave the orders, and we drove off rapidly. 
 
 The Regent hummed a tune, and his two companions listened 
 to it in respectful silence. 
 
 " Well, well, Messieurs," said he, bursting out at last into 
 open voice, " I will ever believe in future, that the gods rf^look 
 benignantly on us worshippers of the Alma Venus ! Do you 
 know much of Tibullus, Monsieur Devereux ? And can you 
 assist my memory with the continuation of the line 
 
 " ' Quisquis amore tenetur, eat ' " 
 
 " ' tutusque sacerque 
 
 Qualibet, insidias non timuisse decet. ' " * 
 
 answered I. 
 
 "Bon!" cried the duke. " I love a gentleman from my very 
 soul, when he can both fight well and read Latin ! I hate a 
 man who is merely a wine-bibber and blade-drawer. By St. 
 Louis, though it is an excellent thing to fill the stomach, 
 especially with Tokay, yet there is no reason in the world why 
 we should not fill the head too. But here we are. Adieu, 
 Monsieur Devereux we shall see you at the Palace." 
 
 I expressed my thanks briefly at the Regent's condescension, 
 descended from the carriage (which instantly drove off with 
 renewed celerity), and once more entered my hotel. 
 
 Two or three days after my adventure with the Regent, I 
 thought it expedient to favor that eccentric prince with a visit. 
 During the early part of his regency, it is well known how suc- 
 cessfully he combated with his natural indolence, and how 
 devotedly his mornings were surrendered to the toils of his 
 new office ; but when pleasure has grown habit, it requires a 
 
 * Whoever is possessed by Love may go safe and holy whithersoever he likes. It become* 
 not him to fear snares.
 
 266 DEVEREUX. 
 
 stronger mind than that of Philippe Debonnalr to give it a 
 permanent successor in business. Pleasure is, indeed, like the 
 genius of the fable, the most useful of slaves, while you subdue 
 it : the most intolerable of tyrants the moment your negligence 
 suffers it to subdue you. 
 
 The hours in which the Prince gave audience to the com- 
 rades of his lighter, rather than grave occupations, were those 
 immediately before and after his levee. I thought that this 
 would be the best season for me to present myself. Accord- 
 ingly, one morning after the levee, I repaired to his palace. 
 
 The ante-chamber was already crowded. I sat myself quietly 
 down in one corner of the room, and looked upon the motley 
 groups around. I smiled inly as they reminded me of the 
 scenes my own anle-room, in my younger days of folly and 
 fortune was wont to exhibit ; the same heterogeneous assem- 
 blage (only upon a grander scale) of the ministers to the physi- 
 cal appetites and the mental tastes. There was the fretting 
 and impudent mountebank, side by side with the gentle and 
 and patient scholar the harlot's envoy and the priest's mes- 
 senger the agent of the police, and the licensed breaker of its 
 laws there; but what boots a more prolix description? 
 What is the ante-room of a great man, who has many wants 
 and many tastes, but a panorama of the blended disparities of 
 this compounded world.) 
 
 While I was moralizing, a gentleman suddenly thrust his 
 head out of a door, and appeared to reconnoitre us. Instantly 
 the crowd swept up to him. I thought I might as well follow 
 the general example, and pushing aside some of my fellow loit- 
 erers, I presented myself and my name to the gentleman, with 
 the most ingratiating air I could command. 
 
 The gentleman, who was tolerably civil for a great man's 
 great man, promised that my visit should be immediately an- 
 nounced to the Prince ; and then, with the politest bow imagi- 
 nable, slapped the door in my face. After I had waited about 
 seven or eight minutes longer, the gentleman reappeared, 
 singled me from the crowd, and desired me to follow him ; I 
 passed through another room, and was presently in the Regent's 
 presence. 
 
 I was rather startled when I saw, by the morning light, and 
 in deshabille, the person of that royal martyr to dissipation. 
 His countenance was red, but bloated, and a weakness in his 
 eyes added considerably to the jaded and haggard expression 
 of his features. A proportion of stomach rather inclined to 
 corpulency seemed to betray the taste for the pleasures of the
 
 DEVEREUX. 267 
 
 table, which the most radically coarse, and yet (strange to say) 
 the most generally accomplished and really good-natured of 
 royal profligates, combined with his other qualifications. He 
 was yawning very elaborately over a great heap of papers, when 
 I entered. He finished his yawn (as if it were too brief and 
 too precious a recreation to lose), and then said, " Good morn- 
 ing, Monsieur Devereux ; I am glad that you have found me 
 out at last." 
 
 " I was afraid, Monseigneur, of appearing an intruder on 
 your presence, by offering my homage to you before." 
 
 "So like my good fortune," said the Regent, turning to a 
 man seated at another table at some distance, whose wily, 
 astute countenance, piercing eye, and licentious expression of 
 lip and brow indicated at once the ability and vice which com- 
 posed his character. "So like my good fortune, is it not Du- 
 bois ? If ever I meet with a tolerably pleasant fellow, who 
 does not disgrace me by his birth or reputation, he is always 
 so terribly afraid of intruding ! and whenever I pick up a 
 respectable personage without wit, or a wit without respecta- 
 bility, he attaches himself to me like a burr, and can't live a 
 day without inquiring after my health." 
 
 Dubois smiled, bowed, but did not answer, and I saw that 
 his look was bent darkly and keenly upon me. 
 
 " Well," said the Prince, " what think you of our opera, Count 
 Devereux ? It beats your English one eh ?" 
 
 "Ah, certainly, Monseigneur; ours is but a reflection of yours." 
 
 " So says your friend, Milord Bolingbroke, a person who 
 knows about operas almost as much as I do, which, vanity 
 apart, is saying a great deal. I should like very well to visit 
 England what should I learn best there ? In Spain (I shall 
 always love Spain), I learnt to cook." 
 
 " Monseigneur, I fear," answered I, smiling, " could obtain 
 but little additional knowledge in that art in our barbarous 
 country. A few rude and imperfect inventions have, indeed, 
 of late years astonished the cultivators of the science ; but 
 the night of ignorance rests still upon its main principles and 
 leading truths. Perhaps, what Monseigneur would find best 
 worth studying in England would be the women." 
 
 "Ah, the women all over the world ! " cried the Duke, laugh- 
 ing ; "but I hear your belles Anglaiscs are sentimental, and love 
 blArcadienne" 
 
 " It is true at present : but who shall say how far Monseign- 
 eur's example might enlighten them in a train of thought so 
 erroneous ? "
 
 268 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " True. Nothing like example, eh, Dubois ? What would 
 Philip of Orleans have been but for thee?" 
 
 4 ' ' L'exemple souvent n'est qu'un miroir trompeur ; 
 Quelquefoib 1'un se brise ou 1'autre s'est sauve, 
 Et par ou 1'un peril, un autre est conserve,' " * 
 
 answered Dubois out of Cinna. 
 
 "Corneille is right," rejoined the Regent. "After all, to do 
 thee justice, mon petit Abb^ example has little to do with cor- 
 rupting us. Nature pleads the cause of Pleasure, as Hype- 
 rides pleaded that of Phyrne. She has no need of eloquence : 
 she unveils the bosom of her client, and her client is acquitted." 
 
 " Monseigneur shows at least that he has learnt to profit by 
 my humble instructions in the classics," said Dubois. 
 
 The Duke did not answer. I turned my eyes to some draw- 
 ings on the table I expressed my admiration of them. " They 
 are mine," said the Regent. "Ah ! I should have been much 
 more accomplished as a private gentleman than I fear I ever 
 shall be as a public man of toil and business. Business bah ! 
 But Necessity is the only real sovereign in the world, the only 
 despot for whom there is no law. What ! are you going 
 already, Count Devereux?" 
 
 " Monseigneur's anti-room is crowded with less fortunate 
 persons than myself, whose sins of envy and covetousness I am 
 now answerable for." 
 
 " Ah well ! I must hear the poor devils ; the only pleasure 
 I have is in seeing how easily I can make them happy. Would 
 to heaven, Dubois, that one could govern a great kingdom only 
 by fair words ! Count Devereux, you have seen me to-day as 
 my acquaintance ; see me again as my petitioner. Bon jour, 
 Monsieur." 
 
 And I retired, very well pleased with my reception : from 
 that time, indeed, during the rest of my short stay at Paris, the 
 Prince honored me with his especial favor. But I have dwelt 
 too long on my sojourn at the French court. The persons whom 
 I have described, and who alone made that sojourn memora- 
 ble, must be my apology. 
 
 One day I was honored by a visit from the Abbe Dubois. 
 After a short conversation upon indifferent things, he accosted 
 me thus : 
 
 " You are aware, Count Devereux, of the partiality which 
 the Regent has conceived towards you. Fortunate would it be 
 
 * Example is often but a deceitful mirror ; where sometimes one destroys himself, while 
 another comes off safe ; and where one perishes, another is preserved,
 
 DEVEREUX. 269 
 
 for that Prince" (here Dubois elevated his brows with an iron- 
 ical and arch expression), "so good by disposition, so injured 
 by example, if his partiality had been more frequently testified 
 towards gentlemen of your merit. A mission of considerable 
 importance, and one demanding great personal address, gives 
 his Royal Highness an opportunity of testifying his esteem for 
 you. He honored me with a conference on the subject yester- 
 day, and has now commissioned me to explain to you the tech- 
 nical objects of this mission, and to offer to you the honor of 
 undertaking it. Should you accept the proposals, you will wait 
 upon his highness before his levee to-morrow." 
 
 Dubois then proceeded, in the clear, rapid manner peculiar 
 to him, to comment on the state of Europe. "For France," 
 said he, in concluding his sketch, " peace is absolutely neces- 
 sary. A drained treasury, an exhausted country, require it. 
 You see, from what I have said, that Spain and England are the 
 principal quarters from which we are to dread hostilities. Spain 
 we must guard against England we must propitiate ; the latter 
 object is easy in England in any case, whether James or George 
 be uppermost. For whoever is king in England will have quite 
 enough to do at home to make him agree willingly enough to 
 peace abroad. The former requires a less simple and a more 
 enlarged policy. I fear the ambition of the Queen of Spain, 
 and the turbulent genius of her minion Alberoni. We must 
 fortify ourselves by new forms of alliance, at various courts, 
 which shall at once defend us and intimidate our enemies. 
 We wish to employ some nobleman of ability and address, on 
 a secret mission to Russia will you be that person ? Your 
 absence from Paris will be but short you will see a very droll 
 country, and a very droll sovereign ; you will return hither, 
 doubly the rage and with a just claim to more important em- 
 ployment hereafter. What say you to the proposal ?" 
 "I must hear more," said I, "before I decide." 
 The Abbe renewed. It is needless to repeat all the particu- 
 lars of the commission that he enumerated. Suffice it that after 
 a brief consideration, I accepted the honor proposed to me. 
 The Abbe wished me joy, relapsed into his ordinary strain of 
 coarse levity for a few minutes, and then reminding me that I 
 was to attend the Regent on the morrow, departed. It was 
 easy to see that in the mind of that subtle and crafty ecclesias- 
 tic, with whose manoeuvres private intrigues were always blended 
 with public, this offer of employment veiled a desire to banish 
 me from the immediate vicinity of the good-natured Regent, 
 whose favor the aspiring Abbe wished at that exact moment ex-
 
 2JTO DEVEREUX. 
 
 clusively to monopolize. Mere men of pleasure he knew would 
 not interfere with his aims upon the Prince ; mere men of busi- 
 ness still less : but a man who was thought to combine the ca- 
 pacities of both, and who was moreover distinguished by the 
 Regent, he deemed a more dangerous rival than the inestima- 
 ble person thus suspected really was. 
 
 However, I cared little for the honest man's motives. Ad- 
 venture to me had always greater charms than dissipation, and 
 it was far more agreeable to the nature of my ambition, to win 
 distinction by any honorable method, than by favoritism at a 
 court, so hollow, so unprincipled, and so grossly licentious as 
 that of the Regent. There to be the most successful courtier 
 was to be the most amusing profligate. Alas, when the heart is 
 away from its objects, and the taste revolts at its excess, Pleasure 
 is worse than palling it is a torture ! and the devil in Jonson's 
 play did not perhaps greatly belie the truth when he averred 
 " that the pains in his native country were pastimes to the life 
 of a person of Fashion." 
 
 The Duke of Orleans received me the next morning with 
 more than his wonted bonhomie. What a pity that so good- 
 natured a prince should have been so bad a man ! He enlarged 
 more easily and carelessly than his worthy preceptor had done 
 upon the several points to be observed in my mission then 
 condescendingly told me he was very sorry to lose me from his 
 court, and asked me, at all events, before I left Paris, to be a 
 guest at one of his select suppers. I appreciated this honor at 
 its just value. To these suppers none were asked but the 
 Prince's chums, or roue's* as he was pleased to call them. As, 
 entre nous, these chums were for the most part the most good- 
 for-nothing people in the kingdom, I could not but feel highly 
 flattered at being deemed, by so deep a judge of character as 
 the Regent, worthy to join them. I need not say that the in- 
 vitation was eagerly accepted, nor that I left PJtilippe le Dtbon- 
 naire impressed with the idea of his being the most admirable per- 
 son in Europe. What a fool a great man is if he does not study 
 to be affable weigh a prince's condescension in one scale, and 
 all the cardinal virtues in the other, and the condescension will 
 outweigh them all ! The Regent of France ruined his country 
 as much as he well could do, and there was not a dry eye when 
 he died ! 
 
 A day had now effected a change a great change in my fate. 
 
 * The term raieS, now so comprehensive, was first given by the Regent to a select num- 
 ber of his friends ; according to them, because they would be broken on the wheel for his 
 sake ; according to himself, because they deserved to be so broken, ED,
 
 J3EVEREUX. 27 1 
 
 A new court a new theatre of action a new walk of ambition, 
 were suddenly opened to me. Nothing could be more promis- 
 ing than my first employment nothing could be more pleas- 
 ing, than the anticipation of change. " I must force myself, to be 
 agreeable to-night," said J, as I dressed for the Regent's sup- 
 per. " I must leave behind me the remembrance of a bon mot, 
 or I shall be forgotten." 
 
 And I was right. In that whirlpool, the capital of France, 
 everything sinks but wit that is always on the surface, and we 
 must cling to it with a firm grasp, if we would not go down to 
 "the deep oblivion." 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Royal Exertions for the Good of the People. 
 
 WHAT a singular scene was that private supper with the 
 Regent of France and his routs! The party consisted of 
 twenty : nine gentlemen of the court besides myself, four men 
 of low rank and character but admirable buffoons and six 
 ladies, such ladies as the Duke loved best witty, lively, sar- 
 castic, and good for nothing. 
 
 De Chatran accosted me. 
 
 " Je sttis ran', mon (her Monsieur Devereux" said he gravely, 
 " to see you in such excellent company you must be a little 
 surprised to find yourself here ! " 
 
 " Not at all ! every scene is worth one visit. He, my good 
 Monsieur Chatran, who goes to the House of Correction once 
 is a philosopher he who goes twice is a rogue ! " 
 
 " Thank you, Count, what am I then I have been here 
 twenty times? " 
 
 " Why, I will answer you with a story. The soul of a Jesuit 
 one night, when its body was asleep, wandered down to the 
 lower regions ; Satan caught it, and was about to consign it to 
 some appropriate place ; the soul tried hard to excuse itself : 
 you know what a cunning thing a Jesuit's soul is ! ' Monsieur 
 Satan,' said the spirit ; 'no king should punish a traveller as 
 he would a native. Upon my honor, I am merely here en 
 voyageur.' 'Go, then,' said Satan, and the soul flew back to 
 its body. But the Jesuit died, and came to the lower regions 
 a second time. He was brought before his Satanic ma jest}', 
 and made the same excuse. ' No, no,' cried Beelzebub ; 
 ' once here is to be only le diable voyageur twice here, and you 
 are le diable tout de bon' "
 
 272 DEVERElJJC. 
 
 "Ha! ha! ha!" said Chatran, laughing : "I then am the 
 diable tout de ban ! 'tis well I am no worse; for we reckon the 
 rou/s a devilish deal worse than the very worst of the devils 
 but see, the Regent approaches us." 
 
 And, leaving a very pretty and gay-looking lady, the Regent 
 sauntered towards us. It was in walking, by the by, that he 
 lost all the grace of his mien. I don't know, however, that 
 one wishes a great man to be graceful, so long as he's familiar. 
 
 " Ah, Monsieur Devereux ! " said he, " we will give you 
 some lessons in cooking to-night we shall show you how to 
 provide for yourself in that barbarous country which you are 
 about to visit. Tout voyageur doit tout savoir ! " 
 
 11 A very admirable saying ; which leads me to understand 
 that Monseigneur has been a great traveller," said I. 
 
 " Ay, in all things and all places eh, Count ! " answered 
 the Regent, smiling ; " but," here he lowered his voice a little, 
 '' 1 have never yet learned how you came so opportunely to 
 our assistance that night. Dieu me damne ! but it reminds me 
 of the old story of the two sisters meeting at a gallant's house. 
 'Oh, sister, how camejw* here?' said one, in virtuous amaze- 
 ment, ''del! ma sceur /' cries the other; 'what brought 
 you ? ' " * 
 
 " Monseigneur is pleasant," said I, laughing ; " but a man 
 does now and then (though I own it is very seldom) do a good 
 action, without having previously resolved to commit a bad 
 one ! " 
 
 " I like your parenthesis," cried the Regent, " it reminds me 
 of my friend St. Simon, who thinks so ill of mankind, that I 
 asked him one day, whether it was possible for him to despise 
 anything more than men? 'Yes,' said he, with a low bow, 
 ' women ! ' " 
 
 " His experience," said I, glancing at the female part of the 
 coterie, "was, I must own, likely to lead him to that opinion." 
 
 " None of your sarcasms, Monsieur," cried the Regent. 
 " L amusement est un des besoins des thomme as I hear young 
 Arouet very pithily said the other day ; and we owe gratitude 
 to whomsoever it may be that supplies that want. Now, you 
 will agree with me that none supply it like women ; therefore 
 we owe them gratitude therefore we must not hear them 
 abused. Logically proved, 1 think ! " 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said I, " it is a pleasure to find they have so 
 able an advocate ; and that your Highness can so well apply 
 
 * The reader will remember a better version of this anecdote in one of 
 the most popular of the English comedies. ED.
 
 DEVEREUX. 273 
 
 to yourself both the assertions in the motto of the great master 
 of fortification, Vauban 'I destroy, but I defend.' " 
 
 " Enough," said the duke gayly, " now to our fortifications" ; 
 and he moved away towards the women ; I followed the royal 
 example ; and soon found myself seated next to a pretty, and 
 very small woman. We entered into conversation ; and, when 
 once begun, my fair companion took care that it should not 
 cease, without a miracle. By the goddess Facundia, what 
 volumes of words issued from that little mouth ! and on all 
 subjects too ! church state law politics play-houses 
 lampoons lace liveries kings queens roturiers beggars 
 you would have thought, had you heard her, so vast was her 
 confusion of all things, that chaos had come again. Our royal 
 host did not escape her. " You never before supped here en 
 famille" said she, " Mon Dieu ! it will do your heart good 
 to see how much the Regent will eat. He has such an 
 appetite you know he never eats any dinner, in order to eat 
 the more at supper. You see that little dark woman he is 
 talking to ? well, she is Madame de Parabere he calls her his 
 little black crow was there ever such a pet name ? Can you 
 guess why he likes her ? Nay, never take the trouble of think- 
 ing I will tell you at once simply because she eats and 
 drinks so much. Parole d"honneur, 'tis true. The Regent 
 says he likes sympathy in all things ! is it not droll ? What a 
 hideous old man is that Noce his face looks as if it had 
 caught the rainbow. That impudent fellow Dubois scolded 
 him for squeezing so many louis out of the good Regent. The 
 yellow creature attempted to deny the fact. ' Nay,' cried 
 Dubois, ' you cannot contradict me ; I see their very ghosts in 
 your face.' " 
 
 While my companion was thus amusing herself, Noce, uncon- 
 scious of her panegyric on his personal attractions, joined us. 
 
 "Ah! my dear Noce"," said the lady, most affectionately, 
 " how well you are looking ! I am delighted to see you." 
 
 " I do not doubt it," said Noce, "for I have to inform you 
 that your petition is granted ; your husband will have the 
 place." 
 
 " Oh, how eternally grateful I am to you ! " cried the lady 
 in an extasy ; "my poor, dear husband will be so rejoiced. I 
 wish I had wings to fly to him ! " 
 
 The gallant Noce uttered a compliment I thought myself 
 de trop, and moved away. I again encountered Chatran. 
 
 " I overheard your conversation with Madame la Marquise," 
 said he, smiling ; " she lias a bitter tongue has she not ? "
 
 274 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " Very ! how she abused the poor rogue Noce ! " 
 
 " Yes, and yet he is her lover ! " 
 
 " Her lover ! you astonish me ; why, she seemed almost 
 fond of her husband the tears came in her eyes when she 
 spoke of him." 
 
 "She is fond of him ! " said Chatran drily. " She loves the 
 ground he treads on it is precisely for that reason she favors 
 Noce; she is never happy but when she is procuring something 
 pour son cher bon man. She goes to spend a week at Noce's 
 country-house, and writes to her husband, with a pen dipped 
 in her blood, saying, ' My heart is with thee ! " 
 
 "Certainly," said I, "France is the land of enigmas; the 
 sphynx must have been a Parisienne. And when Jupiter made 
 man, he made two natures utterly distinct from one another. 
 One was Human nature, and the other French nature ! " 
 
 At this moment supper was announced. We all adjourned 
 to another apartment, where, to my great surprise, I observed 
 the cloth laid the sideboard loaded the wines ready, but 
 nothing to eat on the table ! A Madame de Savori, who was 
 next me, noted my surprise. 
 
 "What astonishes you, Monsieur?" said she. 
 
 "'Nothing, Madame !" said I, "that is, the absence of alt 
 things." 
 
 "What ! you expected to see supper?" 
 
 "I own my delusion I did." 
 
 "It is not cooked yet !" 
 
 " Oh ! well, I can wait ! " 
 
 " And officiate too ! " said the lady ; " in a word, this is 
 one of the Regent's cooking nights." 
 
 Scarcely had I received this explanation, before there was a 
 general adjournment to an inner apartment, where all the nec- 
 essary articles for cooking were ready to our hand. 
 
 " The Regent led the way, 
 To light us to our prey," 
 
 and, with an irresistible gravity and importance of demeanor, 
 entered upon the duties of chef. In a very short time we were 
 all engaged. Nothing could exceed the Zest with which every 
 one seemed to enter into the rites of the kitchen. You would 
 have imagined they had been born scullions, they handled the 
 batterie de cuisine so naturally. As for me, I sought protection 
 with Madame de Savori ; and as, fortunately, she was very 
 deeply skilled in the science, she had occasion to employ me
 
 in many minor avocations which her experience taught her 
 would not be above my comprehension. 
 
 After we had spent a certain time in this dignified occupa- 
 tion, we returned to the sallea manger. The attendants placed 
 the dishes on the table, and we all fell to. Whether out of 
 self-love to their own performances, or complaisance to the per- 
 formances of others, I cannot exactly say, but certain it is that 
 all the guests acquitted themselves a mcrvcille ; you would not 
 have imagined the Regent the only one who had gone without 
 dinner to eat the more at supper. Even that devoted wife to 
 her cher ban Man', who had so severely dwelt upon the good 
 Regent's infirmity, occupied herself with an earnestness that 
 would have seemed almost wolf-like in a famished grenadier. 
 
 Very silent indeed was the conversation till the supper was 
 nearly over; then the effects of the wine became more percep- 
 tible The Regent was the first person who evinced that he 
 had ate sufficiently to be able to talk. Utterly dispensing with 
 the slightest veil of reserve or royalty, he leant over the table, 
 and poured forth a whole tide of jests. The guests then began 
 to think it was indecorous to stuff themselves any more, and, 
 as well as they were able, they followed their host's example. 
 But the most amusing personages were the buffoons; they mim- 
 icked, and joked, and lampooned, and lied as if by inspiration. 
 As the bottle circulated, and the talk grew louder, the lampoon- 
 ing and the lying were not, however, confined to the buffoons. 
 On the the contrary, the best-born and best-bred people seemed 
 to excel the most in those polite arts. Every person who 
 boasted'a fair name, or a decent reputation at court, was seized, 
 condemned, and mangled in an instant. And how elaborately 
 the good folks slandered ! It was no hasty word and flippant 
 repartee which did the business of the absent there was a 
 precision, a polish, a labor of malice, which showed that each 
 person had brought so many reputations already cut up. The 
 good-natured convivialists differed from all other backbiters 
 that I have ever met, in the same manner as the toads of Suri- 
 nam differ from all other toads, viz.: their venomous offspring 
 were not half-formed, misshapen tadpoles of slander, but 
 sprung at once into life well shaped and fully developed. 
 
 " Chantons ! " cried the Regent, whose eyes, winking and 
 rolling, gave token of his approaching that state which equals 
 the beggar to the king, "let us have a song. Noce, lift up 
 thy voice, and let us hear what the tokay has put into thy 
 head ! " 
 
 Noce obeyed, and sang as men half drunk generally do sing.
 
 276 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " del!" whispered the malicious Savori, "what a hideous 
 screech one would think he had turned his face into a voice! " 
 
 " Bravissimo !" cried the duke, when his guest had ceased, 
 " what happy people we are ! Our doors are locked not a 
 soul can disturb us we have plenty of wine we are going to 
 get drunk and we have all Paris to abuse ! what were you 
 saying of Marshal Villars, my little Parabere? " 
 
 And pounce went the little Parabere upon the unfortunate 
 marshal. At last, slander had a respite nonsense began its 
 reign the full inspiration descended upon the orgies the 
 good people lost the use of their faculties. Noise clamor, 
 uproar, broken bottles, falling chairs, and (I grieve to say) their 
 occupants falling too conclude the scene of the royal supper. 
 Let us drop the curtain. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 An Interview. 
 
 I WENT a little out of my way, on departing from Paris, to 
 visit Lord Bolingbroke, who at that time was in the country. 
 There are some men whom one never really sees in capitals ; 
 one sees their masks, not themselves ; Bolingbroke was one. 
 It was in retirement, however brief it might be, that his true 
 nature expanded itself, and, weary of being admired, he al- 
 lowed one to love, and even in the wildest course of his earlier 
 excesses, to respect him. My visit was limited to a few hours, 
 but it made an indelible impression upon me. 
 
 " Once more," I said, as we walked to and fro in the garden 
 of his temporary retreat, "once more you are in your element ; 
 minister and statesman of a prince, and chief supporter of the 
 great plans which are to restore him to his throne." 
 
 A slight shade passed over Bolingbroke's fine brow. " To 
 you my constant friend," said he, "to you who of all my 
 friends alone remained true in exile, and unshaken by misfor- 
 tune to you I will confide a secret that I would entrust to no 
 other. I repent me already of having espoused this cause. I 
 did so while yet the disgrace of an unmerited attainder tin- 
 gled in my veins ; while I was in the full tide of those warm 
 passions which have so often misled me. Myself attainted 
 the best beloved of my associates in danger my party deserted, 
 and seemingly lost but for some bold measure such as then of- 
 fered ; these were all that I saw. I listened eagerly to repre-
 
 bEVEREUX. 277 
 
 sentations I now find untrue ; and I accepted that rank and 
 power from one prince which were so rudely and gallingly torn 
 from me by another. I perceive that I have acted imprudently, 
 but what is done, is done ; no private scruples, no private in- 
 terest, shall make me waver in a cause that I have once 
 pledged myself to serve ; and if I can do aught to make a weak 
 cause powerful, and a divided party successful, I will ; but, 
 Devereux, you are wrong, this is not my element. Ever in the 
 paths of strife I have sighed for quiet ; and, while most eager 
 in the pursuit of ambition, I have languished the most fondly for 
 content. The littleness of intrigue disgusts me, and while the 
 branches of my power soared the highest, and spread with the 
 most luxuriance, it galled me to think of the miry soil in 
 which that power was condemned to strike the roots* upon 
 which it stood, and by which it must be nourished." 
 
 I answered Bolingbrokeas men are wont to answer statesmen 
 who complain of their calling half in compliment, half in 
 contradiction, but he replied with unusual seriousness : 
 
 " Do not think I affect to speak thus : you know how eagerly 
 I snatch any respite from state, and how unmovedly I have 
 borne the loss of prosperity and of power. You are now about 
 to enter those perilous paths which I have trod for years. 
 Your passions, like mine, are strong ! Beware, oh, beware, 
 how you indulge them without restraint ! They are the fires 
 which should warm ; let them not be the fires which destroy." 
 
 Bolingbroke paused in evident and great agitation he re- 
 sumed : "I speak strongly, for I speak in bitterness; I was 
 thrown early into the world ; my whole education had been 
 framed to make me ambitious ; it succeeded in its end. I 
 was ambitious and of all success success in pleasure, suc- 
 cess in fame. To wean me from the former, my friends per- 
 suaded me to marry ; they chose my wife for her connections 
 and her fortune, and I gained those advantages at the expense 
 of what was better than either happiness ! You know how 
 unfortunate has been that marriage, and how young I was 
 when it was contracted. Can you wonder that it failed in the 
 desired effect ? Every one courted me, every temptation as- 
 sailed me ; pleasure even became more alluring abroad, when at 
 home I had no longer the hope of peace : the indulgence of one 
 passion begat the indulgence of another ; and though my better 
 sense prompted all my actions, it never restrained them to a 
 
 * Occasional Writer. No. I. The Editor lias, throughout this work, usually, but not in- 
 variably, noted the passages in Bolingbroke's writings, in which there occur similes, illus- 
 trations, or striking thoughts, correspondent with those in the text.
 
 2j& DEVEREtrX. 
 
 proper limit. Thus the commencement of my actions has 
 been generally prudent, and their continuation has deviated into 
 rashness, or plunged into excess. Devereux, I have paid the 
 forfeit of my errors with a terrible interest when my motives 
 have been pure, men have seen a fault in the conduct, and calum- 
 niated the motives ; when my conduct has been blameless, men 
 have remembered its former errors, and asserted that its pres- 
 ent goodness only arose from some sinister intention thus I 
 have been termed crafty, when I was in reality rash, and that 
 was called the inconsistency of interest which in reality was 
 the inconstancy of passion.* I have reason, therefore, to warn 
 you how you surfer your subjects to become your tyrants ; and 
 believe me no experience is so deep as that of one who has 
 committed faults, and who has discovered their causes." 
 
 " Apply, my dear lord, that experience to your future career. 
 You remember what the most sagacious of all pedants,! even 
 though he was an emperor, has so happily expressed 'Repen- 
 tance is a goddess, and the preserver of those who have 
 erred.' " 
 
 " May I find her so ! " answered Bolingbroke ; "but as Mon- 
 taigne or Charron would sayj .... 'Everyman is at once his 
 own sharper and his own bubble.' We make vast prom- 
 ises to ourselves, and a passion, an example, sweeps even the 
 remembrance of those promises from our minds. One is 
 too apt to believe men hypocrite?, if their conduct squares not 
 with their sentiments; but perhaps no vice is more rare, for 
 no task is more difficult, than systematic hypocrisy: and the same 
 susceptibility which exposes men to be easily impressed by the 
 allurements of vice, renders them at heart most struck by the 
 loveliness of virtue. Thus their language and their hearts 
 worship the divinity of the latter, while their conduct strays 
 the most erringly towards the false shrines over which the for- 
 mer presides. Yes ! I have never been blind to the surpassing 
 excellence of GOOD. The still, sweet whispers of virtue have 
 been heard, even when the storm has been loudest, and the 
 
 * This T do believe to be the real (though perhaps it is a nerw) light in which Lord Bol- 
 ingbroke's life and character are to be viewed. The same writers who tell us of his ungov- 
 ernable passions, always prefix to his name the epithets " designing, cunning, crafty," 
 etc. Now I will venture to tell these historians that, if they had studied human nature 
 instead of party_ pamphlets, they would have discovered that there are certain incompati- 
 ble qualities which can never be united in one character that no man can have violent pas- 
 sions to which he is in the habit of yielding, and be systematically crafty and designing. 
 No man can be all heat, and at the same time all coolness; but opposite causes not unoften 
 produce like effects. Passion usually makes men changeable, so sometimes does craft ; 
 
 hence the mistake of the uninquiring or the shallow; and hence while' writes, and 
 
 _ compiles, will thf characters of great men be transmitted to posterity misstated and 
 belied. KD. 
 
 t The Emperor Julian. The original expression is paraphrased in the text. 
 
 $" Spirit of Patriotism."
 
 DEVEREUX. 279 
 
 bark of Reason been driven the most impetuously over the 
 waves: and, at this moment, I am impressed with a foreboding 
 that sooner or later, the whispers will not only be heard, but 
 their suggestions be obeyed ; and that, far from courts and in- 
 trigue, from dissipation and ambition, I shall learn, in retire- 
 ment, the true principles of wisdom, and the real objects of 
 life." 
 
 Thus did Bolingbroke converse, and thus did I listen, till it 
 was time to depart. I left him impressed with a melancholy 
 that was rather soothing than distasteful. Whatever were the 
 faults of that most extraordinary and most dazzling genius, no 
 one was ever more candid* in confessing his own errors. A 
 systematically bad man either ridicules what is good, or disbe- 
 lieves in its existence ; but no man can be hardened in vice 
 whose heart is still sensible of the excellence and the glory of 
 virtue. 
 
 BOOK V. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 A Portrait. 
 
 MYSTERIOUS impulse at the heart, which never suffers us to 
 be at rest, which urges us onward as by an unseen, yet irresist- 
 ible law human planets in a petty orbit, hurried forever and 
 forever, till our course is run and our light is quenched 
 through the circle of a dark and impenetrable destiny ! art 
 thou not some faint forecast and type of our wanderings here- 
 after ? of the unslumbering nature of the soul ? of the everlast- 
 ing progress which we are pre-doomed to make through the 
 
 * It is impossible to read the letter to Sir W. Windham, without being remarkably struck 
 with the dignified and yet open candor which it displays. The same candor is equally 
 visible in whatever relates to himself, in all Lord Bolingbroke's writings and correspond- 
 ence, and yet candor is the last attribute usually conceded to him. But never was there 
 a writer whom people have talked of more and read less ; and I do not know a greate< proof 
 of this than the ever-repeated assertion (echoed from a most incompetent authority) of the 
 said letter to Sir W. Windham being the finest of all Lord Bolingbroke's writings. It is an 
 article of great value to the history of the times ; but, as to all the higher graces and quali- 
 ties of composition, it is one of the least striking (and on the other hand it is one of the 
 most verbally incorrect) which he has bequeathed to us (the posthumous works always ex- 
 cepted). I am not sure whether the most brilliant passages the most noble illustrations 
 the most profound reflections, and most useful truths to be found in all his writings, are 
 not to be gathered from the least popular of them such at shat volume entitled " Political 
 Tracts." Ep,
 
 280 DEVEREUX. 
 
 countless steps, and realms, and harmonies in the infinite crea- 
 tion ? Oh, often in my rovings have I dared to dream so 
 often have I soared on the wild wings of thought above the 
 " smoke and stir " of this dim earth, and wrought, from the rest- 
 less visions of my mind, a chart of the glories and the won- 
 ders which the released spirit may hereafter visit and behold ! 
 
 What a glad awakening from self, what a sparkling and 
 fresh draught from a new source of being, what a wheel within 
 wheel, animating, impelling, arousing all the rest of this animal 
 machine, is the first excitement of Travel ! The first free 
 escape from the bonds of the linked and tame life of cities and 
 social vices, the jaded pleasure and the hollow love, the mo- 
 notonous round of sordid objects and dull desires, the eternal 
 chain that binds us to things and beings, mockeries of our- 
 selves, alike, but oh, how different ! the shock that brings us 
 nearer to men only to make us strive against them, and learn, 
 from the harsh contest of veiled deceit and open force, that the 
 more we share the aims of others, the more deeply and basely 
 rooted we grow to the littleness of self. 
 
 I passed more lingeringly through France than I did through 
 the other portions of my route. I had dwelt long enough in 
 the capital to be anxious to survey the country. It was then 
 that the last scale which the magic of Louis Quatorze and the 
 memory of his gorgeous court had left upon the moral eye, fell 
 off, and I saw the real essence of that monarch's greatness, 
 and the true relics of his reign. I saw the poor, and the de- 
 graded, and the racked, and the priest-ridden, tillers and peo- 
 plers of the soil, which made the substance beneath the glitter- 
 ing and false surface the body of that vast empire, of which I 
 had hitherto beheld only the face, and THAT darkly, and for 
 the most part covered by a mask ! 
 
 No man can look upon France, beautiful France, her rich 
 soil, her temperate yet maturing clime, the gallant and bold 
 spirits which she produces, her boundaries so indicated and 
 protected by nature itself, her advantages of ocean and land, of 
 commerce and igriculture, and not wonder that her prosperity 
 should be so bloated, and her real state so wretched and dis- 
 eased. 
 
 Let England draw the moral, and beware not only of wars 
 which exhaust, but of governments which impoverish. A 
 waste of the public wealth is the most lasting of public afflic- 
 tions; and "the treasury which is drained by extravagance 
 must be refilled by crime."* 
 
 * Tacitus,
 
 DEVEREUX. 28l 
 
 I remember one beautiful evening an accident to my car- 
 riage occasioned my sojourn for a whole afternoon in a small 
 village. The Curt? honored me with a visit, and we strolled, 
 after a slight repast, into the hamlet. The priest was com- 
 plaisant, quiet in manner, and not ill informed, for his obscure 
 station and scanty opportunities of knowledge ; he did not 
 seem, however, to possess the vivacity of his countrymen, but 
 was rather melancholy and pensive, not only in his expression 
 of countenance, but his cast of thought. 
 
 " You have a charming scene here ; I almost feel as if it were 
 a sin to leave it so soon." 
 
 We were, indeed, in a pleasant and alluring spot at the time 
 I addressed this observation to the good Cure. A little rivulet 
 emerged from a copse to the left and ran sparkling and dimp- 
 ling beneath our feet, to deck with a more living verdure the 
 village green, which it intersected with a winding, nor unmelo- 
 dious stream. We had paused, and I was leaning against an old 
 and solitary chestnut tree, which commanded the whole scene. 
 The village was a little in the rear, and the smoke from its few 
 chimneys rose slowly to the silent and deep skies, not wholly 
 unlike the human wishes, which, though they spring from the 
 grossness and the fumes of earth, purify themselves as they as- 
 cend to Heaven. And from the village ( when other sounds, 
 which I shall note presently, were for an instant still), came 
 the whoop of children, mellowed, by distance, into a confused, 
 yet thrilling sound, which fell upon the heart like a voice of 
 our gone childhood itself. Before, in the far expanse, stretched 
 a chain of hills on which the autumn sun sunk slowly, pouring 
 its yellow beams over groups of peasantry, which, on the op- 
 posite side of the rivulet, and at some interval from us, were 
 scattered, partly over the green, and partly gathered beneath 
 the shade of a little grove. The former were of the young, 
 and those to whom youth's sports are dear, and were dancing 
 to the merry music, which (ever and anon blended with the 
 laugh and the tone of a louder jest) floated joyously on 
 our ears. The fathers and matrons of the hamlet were in- 
 haling a more quiet joy beneath the trees, and I involuntarily 
 gave a tenderer interest to their converse by supposing them 
 to sanction to each other the rustic loves which they might 
 survey among their children. 
 
 "Will not Monsieur draw nearer to the dancers," said 
 the Cure* ; " there is a plank thrown over the rivulet a little 
 lower down ?" 
 
 " No ! " said I, " perhaps they are seen to better advantage
 
 282 DEYEREUX. 
 
 where we are what mirth will bear too close an inspec- 
 tion?" 
 
 " True, sir," remarked the priest, and he sighed. 
 
 "Yet," I resumed musingly, and I spoke rather to myself 
 than to my companion, "yet, how happy do they seem ! what a 
 revival of our Arcadian dreams are the flute and the dance, the 
 glossy trees all glowing in the autumn sunset, the green sod, 
 and the murmuring rill, and the buoyant laugh startling the 
 satyr in his leafy haunts ; and the rural loves which will grow 
 sweeter still than the sun has set, and the twilight has made the 
 sigh more tender, and the blush of a mellower hue ! Ah, why 
 is it only the revival of a dream ? why must it be only an in- 
 terval of labor and woe the brief saturnalia of slaves the 
 green resting spot in a dreary and long road of travail and toil ? " 
 
 "You are the first stranger I have met," said the Cure, "who 
 seems to pierce beneath the thin veil of our Gallic gayety ; the 
 first to whom the scene we now survey is fraught with other feel- 
 ings than a belief in the happiness of our peasantry, and an envy 
 at its imagined exuberance. But as it is not the happiest individ- 
 uals, so I fear it is not the happiest nations, that are the gayest." 
 
 I looked at the Cure with some surprise. " Your remark is 
 deeper than the ordinary wisdom of your tribe, my father," said I. 
 
 " I have travelled over three parts of the globe," answered 
 the Cure; "I was not always intended for what I am"; and 
 the priest's mild eyes flashed with a sudden light that as sud- 
 denly died away. " Yes, I have travelled over the greater part of 
 the known world," he repeated, in a more quiet tone, "and I 
 have noted that where a man has many comforts to guard, and 
 many rights to defend, he necessarily shares the thought and 
 the seriousness of those who feel the value of a treasure which 
 they possess, and whose most earnest meditations are intent 
 upon providing against its loss. I have noted, too, that the 
 joy produced by a momentary suspense of labor is naturally 
 great, in proportion to the toil ; hence it is that no European 
 mirth is so wild as that of the Indian slave, when a brief holi- 
 day releases him from his task. Alas! that very mirth is the 
 strongest evidence of the weight of the previous chains ; even 
 as, in ourselves, we find the happiest moment we enjoy is that 
 immediately succeeding the cessation of deep sorrow to the 
 mind, or violent torture to the body."* 
 
 *. This reflection, if true, may console us for the loss of those village dances and peasant 
 holidays for which "merry England" was once celebrated. The loss of them has been 
 ascribed to the gloomy influence of the Puritans ; but it has never occurred to the good 
 poets, who have so mourned over that loss, that it is also to be ascribed to the liberty 
 Which those Puritans generalized, if they did not introduce. Eu.
 
 DfcVEREtiX. 283 
 
 I was struck by this observation of the priest. 
 
 "I see now," said I, "that, as an Englishman, I have no rea- 
 son to repine at the proverbial gravity of my countrymen, or to 
 envy the lighter spirit of the sons of Italy and France." 
 
 "No," said the Cure, "the happiest nations are those in whose 
 people you witness the least sensible reverses from gayety to 
 dejection ; and that thought, which is the noblest characteristic 
 of the isolated man, is also that of a people. Freemen are seri- 
 ous, they have objects at their heart worthy to engross atten- 
 tion. It is reserved for slaves to indulge in groans at one mo- 
 ment, and laughter at another." 
 
 "At that rate," said I, "the best sign for France will be when 
 the gayety of her sons is no longer a just proverb, and the laugh- 
 ing lip is succeeded by the thoughtful brow." 
 
 We remained silent for several minutes ; our conversation 
 had shed a gloom over the light scene before us, and the voice 
 of the flute no longer sounded musically on my ear. I pro- 
 posed to the Cure to return to my inn. As we walked slowly 
 in that direction, I surveyed my companion more attentively 
 than I had hitherto done. He was a model of masculine vigor 
 and grace of form ; and, had I not looked earnestly upon his 
 cheek, I should have thought him likely to outlive the very oaks 
 around the hamlet church where he presided. But the cheek 
 was worn and hectic, and seemed to indicate that the keen fire 
 which burns at the deep heart, unseen, but unslaking, would 
 consume the mortal fuel, long before Time should even have 
 commenced his gradual decay. 
 
 " You have travelled then, much, sir," said I, and the tone of 
 my voice was that of curiosity. 
 
 The good Cure penetrated into my desire to hear something 
 of his adventures ; and few are the recluses who are not grati- 
 fied by the interest of others, or who are unwilling to reward it 
 by recalling those portionsof life most cherished by themselves. 
 Before we parted that night, he told me his little history. He 
 had been educated for the army ; and before he entered the 
 profession he had seen the daughter of a neighbor loved her 
 and the old story she loved him again, and died before the love 
 passed the ordeal of marriage. He had no longer a desire for 
 glory, but he had for excitement. He sold his little property 
 and travelled, as he had said, for nearly fourteen years, equally 
 over the polished lands of Europe, and the far climates, where 
 Truth seems fable, and Fiction finds her own legends realized 
 or excelled. 
 
 He returned home, poor in pocket, and wearied in spirit.
 
 284 DEVEREUX. 
 
 He became what I beheld him. " My lot is fixed now," said he 
 in conclusion ; "but I find there is all the difference between 
 quiet and content ; my heart eats itself away here ; it is the 
 moth fretting the garment laid by, more than the storm or the 
 fray would have worn it." 
 
 I said something, common-place enough, about solitude, and 
 the blessings of competence, and the country. The Cure" shook 
 his head gently, but made no answer ; perhaps he did wisely in 
 thinking the feelings are ever beyond the reach of a stranger's rea- 
 soning. We parted more affectionately than acquaintances of so 
 short a time usually do; and when I returned from Russia, I 
 stopped at the village on purpose to inquire after him. A few 
 months had done the work: the moth had already fretted away the 
 human garment ; and I walked to his lowly and nameless grave, 
 and felt that it contained the only quiet in which monotony 
 is not blended with regret ! 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The entrance into Petersburgh a Rencontre with an inquisitive and mys- 
 terious Stranger. Nothing like Travel. 
 
 IT was certainly like entering a new world when I had the 
 frigid felicity of entering Russia. I expected to have found 
 Petersburgh a wonderful city, and I was disappointed ; it was 
 a wonderful beginning of a city, and that was all I ought to 
 have expected. But never, I believe, was there a place which 
 there was so much difficulty in arriving at : such winds such 
 climate such police arrangements arranged, too, by such 
 fellows ! six feet high, with nothing human about them, but 
 their uncleanliness and ferocity ! Such vexatious delays, dif- 
 ficulties, ordeals, through which it was necessary to pass, and 
 to pass, too, with an air of the most perfect satisfaction and con- 
 tent. By the Lord ! one would have imagined, at all events, 
 it must be an earthly paradise, to be so arduous of access, in- 
 stead of a Dutch-looking town, with comfortless canals, and 
 the most terrible climate in which a civilized creature was ever 
 frozen to death. "It is just the city a nation of bears would 
 build, if bears ever became architects," said I to myself, as I 
 entered the northern capital, with my teeth chattering, and my 
 limbs in a state of perfect insensibility. 
 
 My vehicle stopped at last, at a hotel to which I had been 
 directed. It was a circumstance, I believe, peculiar to Peters- 
 burgh, that, at the time I speak of, none of its streets had a
 
 BEVEREUX. 285 
 
 name ; and if one wanted to find out a house, one was forced to do 
 so by oral description. A pleasant thing it was, too, to stop in 
 the middle of a street to listen to such descriptions at full 
 length, and find oneself rapidly becoming ice as the detail pro- 
 gressed. After I was lodged, thawed, and fed, I fell fast asleep, 
 and slept for eighteen hours, without waking once ; to my mind 
 it was a miracle that I ever woke again. 
 
 I then dressed myself, and, taking my interpreter, who was a 
 Livonian, a great rascal, but clever, who washed twice a week, 
 and did not wear a beard above eight inches long, I put my- 
 self into my carriage, and went to deliver my letters of intro- 
 duction. I had one in particular to the Admiral Apraxin ; and 
 it was with him that I was directed to confer, previous to seek- 
 ing an interview with the Emperor. Accordingly I repaired to 
 his hotel, which was situated on a sort of quay, and was really, 
 for Petersburgh, very magnificent. In this quarter, then, or a 
 little later, lived about thirty officers of the court, General 
 Jagoyinsky, General Cyernichoff, etc. ; and appropriately enough, 
 the most remarkable public building in the vicinity is the great 
 slaughter-house a fine specimen that of practical satire ! 
 
 On endeavoring to pass through the Admiral's hall, I had the 
 mortification of finding myself rejected by his domestics. As 
 two men in military attire were instantly admitted, I thought 
 this a little hard upon a man who had travelled so far to see his 
 admiralship, and accordingly hinted my indignation to Mr. 
 Muscotofsky, my interpreter. 
 
 " You are not so richly dressed as those gentlemen," said he. 
 
 " That is the reason, is it ? " 
 
 " If it so please St. Nicholas, it is ; and, besides, those gen- 
 tlemen have two men running before them, to cry, ' Clear the 
 way ! ' ' 
 
 " I had better, then, dress myself better, and take two avant 
 couriers." 
 
 " If it so please St. Nicholas." 
 
 Upon this I returned, robed myself in scarlet and gold, took 
 a couple of lacqueys, returned to Admiral Apraxin's, and was 
 admitted in an instant. Who would have thought these sav- 
 ages so like us ? Appearances, you see, produce realities all 
 over the world ? 
 
 The Admiral, who was a very great man at court though he 
 narrowly escaped Siberia, or the knout, some time after was 
 civil enough to me : but I soon saw that, favorite as he was 
 with the Czar, that great man left but petty moves in the grand 
 chess-board of politics to be played by any but himself : and
 
 286 
 
 my proper plan in this court appeared evidently to be unlike 
 that pursued in most others, where it is better to win the favor- 
 ite than the prince. Accordingly, I lost no time in seeking an 
 interview with the Czar himself, and readily obtained an ap- 
 pointment to that effect. 
 
 On the day before the interview took place, I amused my- 
 self with walking over the city, gazing upon its growing grand- 
 eur, and casting, in especial, a wistful eye upon the fortress or 
 citadel, which is situated in an island, surrounded by the city ; 
 and upon the building of which more than one hundred thous- 
 and men are supposed to have perished. So great a sacrifice 
 does it require to conquer nature. 
 
 While I was thus amusing myself, I observed a man in a 
 small chaise with one horse pass me twice, and look at me 
 very earnestly. Like most of my countrymen, I do not love to 
 be stared at ; however, I thought it better in that unknown 
 country to change my intended frown for a good-natured ex- 
 pression of countenance, and turned away. A singular sight 
 now struck my attention ; a couple of men with beards that 
 would have hidden a cassowary were walking slowly along in 
 their curious long garments, and certainly ( I say it reverently) 
 disgracing the semblance of humanity, when, just as they came 
 by a gate, two other men of astonishing height started forth, 
 each armed with a pair of shears. Before a second was over, 
 off went the beards of the first two passengers ; and before an- 
 other second expired, off went the skirts of their garments 
 too I never saw excrescences so expeditiously lopped. The 
 two operators, who preserved a profound silence during this 
 brief affair, then retired a little, and the mutilated wanderers 
 pursued their way with an air of extreme discomfiture. 
 
 "Nothing like travel, certainly ! " said I unconsciously aloud. 
 
 " True ! " said a voice in English behind me. I turned, and 
 saw the man who had noticed me so earnestly in the one-horse 
 chaise. He was a tall, robust man, dressed very plainly, and 
 even shabbily, in a green uniform, with a narrow tarnished gold 
 lace ; and I judged him to be a foreigner, like myself, though 
 his accent ind pronunciation evidently showed that he was not 
 a native of the country in the language of which he accosted me. 
 
 "It is very true," said he again ; "there is nothing like 
 travel ! " 
 
 "And travel," I rejoined courteously, "in those places where 
 travel seldom extends. T Vive only been six days at Peters- 
 burgh, and, till I came hither. I knew nothing of the variety 
 of human nature or the power of human genius. But will you
 
 DEVEREUX. 287 
 
 vllow me to ask the meaning of the very singular occurrence 
 \VQ have just witnessed ?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing," rejoined the man with a broad, strong smile, 
 "nothing but an attempt to make men out of brutes. This 
 custom of shaving is not, thank Heaven, much wanted now 
 some years ago it was requisite to have several stations for 
 barbers and tailors to perform their duties in. Now this is 
 very seldom necessary : those gentlemen were especially marked 
 
 out for the operation. By (and here the man swore a 
 
 hearty English and somewhat seafaring oath, which a little 
 astonished me in the streets of Petersburgh), I wish it were as 
 easy to lop off all old customs ! that it were as easy to clip the 
 beard of the mind, sir ! Ha ha ! " 
 
 '' But the Czar must have found a little difficulty in effecting 
 even this outward amendment, and to say truth, I see so many 
 beards about still that I think the reform has been more par- 
 tial than universal." 
 
 " Ah, those are the beards of the common people ; the Czar 
 leaves those for the present. Have you seen the docks yet?" 
 
 '' No : I am not sufficiently a sailor to take much interest in 
 them." 
 
 " Humph ! humph ! you are a soldier, perhaps?" 
 
 " I hope to be so one day or other I am not yet ? " 
 
 " Not yet ! humph ! there are opportunities in plenty for 
 those who wish it what is your profession then, and what do 
 you know best ? " 
 
 I was certainly not charmed with the honest inquisitiveness 
 of the stranger. " Sir," said I, " sir, my profession is to answer 
 no questions ; and what I know best is to hold my tongue ! " 
 
 The stranger laughed out. " Well, well, that is what all 
 Englishmen know best !" said he; "but don't be offended- 
 if you will come home with me I will give you a glass of brandy ! " 
 
 " I am very much obliged for the offer, but business obliges 
 me to decline it good-morning, sir." 
 
 " Good-morning ! " answered the man, slightly moving his 
 hat, in answer to my salutation. 
 
 We separated, as I thought, but T was mistaken. As ill-luck 
 would have it, I lost my way in endeavoring to return home. 
 While I was interrogating a French artisan, who seemed in a 
 prodigious hurry, up comes my inquisitive friend in green again. 
 " Ha ! you have lost your way I can put you into it better 
 than any man in Petersburgh ! " 
 
 I thought it right to accept the offer ; and we moved on, side 
 by side. I now looked pretty attentively at my gentleman. 1
 
 288 DEVEREUX. 
 
 have said that he was tall and stout he was also remarkably 
 well-built, and had a kind of seaman's ease and freedom of 
 gait and manner. His countenance was very peculiar ; short, 
 firm, and strongly marked ; a small, but thick mustachio cov- 
 ered his upper lip the rest of his face was shaved. His mouth 
 was wide, but closed, when silent, with that expression of iron 
 resolution which no feature but the mouth can convey. His 
 eyes were large, well-opened, and rather stern ; and when, 
 which was often in the course of conversation, he pushed back 
 his hat from his forehead, the motion developed two strong 
 deep wrinkles between the eyebrows, which might be indica- 
 tive either of thought or of irascibility perhaps of both. He 
 spoke quick, and with a little occasional embarrassment of 
 voice, which, however, never communicated itself to his man- 
 ner. He seemed, indeed, to have a perfect acquaintance with 
 the mazes of the growing city ; and, every now and then, 
 stopped to say when such a house was built whither such a 
 street was to lead. etc. As each of these details betrayed some 
 ;reat triumph over natural obstacles, and sometimes over na- 
 tional prejudice. I could not help dropping a few enthusiastic 
 expressions in praise of the genius of the Czar. The man's 
 *yes sparkled as he heard them. 
 
 " ft is easy to see," said I, " that you sympathize with me, 
 md that the admiration of this great man is not confined to 
 Englishmen. How little in comparison seem all other mon- 
 irchs : they ruin kingdoms the Czar creates one. The whole 
 history of the world does not afford an instance of triumphs 
 so vast so important so glorious as his have been. How his 
 subjects should adore him ! " 
 
 " No," said the stranger, with an altered and thoughtful 
 manner, " it is not his subjects, but their posterity, that will 
 appreciate his motives, arid forgive him for wishing Russia to 
 be an empire of MEN. The present generation may sometimes 
 be laughed, sometimes forced, out of their more barbarous 
 habits and brute-like customs, but they cannot be reasoned out 
 of them ; and they don't love the man who attempts to do it. 
 Why, sir, I question whether Ivan IV., who used to butcher the 
 flogs between prayers for an occupation, and between meals 
 for an appetite, I question whether his memory is not to the 
 full as much loved as the living Czar. I know, at least, that 
 whenever the latter attempts a reform, the good Muscovites 
 shrug up their shoulders, and mutter, ' We did not do these 
 things in the good old days of Ivan IV.' " 
 
 "Ah ! the people of all nations are wonderfully attached to
 
 DEVEREUX. 289 
 
 their ancient customs ; and it is not unfrequently that the most 
 stubborn enemies to living men are their ancestors." 
 
 " Ha, ha ! true good ! " cried the stranger ; and then, 
 after a short pause, he said in a tone of deep feeling which had 
 not hitherto seemed at all a part of his character, "We should 
 do that which is good to the human race, from some principle 
 within, and should not therefore abate our efforts for the oppo- 
 sition, the rancor, or the ingratitude that we experience with- 
 out. It will be enough reward for Peter I., if hereafter, when 
 (in that circulation of knowledge throughout the world which 
 I can compare to nothing better than the circulation of the 
 blood in the human body) the glory of Russia shall rest, not 
 upon the extent of her dominions, but that of her civilization 
 not upon the number of inhabitants, embruted and besotted, 
 but the number of enlightened, prosperous, and free men ; it 
 will be enough for him, if he be considered to have laid the 
 first stone of that great change if his labors be fairly weighed 
 against the obstacles which opposed them if, for his honest 
 and unceasing endeavor to improve millions, he be not too 
 severely judged for offences in a more limited circle and if, 
 in consideration of having fought the great battle against cus- 
 tom, circumstances, and opposing nature, he be sometimes for- 
 given for not having invariably conquered himself." 
 
 As the stranger broke off abruptly, I could not but feel a 
 little oppressed by his words and the energy with which they 
 were spoken. We were now in sight of my lodging. I asked 
 my guide to enter it ; but the change in our conversation 
 seemed to have unfitted him a little for my companionship. 
 
 " No," said he, " I have business now : we shall meet again ; 
 what's your name ? " 
 
 "Certainly," thought I, "no man ever scrupled so little to 
 ask plain questions": however, I answered him truly and 
 freely. 
 
 " Devereux ! " said he, as if surprised : " Ha ! well we 
 shall meet again. Good-day." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Czar the Czarina. A Feast at a Russian Nobleman's. 
 
 THE next day I dressed myself in my richest attire ; and, 
 according to my appointment, went with as much state as I 
 could command to the Czar's palace (if an exceedingly humble
 
 2QO DEVEREUX. 
 
 abode can deserve so proud an appellation). Although my 
 mission was private, I was a little surprised by the extreme sim- 
 plicity and absence from pomp which the royal residence pre- 
 sented. I was ushered for a few moments into a paltry ante- 
 chamber, in which were several models of ships, cannon, and 
 houses ; two or three indifferent portraits one of King Wil- 
 liam III., another of Lord Caermarthen. I was then at once 
 admitted into the royal presence. 
 
 There were only two persons in the room one a female, the 
 other a man ; no officers, no courtiers, no attendants, none of 
 the insignia nor the witnesses of majesty. The female was 
 Catharine, the Czarina ; the man was the stranger I had met 
 the day before and Peter the Great. I was a little startled at 
 the identity of the Czar with my inquisitive acquaintance. 
 However, I put on as assured a countenance as I could. 
 Indeed, I had spoken sufficiently well of the royal person to 
 feel very little apprehension at having unconsciously paid so 
 slight a respect to the royal dignity. 
 
 " Ho ho ! " cried the Czar, as I reverently approached him ; 
 " I told you we should meet soon ! " and, turning round, he 
 presented me to her majesty. That extraordinary woman 
 received me very graciously ; and, though I had been a spec- 
 tator of the most artificial and magnificent court in Europe, I 
 must confess that I could detect nothing in the Czarina's air 
 calculated to betray her having been the servant of a Lutheran 
 minister and the wife of a Swedish dragoon. Whether it was 
 that greatness was natural to her, or whether (which was more 
 probable) she was an instance of the truth of Suckling's hack- 
 neyed thought, in Brennoralt " Success is a rare paint hides 
 all the ugliness." 
 
 While I was making my salutations, the Czarina rose very 
 quietly, and presently, to my no small astonishment, brought 
 me with her own hand, a tolerably large glass of raw brandy. 
 There is nothing in the world I hate so much as brandy ; how- 
 ever, I swallowed the potation as if it had been nectar, and made 
 some fine speech about it, which the good Czarina did not seem 
 perfectly to understand. I then, after a few preliminary obser- 
 vations, entered upon my main business with the Czar. Her 
 Majesty sat at a little distance, but evidently listened very 
 attentively to the conversation. I could not but be struck with 
 the singularly bold and strong sense of my royal host. There 
 was no hope of deluding or misleading him by diplomatic sub- 
 terfuge. The only way by which that wonderful man was ever 
 misled was through his passions. His reason conquered ail
 
 DEVEREUX. 291 
 
 trrors but those of temperament. I turned the conversation 
 as artfully as I could upon Sweden and Charles XII. " Hatred 
 to one power," thought I, "may produce love to another ; and 
 if it does, the child will spring from a very vigorous parent." 
 While I was on this subject, I observed a most fearful convul- 
 sion come over the face of the Czar one so fearful that I 
 involuntarily looked away. Fortunate was it that I did so. 
 Nothing ever enraged him more than being observed in those 
 constitutional contortions of countenance to which from his 
 youth he had been subjected. 
 
 After I had conversed with the Czar as long as I thought 
 decorum permitted, I rose to depart. He dismissed me very 
 complaisantly. I re-entered my fine equipage, and took the 
 best of my way home. 
 
 Two or three days afterwards, the Czar ordered me to be 
 invited to a large dinner at Apraxin's. I went there, and soon 
 found myself in conversation with a droll little man, a Dutch 
 minister, and a great favorite with the Czar. The Admiral 
 and his wife, before we sat down to eat, handed round to each 
 of their company a glass of brandy on a plate. 
 
 "What an odious custom ! " whispered the little Dutch min- 
 ister, smacking his lips, however, with an air of tolerable con- 
 tent. 
 
 " Why, said I prudently, " all countries have their customs. 
 Some centuries ago, a French traveller thought it horrible in 
 us Englishmen to eat raw oysters. But the English were in 
 the right to eat oysters ; and perhaps, by and by, so much does 
 civilization increase, we shall think the Russians in the right to 
 drink brandy. But really (we had now sat down to the enter- 
 tainment), I am agreeably surprised here. All the guests are 
 dressed like my own countrymen ; a great decorum reigns 
 around. If it were a little less cold, I might fancy myself in 
 London or in Paris." 
 
 " Wait," quoth the little Dutchman, with his mouth full of 
 jelly broth " wait till you hear them talk. What think you, 
 now, that lady next to me is saying ? " 
 
 " I cannot guess but she has the prettiest smile in the 
 world ; and there is something at once so kind and so respect- 
 ful in her manner that I should say she was either asking some 
 great favor, or returning thanks for one." 
 
 " Right," cried the little minister. " I will interpret for you. 
 She is saying to that old gentleman ' Sir, I am extremely 
 grateful (and may St. Nicholas bless you for it) for your 
 very great kindness in having, the day before yesterday,
 
 392 DEVEREUX. 
 
 at your sumptuous entertainment, made me so deliciously 
 drunk ! ' " 
 
 " You are witty, monsieur," said I, smiling. " Se non evero 
 ben trovato" 
 
 " By my soul, it is true," cried the Dutchman ; " but, 
 hush ! see, they are going to cut up that great pie." 
 
 I turned my eyes to the center of the table, which was orna- 
 mented with a huge pasty. Presently it was cut open, and 
 out walked a hideous little dwarf. 
 
 " Are they going to eat him ? " said I. 
 
 " Ha ha ! " laughed the Dutchman. " No ! this is a fashion 
 of the Czar's, which the Admiral thinks it good policy to fol- 
 low. See, it tickles the hebete Russians. They are quite 
 merry on it." 
 
 " To be sure," said I ; " practical jokes are the only witti- 
 cisms savages understand." 
 
 "Ay, and if it were not for such jokes now and then, the 
 Czar would be odious beyond measure ; but dwarf pies and 
 mock processions make his subjects almost forgive him for 
 having shortened their clothes and clipped their beards." 
 
 "The Czar is very fond of those mock processions? " 
 
 " Fond ! " and the little man sunk his voice into a whisper ; 
 " he is the sublimest buffoon that ever existed. I will tell you 
 an instance (do you like these Hungary wines, by the by ?) : 
 On the pth of last June, the Czar carried me, and half-a-dozen 
 more of his foreign ministers to his pleasure-house (Peterhoff). 
 Dinner, as usual, all drunk with tokay, and finished by a quart 
 of brandy each, from her Majesty's own hand. Carried off to 
 sleep, some in the garden, some in the wood. Woke at four, 
 still in the clouds. Carried back to the pleasure-house, found 
 the Czar there, made us a low bow, and gave us a hatchet 
 apiece, with orders to follow him. Off we trudged, rolling about 
 like ships in the Zuyder Zee, entered a wood, and were immedi- 
 ately set to work at cutting a road through it. Nice work for 
 us of the corps diplomatique ! And, by my soul, sir, you see 
 that I am by no means a thin man ! We had three hours of 
 it were carried back made drunk again sent to bed roused 
 again in an hour made drunk a third time ; and, because we 
 could not be waked again, left in peace till eight the next 
 morning. Invited to court to breakfast such headaches 
 we had longed for coffee found nothing but brandy forced 
 to drink sick as dogs sent to take an airing upon the most 
 damnable little horses not worth a guilder no bridles noi 
 saddles bump bump bump we go up and down before th^
 
 DEVEREUX. 293 
 
 Czar's window he and the Czarina looking at us. I do assure 
 you I lost two stone by that ride two stone, sir ! taken to 
 dinner drunk again, by the Lord all bundled on board a 
 torrenschute devil of a storm came on Czar took the rud- 
 der Czarina on high benches in the cabin, which was full of 
 water waves beating winds blowing certain of being 
 drowned charming prospect ! tossed about for seven hours 
 driven into the Port of Cronsflot. Czar leaves us, saying, 
 ' Too much of a jest, eh, gentlemen ! ' All got ashore wet as 
 dog-fishes, made a fire, stripped stark naked (a Dutch ambas- 
 sador stark naked think of it, sir !), crept into some covers 
 of sledges, and rose next morning with the ague positive fact, 
 sir. Had the ague for two months. Saw the Czar in August 
 ' A charming excursion to my pleasure-house,' said his 
 majesty ' we must make another party there soon.' " 
 
 As the Dutchman delivered himself of this little history he 
 was by no means forgetful of the Hungary wines ; and as Bac- 
 chus and Venus have old affinity, he now began to grow elo- 
 quent on the women. 
 
 " What think you of them yourself?" said he, " they have a 
 rolling look, eh ! " 
 
 " They have so," I answered, " but they all have black 
 teeth what's the reason ? " 
 
 " They think it a beauty, and say white teeth are the sign of 
 a blackamoor." 
 
 Here the Dutchman was accosted by some one else, and 
 there was a pause. Dinner at last ceased ; the guests did not 
 sit long after dinner, and for a very good reason : the brandy 
 bowl is a great enforcer of a prostrate position ! I had the 
 satisfaction of seeing the company safely under the table. The 
 Dutchman went first, and, having dexterously manoeuvred an 
 escape from utter oblivion for myself, I managed to find my 
 way home, more edified than delighted by the character of a 
 Russian entertainment. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Conversations with the Czar if Cromwell was the greatest man (Caesar 
 excepted) who ever rose to the Supreme Power, Peter was the greatest 
 man ever born to it. 
 
 IT was singular enough that my introduction to the notice 
 of Peter the Great, and Philip the Debonnair, should have 
 taken place under circumstances so far similar that both those
 
 294 DEVEREUX. 
 
 illustrious personages were playing the part rather of subjects 
 than of princes. I cannot, however, conceive a greater mark 
 of the contrast between their characters than the different 
 motives and manners of the incognitos severally assumed. 
 
 Philip, in a scene of low riot and debauch, hiding the Jupiter 
 under the Silenus wearing the mask only for the licentiousness 
 it veiled, and foregoing the prerogative of power, solely for 
 indulgence in the grossest immunities of vice. 
 
 Peter, on the contrary, parting with the selfishness of state, 
 in order to watch the more keenly over the interests of his 
 people only omitting to preside in order to examine and 
 affecting the subject only to learn the better the duties of the 
 prince. Had I leisure, I might here pause to point out a nota- 
 ble contrast, not between the Czar and the Regent, but between 
 Peter the Great and Louis le Grand ; both creators of a new 
 era, both associated with a vast change in the condition of 
 two mighty empires. There ceases the likeness, and begins 
 the contrast ; the blunt simplicity of Peter, the gorgeous magni- 
 ficence of Louis ; the sternness of a legislator for barbarians, 
 the clemency of an idol of courtiers. One the victorious 
 defender of his country a victory solid, durable, and just ; 
 the other the conquering devastator of a neighboring people 
 a victory glittering, evanescent, and dishonorable. The one, 
 in peace, rejecting parade, pomp, individual honors, and trans- 
 forming a wilderness into an empire : the other involved in 
 ceremony, and throned on pomp : and exhausting the produce 
 of millions to pamper the bloated vanity of an individual. 
 The one a fire that burns without enlightening beyond a most 
 narrow circle, and whose lustre is tracked by what it ruins, 
 and fed by what it consumes : the other a luminary, whose 
 light, not so dazzling in its rays, spreads over a world, and is 
 noted, not for what it destroys, but for what it vivifies and 
 creates. 
 
 I cannot say that it was much to my credit that, while I 
 thought the Regent's condescension towards me natural enough, 
 I was a little surprised by the favor shown me by the Czar. 
 At Paris, I had seemed to be the man of pleasure ; that alone 
 was enough to charm Philip of Orleans. But in Russia, what 
 could I seem in any way calculated to charm the Czar? I 
 could neither make ships, nor could sail them when they were 
 made ; I neither knew, nor, what was worse, cared to know, 
 the stern from the rudder. Mechanics were a mystery to me ; 
 road-making was an incomprehensible science. Brandy I could 
 not endure a blunt bearing, and familiar manner, I could not
 
 295 
 
 assume. What was it then that made the Czar call upon me 
 at least twice a week in private, shut himself up with me by 
 the hour together, and endeavor to make me drunk with tokay, 
 in order (as he very incautiously let out one night), "to learn 
 the secrets of my heart"? I thought, at first, that the nature 
 of my mission was enough to solve the riddle : but we talked 
 so little about it that, with all my diplomatic vanities fresh 
 about me, I could not help feeling I owed the honor I received 
 less to my qualities as a minister, than to those as an indi- 
 vidual. 
 
 At last, however, I found that the secret attraction was what 
 the Czar termed the philosophical channel into which our con- 
 ferences flowed. I never saw a man so partial to moral pro- 
 blems and metaphysical inquiries, especially to those connected 
 with what ought to be the beginning or the end of all moral 
 sciences politics. Sometimes we would wander out in disguise, 
 and select some object from the customs, or things around us. 
 as the theme of reflection and discussion ; nor in these moments 
 would the Czar ever allow me to yield to his rank what I might 
 not feel disposed to concede to his arguments. One day, I 
 remember that he arrested me in the streets, and made me 
 accompany him to look upon two men undergoing the fearful 
 punishment of the battaog ; * one was a German, the other a 
 Russian; the former shrieked violently struggled in the hands 
 of his punishers and, with the utmost difficulty, was subjected 
 to his penalty ; the latter bore it patiently, and in silence ; he 
 only spoke once, and it was to say, " God bless the Czar ! " 
 
 " Can your Majesty hear the man," said I warmly, when the 
 Czar interpreted these words to me, " and not pardon him ?" 
 
 Peter frowned, but I was not silenced. " You don't know 
 the Russians ! " said he sharply, and turned aside. The 
 punishment was now over. "Ask the German," said the. Czar 
 to an officer, " what was his offence ? " The German, who was 
 writhing and howling horribly, uttered some violent words 
 against the disgrace of the punishment, and the pettiness of his 
 fault ; what the fault was I forget. 
 
 " Now ask the Russian," said Peter. " My punishment was 
 just ! " said the Russian, coolly, putting on his clothes as if 
 nothing had happened ; "God and the Czar were angry with 
 me ! " 
 
 " Come away, Count," said the Czar ; " and now solve me a 
 problem. I know both those men ; and the German, in a 
 battle, would be the braver of the two. How comes it that he 
 
 * A terrible U^id of flogging, but less severe than the knout.
 
 296 DEVEfcfcUX. 
 
 weeps and writhes like a girl, while the Russian bears the same 
 pain without a murmur?" 
 
 "Will your Majesty forgive me," said I, "but I cannot help 
 wishing that the Russian had complained more bitterly ; insensi- 
 bility to punishment is the sign of a brute, not a hero. Do you 
 not see that the German felt the indignity, the Russian did not ; 
 and do you not see that that very pride, which betrays agony 
 under the disgrace of the battaog, is exactly the very feeling 
 that would have produced courage in the glory of the battle. 
 A sense of honor makes better soldiers and better men than 
 indifference to pain." 
 
 " But had I ordered the Russian to death, he would have 
 gone with the same apathy, and the same speech, ' It is just ! 
 I have offended God and the Czar ! ' " 
 
 "Dare I observe, Sire, that that fact would be a strong proof 
 of the dangerous falsity of the old maxims which extol indiffer- 
 ence to death as a virtue. In some individuals it may be a 
 sign of virtue, I allow ; but, as a national trait, it is the 
 strongest sign of national misery. Look round the great globe. 
 What countries are those where the inhabitants bear death with 
 cheerfulness, or, at least, with apathy ? Are they the most civil- 
 ized the most free the most prosperous? Pardon me no ! 
 They are the half-starved, half clothed, half-human, sons of the 
 forest and the waste; or, when gathered in states, they are slaves 
 without enjoyment or sense beyond the hour : and the reason 
 that they do not recoil from the pangs of death is because they 
 have never known the real pleasures or the true objects of life." 
 
 " Yet," said the Czar musingly, "the contempt of death was 
 the great characteristic of the Spartans." 
 
 " And, therefore," said I, "the great token that the Spar- 
 tans were a miserable horde. Your majesty admires England 
 and the English ; you have, beyond doubt, witnessed an execu- 
 tion in that country; you have noted, even where the criminal 
 is consoled by religion, how he trembles and shrinks how de- 
 jected how prostrate of heart he is before the doom is com- 
 pleted. Take now the vilest slave, either of the Emperor of 
 Morocco, or the great Czar of Russia. He changes neither 
 tint nor muscle : he requires no consolation : he shrinks from 
 no torture. What is the inference ? That slaves dread death less 
 than the free. And it should be so. The end of legislation 
 is not to make death, but life, a blessing." 
 
 " You have put the matter in a new light," said the Czar ; 
 " but you allow that, in individuals, contempt of death is some- 
 times a virtue."
 
 BEVEREUX. 297 
 
 u Yes, when it springs from mental reasonings, not physical 
 indifference. But your Majesty has already put in action one 
 vast spring of a system, which will ultimately open to your sub- 
 jects so many paths of existence that they will preserve con- 
 tempt for its proper objects, and not lavish it solely as they do 
 now, on the degradation which sullies life, and the axe that 
 ends it. You have already begun the conquest of another 
 and a most vital error in the philosophy of the ancients; 
 that philosophy taught that man should have few wants, 
 and made it a crime to increase, and a virtue to reduce, 
 them. A legislator should teach, on the contrary, that man 
 should have many wants : for wants are not only the 
 sources of enjoyment they are the sources of improvement ; 
 and that nation will be the most enlightened among whose 
 populace they are found the most numerous. You, Sire, by 
 circulating the arts, the graces, create a vast herd of moral 
 wants hitherto unknown, and in those wants will hereafter be 
 found the prosperity of your people, the fountain of your re- 
 sources, and the strength of your empire." 
 
 In conversation on these topics we often passed hours to- 
 gether, and from such conferences the Czar passed only to those 
 on other topics more immediately useful to him. No man, per- 
 haps, had a larger share of the mere human frailties than Peter the 
 Great ; yet I do confess that when I saw the nobleness of mind 
 with which he flung aside his rank as a robe, and repaired from 
 man to man, the humblest or the highest, the artisan or the prince, 
 the prosperity of his subjects his only object, and the acquisi- 
 tion of knowledge his only means to obtain it, I do confess 
 that my mental sight refused even to perceive his frailties, and 
 that I could almost have bent the knee in worship to a being 
 whose benevolence was so pervading a spirit, and whose power 
 was so glorious a minister to utility. 
 
 Towards the end of January, I completed my mission, and 
 took my leave of the court of Russia. 
 
 " Tell the Regent," said Peter, " that I shall visit him in 
 France soon, and shall expect to see his drawings, if I show 
 him my models." 
 
 In effect, the next month (February 16), the Czar com- 
 menced his second course of travels. He was pleased to tes- 
 tify some regard for me on my departure. " If ever you quit 
 the service of the French court, and your own does not require 
 you, I implore you to come to me ; I will give you carteblanehe 
 as to the nature and appointments of your office." 
 
 I need not say that 1 expressed my gratitude for the royal con-
 
 298 DEVEREUX. 
 
 descension ; nor that, in leaving Russia, I brought, from the ex- 
 ample of its sovereign, a greater desire to be useful to mankind 
 than I had known before. Pattern and Teacher of kings, if each 
 country, in each century, had produced one such ruler as you, 
 either all mankind would noiv be contented with despotism, or 
 all mankind would be free! Oh ! when kings have only to be 
 good, to be kept forever in our hearts and souls as the gods 
 and benefactors of the earth, by what monstrous fatality have 
 they been so blind to their fame? When we remember the 
 millions, the generations, they can degrade, destroy, elevate or 
 save, we might almost think (even if the other riddles of 
 the present existence did not require a future existence to 
 solve them), we might almost think a hereafter necessary, were 
 it but for the sole purpose of requiting the virtues of princes, 
 or their SINS.* 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Return to Paris. Interview with Bolingbroke. A gallant Adventure. Affair 
 with Dubois. Public Life is a Drama, in which private Vices generally 
 play the part of the Scene-shifters. 
 
 IT is a strange feeling we experience on entering a great city 
 by night a strange mixture of social and solitary impressions. 
 I say by night, because at that time we are most inclined to feel ; 
 and the mind, less distracted than in the day by external 
 objects, dwells the more intensely upon its own hopes and 
 thoughts, remembrances and associations and sheds over them 
 from that one feeling which it cherishes the most, a blending 
 and a mellowing hue. 
 
 It was at night that I re-entered Paris. I did not tarry long 
 at my hotel, before (though it was near upon midnight) I con- 
 veyed myself to Lord Bolingbroke's lodgings. Knowing his 
 engagements at St. Germains, where the Chevalier (who had but 
 a very few weeks before returned to France, after the crude and 
 unfortunate affair of 1715) chiefly resided, I was not very san- 
 guine in my hopes of finding him at Paris. I was, however, 
 agreeably surprised. His servant would have ushered me into 
 his study, but I was willing to introduce myself. I withheld 
 the servant, and entered the room alone. 
 
 The door was ajar, and Bolingbroke neither heard nor saw 
 
 * Upon his death-bed Peter is reported to have said, " God, I dare trust, will look mer- 
 cifully upon my faults in consideration of the good I have done my country." These 
 are worthy to be the last words of a king ! Rarely has there been a monarch who more 
 required the forgiveness of the Creator ; yet seldom perhaps has there been a human 
 bei ig who more deserved it. ED.
 
 DEVEREUX. 299 
 
 me. There was something in his attitude and aspect which 
 made me pause to survey him, before I made myself known. 
 He was sitting by a table covered with books. A large folio 
 (it was the Cas.uibon edition of Polybius) was lying open before 
 him. I recognized the work at once it was a favorite book 
 with Bolingbroke, and we had often discussed the merits of its 
 author. I smiled as I saw that that book, which has to states- 
 men so peculiar an attraction, made still the study from which 
 the busy, restless, ardent, and exalted spirit of the statesman 
 before me drew its intellectual food. But at the moment in 
 which I entered, his eye was absent from the page, and turned 
 abstractedly in an opposite, though still downcast, direction. 
 His countenance was extremely pale his lips were tightly 
 compressed, and an air of deep thought, mingled, as it seemed 
 to me, with sadness made the ruling expression of his lordly 
 and noble features. "It is the torpor of ambition after one of 
 its storms," said I, inly and I approached, and laid my hand 
 on his shoulder. 
 
 After our mutual greetings, I said : " Have the dead so strong 
 an attraction that at this hour they detain the courted and 
 courtly Bolingbroke from the admiration and converse of the 
 living ? " 
 
 The statesman looked at me earnestly. " Have you heard 
 the news of the day? " said he. 
 
 " How is it possible? I have but just arrived at Paris." 
 
 " You do not know, then, that I have resigned my office under 
 the Chevalier ! " 
 
 " Resigned your office ! " 
 
 "Resigned is a wrong word I received a dismissal. Imme- 
 diately on his return the Chevalier sent for me embraced me 
 desired me to prepare to follow him to Lorraine ; and three 
 days afterwards came the Duke of Ormond to me, to ask me to 
 deliver up the seals and papers. I put the latter very carefully 
 in a little letter-case, and behold an end to the administration 
 of Lord Bolingbroke ! The Jacobites abuse me terribly their 
 king accuses me of neglect, incapacity, and treachery and 
 Fortune pulls down the fabric she had built for me, in order to 
 pelt me with the stones ! " * 
 
 " My dear, dear friend, I am indeed grieved for you ; but I 
 am more incensed at the infatuation of the Chevalier. Surely, 
 surely he must already have seen his error, and solicited your 
 return." 
 
 " Return ! " cried Bolingbroke, and his eyes flashed fire 
 
 * tetter to Sir \V. Windham, Ep,
 
 00 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " return ! Hear what I said to the queen mother who came to 
 me to attempt a reconciliation : ' Madam,' said I, in a tone as 
 calm as I could command, 'if ever this hand draws the sword, 
 or employs the pen, in behalf of that prince, may it rot ! ' 
 Return ! not if my head were the price of refusal ! Yet, Dev- 
 ereux," and here Bolingbroke's voice and manner changed 
 "yet it is not at these tricks of fate that a wise man will repine. 
 We do right to cultivate honors ; they are sources of gratifica- 
 tion to ourselves ; they are more they are incentives to the 
 conduct which works benefit to others ; but we do wrong to 
 afflict ourselves at their loss. Nee querere nee spernere honores 
 oportet* It is good to enjoy the blessings of fortune ; it is 
 better to submit without a pang to their loss. You remember, 
 when you left me, I was preparing myself for this stroke 
 believe me, I am now prepared." 
 
 And in truth Bolingbroke bore the ingratitude of the Cheva- 
 lier well. Soon afterwards he carried his long cherished wishes 
 for retirement into effect ; and Fate, who delights in reversing 
 her disk, leaving in darkness what she had just illumined, and 
 illumining what she had hitherto left in obscurity and gloom, 
 for a long interval separated us from each other, no less by his 
 seclusion than by the publicity to which she condemned myself. 
 
 Lord Bolingbroke's dismissal was not the only event affect- 
 ing me that had occurred during my absence from France. 
 Among the most active partisans of the Chevalier, in the expe- 
 dition of Lord Mar, had been Montreuil. So great, indeed, 
 had been either his services, or the idea entertained of their 
 value, that a reward of extraordinary amount was offered for 
 his head. Hitherto he had escaped, and was supposed to be 
 still in Scotland. 
 
 But what affected me more nearly was the condition of 
 Gerald's circumstances. On the breaking out of the rebellion, 
 he had been suddenly seized, and detained in prison; and it 
 was only upon the escape of the Chevalier that he was released ; 
 apparently, however, nothing had been proved against him ; 
 and my absence from the headquarters of intelligence left me 
 in ignorance both of the grounds of his imprisonment, and the 
 circumstances of his release. 
 
 I heard, however, from Bolingbroke, who seemed to possess 
 some of that information which the ecclesiastical intriguants 
 of the day so curiously transmitted from court to court, and 
 corner to corner, that Gerald had retired to Devereux Court in 
 great disgust at his confinement. However, when I considered 
 
 * It becomes us neither to court, nor to despise honors.
 
 DEVEREUX. 301 
 
 his bold character, his close intimacy with Montreuil, and the 
 genius for intrigue which that priest so eminently possessed, I 
 was not much inclined to censure the government for unneces- 
 sary precaution in his imprisonment. 
 
 There was another circumstance connected with the rebellion 
 which possessed for me an individual and deep interest. A 
 man of the name of Barnard had been executed in England for 
 seditious and treasonable practices. I took especial pains to 
 ascertain every particular respecting him. I learned that he was 
 young, of inconsiderable note, but esteemed clever ; and had, 
 long previously to the death of the queen, been secretly employed 
 by the friends of the Chevalier. This circumstance occasioned 
 me much internal emotion, though there could be no doubt that 
 the Barnard whom I had such cause to execrate, had only 
 borrowed from this minion the disguise of his name. 
 
 The Regent received me with all the graciousness and com- 
 plaisance for which he was so remarkable. To say the truth 
 my mission had been extremely fortunate in its results ; the only 
 cause in which the Regent was concerned, the interests of which 
 Peter the Great appeared to disregard, was that of the Chevalier ; 
 but I had been fully instructed on that head anterior to my 
 legation. 
 
 There appears very often to be a sort of moral fitness between 
 the beginning and the end of certain alliances or acquaintances. 
 This sentiment is not very clearly expressed. I am about to 
 illustrate it by an important event in my political life. During 
 my absence Dubois had made rapid steps towards being a great 
 man. He was daily growing into power, and those courtiers 
 who were neither too haughty nor too honest to bend the knee 
 to so vicious, yet able a minion, had already singled him out as 
 a fit person to flatter and to rise by. For me, I neither sought 
 nor avoided him ; but he was as civil towards me as \\\s brusque 
 temper permitted him to be towards most persons; and as our 
 careers were not likely to cross one another, I thought I might 
 reckon on his neutrality, if not on his friendship. Chance turned 
 the scale against me. 
 
 One day I received an anonymous letter, requesting me to be, 
 
 at such an hour, at a certain house in the Rue . It occurred 
 
 to me as no improbable supposition, that the appointment might 
 relate to my individual circumstances, whether domestic or 
 political, and I certainly had not at the moment any ideas of 
 gallantry in my brain. At the hour prescribed I appeared at 
 the place of assignation. My mind misgave me when I saw a 
 female conduct me into a little chamber hung with tapestry
 
 301 UEVEREUX. 
 
 descriptive of the loves of Mars and Venus. After I had cooled 
 my heels in this apartment for about a quarter of an hour, in sailed 
 a tall woman, of a complexion almost Moorish. I bowed thY 
 lady sighed. An tclaircisftment ensued and I found that I had 
 the good fortune to be the object of a. caprice, in the favorite mis- 
 tress of the Abbe Dubois. Nothing was farther from my wishes ! 
 What a pity it is that one cannot always tell a woman one's 
 mind ! 
 
 I attempted a flourish about friendship, honor, and the respect 
 due to the amante of the most intimate ami I had in the world. 
 
 " Pooh ! " said the tawny Calypso, a little pettishly " pooh ! 
 one does not talk of those things here." 
 
 " Madame," said I, very energetically, " I implore you to 
 refrain. Do not excite too severe a contest between passion 
 and duty ! I feel that I must fly you you are already too 
 bewitching." 
 
 Just as I rose to depart, in rushes the femmede chambre, and 
 announces, not Monsieur, the Abbe, but Monseigneur,the Regent. 
 Of course (the old resort in such cases) I was thrust into a closet; 
 in marches his royal highness, and is received very cavalierly. 
 It is quite astonishing to me what airs those women give them- 
 selves when they have princes to manage ! However, my con- 
 finement was notlong the closet had another door the/emwe 
 de chambre slips round, opens it, and I congratulate myself on 
 my escape. 
 
 When a Frenchwoman is piqued, she passes all understand- 
 ing. The next day I am very quietly employed at breakfast, 
 when my valet ushers in a masked personage, and, behold my 
 gentlewoman again ! Human endurance will not go too far, and 
 this was a case which required one to be in a passion one way 
 or the other; so I feigned anger, and talked with exceeding 
 dignity about the predicament I had been placed in the day 
 before. 
 
 " Such must always be the case," said I, " when one is weak 
 enough to form an attachment to a lady who encourages so 
 many others !" 
 
 " For your sake," said the tender dame, " for your sake, then, 
 I will discard them all ! " 
 
 There was something grand in this : it might have elicited a 
 few strokes of pathos, when never was there anything so strange- 
 ly provoking the Abbe Dubois himself was heard in my anti- 
 room. I thought this chance, but it was more ; the good Abbe", 
 I afterwards found, had traced cause for suspicion, and had come 
 , v o pay me a visit of amatory police, I opened my dressing
 
 bEVEREUX. 303 
 
 room door, and thrust in the lady. " There," said I, " are the 
 back-stairs, and at the bottom of the back-stairs is a door." 
 
 Would not any one have thought this hint enough ? By no 
 means ; this very tall lady stooped to the littleness of listening, 
 and, instead of departing, stationed herself by the keyhole. 
 
 I never exactly learned whether Dubois suspected the visit 
 his mistress had paid me, or whether he merely surmised, from 
 his spies or her escritoire, that she harbored an inclination to- 
 wards me ; in either case his policy was natural, and like himself. 
 
 He sat himself down talked of the Regent, of pleasure, of 
 women, and, at last of his very tall lady in question. 
 
 " Le pauvre diablesse" said he contemptuously, " I had once 
 compassion on her ; I have repented it ever since. You have 
 no idea what a terrible creature she is has such a wen in her 
 neck quite a goitre. Mortdiable ! " (and the Abbe spat in his 
 handkerchief). " I would sooner have a liaison with the witch 
 of Endor ! " 
 
 Not content with this he went on in his usual gross and dis- 
 pleasing manner to enumerate or to forge those various par- 
 ticulars of her personal charms, which he thought most likely to 
 steel me against her attractions. "Thank Heaven, at least," 
 thought I ' that she has gone ! " 
 
 Scarcely had this pious gratulation flowed from my heart, be- 
 fore the door was burst open, and pale trembling eyes on 
 fire hands clenched forth stalked the lady in question. A 
 wonderful proof how much sooner a woman would lose her 
 character than allow it to be called not worth the losing. She 
 entered, and had all the furies of Hades lent her their tongues she 
 could not have been more eloquent. It would have been a 
 very pleasant scene if one had not been a partner in it. The 
 old Abbe, with his keen, astute, marked face, struggling between 
 surprise, fear, the sense of the ridiculous, and the certainty of 
 losing his mistress ; the lady, foaming at the mouth, and shaking 
 her clenched hand most menacingly at her traducer myself en- 
 deavoring to pacify, and acting, as one does at such moments, 
 mechanically though one flatters one-self afterwards that one 
 acted solely from wisdom. 
 
 But the Abbe's mistress was by no means content with vin- 
 dicating herself she retaliated and gave so minute a descrip- 
 tion of the Abbe's own qualities and graces, coupled with so 
 many pleasing illustrations, that in a very little time his coolness 
 forsook him, and he grew in as great a rage as herself. At last 
 she flew out of the room. The Abbe", trembling with passion, 
 shook me most cordially by the hand, grinned from ear to ear,
 
 304 DEVEREUX. 
 
 said it was a capital joke, wished me good-by, as if he loved me 
 better than his eyes, and left the house, my most irreconcilable 
 and bitter foe ! 
 
 How could it be otherwise ? The rivalship the Abbe" might 
 have forgiven such things happened every day to him but the 
 having been made so egregiously ridiculous, the Abbe could 
 not forgive ; and the Abbe's was a critical age for jesting on 
 these matters, sixty or so. And then such unpalatable sarcasms 
 on his appearance! " ' 1'is all over in that quarter," said I to 
 myself, "but we may find another," and. I drove out that very 
 day to pay my respects to the Regent. 
 
 What a pity it is that one's pride should so often be the bane 
 of one's wisdom ! Ah ! that one could be as good a man of 
 the world in practice as one is in theory ! my master-stroke of 
 policy at that moment would evidently have been this : I should 
 have gone to the Regent and made out a story a little similar 
 to the real one, but with this difference, all the ridicule of the 
 situation should have fallen upon me, and the little Dubois 
 should have been elevated on a pinnacle of respectable appear- 
 ances ! This, as the Regent told the Abbe everything, would 
 have saved me. I saw the plan ; but was too proud to adopt 
 it ; I followed another course in my game : I threw away the 
 knave and played with the king, i. e., with the Regent. After a 
 little preliminary conversation, I turned the conversation on 
 the Abbe. 
 
 " Ah, the sctte'rat ! " said Philip, smiling, " 'tis a sad dog, but 
 very clever and loves me; he would be incomparable, if he were 
 but decently honest." 
 
 " At least," said I, " he is no hypocrite, and that is some 
 praise." 
 
 " Hem ! " ejaculated the Duke very slowly, and then, after 
 a pause, he said, " Count, I have a real kindness for you, and I 
 will therefore give you a piece of advice : think as well of 
 Dubois as you can, and address him as if he were all you en- 
 deavored to fancy him." 
 
 After this hint, which in the mouth of any prince but Philip 
 of Orleans would have been not a little remarkable for its want 
 of dignity, my prospects did not seem much brighter : however, 
 I was not discouraged. 
 
 "The Abbe"," said I respectfully, "is a choleric man : one 
 may displease him ; but dare I hope that so long as I preserve 
 inviolate my zeal and my attachment to the interests and the 
 person of your highness, no " 
 
 The Regent interrupted me. " You mean nobody shall sue-
 
 >EVEltEUX. 505 
 
 cessfully misrepresent you to me ? No, Count " (and here the 
 Regent spoke with the earnestness and dignity which, when he 
 did assume, few wore with a nobler grace), "no, Count, I make 
 a distinction between those who minister to the state, and those 
 who minister to me. I consider your services too valuable to 
 the former to put them at the mercy of the latter. And now 
 that the conversation has turned upon business, I wish to speak 
 to you about this scheme of Gortz.'' 
 
 After a prolonged conference with the Regent upon matters 
 of business, in which his deep penetration into human nature 
 not a little surprised me, I went away, thoroughly satisfied with 
 my visit. I should not have been so had I added to my other 
 accomplishments the gift of prophecy. 
 
 Above five days after this interview, I thought it would be but 
 prudent to pay the Abbe Dubois one of those visits of homage 
 which it was already become policy to pay him. " If I go," 
 thought I, " it will seem as if nothing had happened ; if I stay 
 away, it will seem as if I attached importance to a scene I should 
 appear to have forgotten." 
 
 Jt so happened that the Abbe had a very unusual visitor that 
 morning, in the person of the austere but admirable Due deSt. 
 Simon. There was a singular, and almost invariable, distinc- 
 tion in the Regent's mind between one kind of regard and 
 another. His regard for one order of persons always arose 
 either out of his vices or his indolence ; his regard for another, 
 out of his good qualities and his strong sense. The Due deSt. 
 Simon held the same place in the latter species of affection that 
 Dubois did in the former. The Due was just coming out of 
 the Abbe's closet as I entered the ante-room. He paused to 
 speak to me, while Dubois, who had followed the Due out, 
 stopped for one moment, and surveyed me with a look like a 
 thunder-cloud. I did not appear to notice it, but St. Simon did. 
 
 ''That look," said he, as Dubois, beckoning to a gentleman 
 to accompany him to his closet, once more disappeared, 
 " that look bodes you no good, Count." 
 
 Pride is an elevation which is a spring-board at one time, 
 and a stumbling-block at another. It was witli me more often 
 the stumbling-block than the spring-board. " Monseigneur le 
 Due," said I haughtily enough, and rather in too loud a tone 
 considering the chamber was pretty full, " in no court to which 
 Morton Devereux proffers his services shall his fortune de- 
 pend upon the looks of a low-born, insolent, or profligate 
 priest." 
 St. Simon smiled sardonically. "Monsieur le Comte," said
 
 306 DEVEREUX. 
 
 he, rather civilly, "I honor your sentiments, and I wish you suc- 
 cess in the world and a lower voice." 
 
 I was going to say something by way of retort, for I was in 
 a very bad humor, but I checked myself ; " I need not," thought 
 I, " make two enemies if I can help it." 
 
 " I shall never," I replied gravely, " I shall never despair, so 
 long as the Due de St. Simon lives, of winning by the same arts 
 the favor of princes and the esteem of good men." 
 
 The Due was flattered, and replied suitably, but he very soon 
 afterwards went away. I was resolved that I would not go till I had 
 fairly seen what sort of reception the Abbe would give me. I did 
 not wait long he came out of his closet, and standing in his 
 usual rude manner with his back to the fireplace, received the 
 addresses and compliments of his visitors. I was not in a hurry 
 to present myself, but I did so at last with a familiar, yet rather 
 respectful, air. Dubois looked at me from head to foot, and 
 abruptly turning his back upon me, said with an oath, to a 
 courtier who stood next to him, " The plagues of Pharaoh 
 are come again only instead of Egyptian frogs in our cham- 
 bers, we have the still more troublesome guests English ad- 
 venturers ! " 
 
 Somehow or other my compliments rarely tell ; I am lavish 
 enough of them, but they generally have the air of sarcasms ; 
 thank Heaven, however, no one can accuse me of ever wanting 
 a rude answer to a rude speech. " Ha ! ha ! ha ! " said I now, 
 in answer to Dubois, with a courteous laugh, " you have an ex- 
 cellent wit, Abbe. Apropos of adventurers, I met a Monsieur 
 St. Laurent, Principal of the Institution of St. Michael, the 
 other day, 'Count,' said he, hearing I was going to Paris, 'you 
 can do me an especial favor ! ' ' What is it ? ' said I. ' Why a 
 cast-off valet of mine is living at Paris he would have gone 
 long since to the galleys, if he had not taken sanctuary in the 
 Church if ever you meet him give him a good horsewhipping 
 on my account: his name is William Dubois.' 'Depend upon 
 it,' answered I to Monsieur St. Laurent, 'that if he is servant 
 to anyone not belonging to the royal family, I will fulfil your 
 errand, and horsewhip him soundly ; if /// the service of the 
 royal family, why respect for his masters must oblige me 
 to content myself with putting all persons on their guard 
 against a little rascal, who retains, in all situations, the manners 
 of the apothecary's son, and the roguery of the director's 
 valet.' " 
 
 All the time I was relating this charming little anecdote, it 
 would have been amusing to the last degree to note the horri-
 
 36? 
 
 fied countenances of the surrounding gentlemen. Dubois was 
 too confoundtd, too aghast, to interrupt me, and I left the room 
 before a single syllable was uttered. Had Dubois at that time 
 been what he was afterwards, cardinal and prime minister, I 
 should in all probability have had permanent lodgings in the 
 Bastile, in return for my story. Even as it was, the Abbe was 
 not so grateful as he ought to have been, for my taking so much 
 pains to amuse him ! In spite of my anger on leaving the favor- 
 ite, I did not forget my prudence, and accordingly I hastened 
 to the Prince. When the Regent admitted me, I flung myself 
 on my knee, and told him, verbatim, all that had happened. 
 The Regent, who seems to have had very little real liking for 
 Dubois, could not help laughing when I ludicrously described 
 to him the universal consternation my anecdote had excited.* 
 
 " Courage, my dear Count," said he kindly, " you have noth- 
 ing to fear; return home and count upon an embassy ! " 
 
 I relied on the royal word, returned to my lodgings, and spent 
 the evening with Chaulieu and Fontenelle. The next day the 
 Due de St. Simon paid me a visit. After a little preliminary 
 conversation, he unburthened the secret with which he was 
 charged. I was desired to leave Paris in forty-eight hours. 
 
 "Believe me," said St. Simon, "that this message was not en- 
 trusted to me by the Regent, without great reluctance. He 
 sends you many condescending and kind messages ; says he 
 shall always both esteem and like you, and hopes to see you 
 again, some time or other, at the Palais Royal. Moreover, he 
 desires the message to be private, and has entrusted it tome in 
 especial, because hearing that I had a kindness for you, and 
 knowing I had a hatred for Dubois, he thought I should be the 
 least unwelcome messenger of such disagreeable tidings. ' To 
 tell you the truth, St. Simon,' said the Regent laughing, ' I only 
 consent to have him banished, from a firm conviction that, if I 
 do not, Dubois will take some opportunity of having him be- 
 headed.'" 
 
 " Pray," said T, smiling with a tolerable good grace, " pray 
 give my most grateful and humble thanks to his highness, for 
 his very considerate and kind foresight. I could not have 
 chosen better for myself than his highness has chosen for me : 
 my only regret on quitting France is at leaving a prince so af- 
 fable as Philip, and a courtier so virtuous as St. Simon." 
 
 Though the good Due went every year to the Abbey de la 
 
 * On the death of Duhois, the Regent wrote to die Count de Noce\ whom he had ban- 
 ist the favorite, uttered at < 
 :pect you to-night to suppe 
 
 ished for an indiscreet expression against the favorite, uttered at one of his private suppers ; 
 " With the beast dies the venom : 1 expect you to-night to supper at the Palais RoyaL"
 
 3oS 15EVEREUX. 
 
 Trappe, for the purpose of mortifying his sins and preserving 
 his religion, in so impious an atmosphere as the Palais Royal, he 
 was not above flattery ; and he expressed himself towards me 
 with particular kindness after my speech. 
 
 At court, one becomes a sort of human ant-bear, and learns 
 to catch one's prey by one's tongue. 
 
 After we had eased ourselves a little by abusing Dubois, the 
 Due took his leave in order to allow me time to prepare for 
 my " journey," as he politely called it. Before he left, he how- 
 ever asked me whither my course would be bent. I told him 
 that I should take my chance with the Czar Peter, and see if 
 his czarship thought the same esteem was due to the disgraced 
 courtier, as to the favored diplomatist. 
 
 That night I received a letter from St. Simon, enclosing one 
 addressed with all due form to the Czar. " You will consider 
 the enclosed," wrote St. Simon, l< a fresh proof of the Regent's 
 kindness to you ; it is a most flattering testimonial in your favor, 
 and cannot fail to make the Czar anxious to secure your ser- 
 vices." 
 
 I was not a little touched by a kindness, so unusual in princes 
 to their discarded courtiers, and this entirely reconciled me to 
 a change of scene which, indeed, under any other circumstan- 
 ces, my somewhat morbid love for action and variety would 
 have induced me rather to relish than dislike. 
 
 Within thirty-six hours from the time of dismissal, I had 
 turned my back upon the French capital. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 A long Interval of Years. A Change of Mind and its Causes. 
 
 THE last accounts received of the Czar reported him to be 
 at Dantzic. He had, however, quitted that place when I ar- 
 rived there. I lost no time in following him, and presented 
 myself to his Majesty one day after his dinner, when he was 
 sitting with one leg in the Czarina's lap, and a bottle of the 
 best eau de -vie before him. I had chosen my time well ; he 
 received me most graciously, read my letter from the Regent 
 about which, remembering the fate of Bellerophon, I had had 
 certain apprehensions, but which proved to be in the highest 
 degree complimentary and then declared himself extremely 
 happy to see me again. However parsimonious Peter gener- 
 ally was towards foreigners, I never had ground for personal
 
 DEVEREUX. 309 
 
 domplaint on that score. The very next day I was appointed 
 to a post of honor and profit about the royal person ; from 
 this I was transferred to a military station, in which I rose with 
 great rapidity ; and I was only occasionally calied from my 
 warlike duties, to be entrusted with diplomatic missions of the 
 highest confidence and importance. 
 
 It is this portion of my life a portion of nine years, to the 
 time of the Czar's death that I shall, in this history, the most 
 concentrate and condense. In truth, were I to dwell upon 
 it at length, I should make little more than a mere record of 
 political events differing, in some respects, it is true, from the 
 received histories of the time^ but containing nothing to com- 
 pensate in utility for the want of interest. That this was the 
 exact age for adventurers, Alberoni and Dubo ; s are sufficient 
 proofs. Never was there a more stirring, active, restless period ; 
 never one in which the genius of intrigue was so pervading- 
 ly at work. I was not less fortunate than my brethren. Al- 
 though scarcely four and twenty when I entered the Czar's 
 service, my habits of intimacy with men much older my cus- 
 tomary gravity, reserve, and thought "my freedom, since Isora's 
 death, from youthful levity or excess my early entrance into 
 the world and a countenance prematurely marked with lines 
 of reflection, and sobered by its hue made me appear consid- 
 erably older than I was. I kept my own counsel, and affected 
 to be so ; youth is a great enemy to one's success ; and more 
 esteem is often bestowed upon a wrinkled brow than a plod- 
 ding brain. 
 
 All the private intelligence which, during this space of time, I 
 had received from England was far from voluminous. My 
 mother still enjoyed the quiet of her religious retreat. A fire, 
 arising from the negligence of a servant, had consumed 
 nearly the whole of Devereux Court (the fine old house ! till 
 that went, I thought even England held one friend). Upon 
 this accident, Gerald had gone to London ; and though there 
 was now no doubt of his being concerned in the Rebellion of 
 ly^j he had been favorably received at court, and was already 
 renowned throughout London, for his pleasures, his excesses, 
 and his munificent profusion. 
 
 Montreuil, whose lot seemed to be always to lose, by intrigue, 
 what he gained by the real solidity of his genius, had embarked 
 very largely in the rash but gigantic schemes of Gortz and Alber- 
 oni ; schemes which, had they succeeded, would not only have 
 placed a new king upon the English throne, but wrought an 
 Utter change over the whole face of Europe. With Alberoni
 
 and with Gortz fell Montreuil. He was banished France and 
 Spain ; the penalty of death awaited him in Britain ; and he 
 was supposed to have tin-own himself into some convent in 
 Italy, where his name and his character were unknown. In 
 this brief intelligence was condensed all my information of the 
 actors in my first scenes of life. I return to that scene on 
 which I had now entered. 
 
 At the age of thirty-three, I had acquired a reputation suffi- 
 cient to content my ambition my fortune was larger than my 
 wants I was a favorite in courts I had been successful in 
 camps I had already obtained all that would have rewarded 
 the whole lives of many men superior to myself in merit 
 more ardent than myself in desires. I was still young my 
 appearance, though greatly altered, manhood had rather im- 
 proved than impaired. I had not forestalled my constitution 
 by excesses, nor worn dry the sources of pleasure by too large 
 a demand upon their capacities; why was it then, at that gold- 
 en age in the very prime and glory of manhood in the very 
 zenith and summer of success that a deep, dark, pervading mel- 
 ancholy fell upon me ? A melancholy so gloomy that it seemed 
 to be as a thick and impenetrable curtain drawn gradually be- 
 tween myself and the blessed light of human enjoyment. A 
 torpor crept upon me an indolent, heavy, clinging languor, 
 gathered over my whole frame the physical and the mental : 
 I sat for hours without book, paper, object, thought, gazing on 
 vacancy stirring not feeling not yes, feeling, but feeling 
 only one sensation, a sick, sad, drooping despondency a sink- 
 ing in of the heart a sort of gnawing within, as if some- 
 thing living were twisted round my vitals, and, finding no other 
 food, preyed, though with a sickly and dull maw, upon them. 
 This disease came upon me slowly : it was not till the beginning 
 of a second year, from its obvious and palpable commencement, 
 that it grew to the height that I have described. It began with 
 a distaste to all that I had been accustomed to enjoy, or to 
 pursue. Music, which I had always passionately loved, though 
 from some defect in the organs of hearing I was incapable of 
 attaining the smallest knowledge of the science, music lost all its 
 diviner spells, all its properties of creating a new existence, a 
 life of dreaming and vague luxuries, within the mind it be- 
 came only a monotonous soundness grateful to the languor of my 
 faculties than utter and dead stillness. I had never been what 
 is generally termed a boon companion, but I had had the social 
 vanities, if not the social tastes : I had insensibly loved the 
 board which echoed with applause at my sallies, and the
 
 DEVEREUX. 311 
 
 comrades who, while they deprecated my satire, had been com- 
 plaisant enough to hail it as wit. One of my weaknesses is 
 a love of show, and I had gratified a feeling not the less 
 cherished because it arose from a petty source, in obtaining for 
 my equipages, my mansion, my banquets, the celebrity which 
 is given no less to magnificence than to fame ; now I grew in- 
 different alike to the signs of pomp, and to the baubles of taste ; 
 praise fell upon a listless ear, and (rare pitch of satiety !) the 
 pleasures that are the offspring of our foibles delighted me no 
 more. I had early learned from Bolingbroke a love for the 
 converse of men, eminent, whether for wisdom or for wit ; the 
 graceful badinage, or the keen critique the sparkling flight of 
 the winged words which encircled and rebounded from lip to 
 lip, or the deep speculation upon the mysterious and unravelled 
 wonders of man, of nature and the world the light maxim 
 upon manners, or the sage inquiry into the mines of learn- 
 ing; all and each had possessed a link to bind my temper and 
 my tastes to the graces and fascination of social life. Now a 
 new spirit entered within me : the smile faded from my lip, and 
 the jest departed from my tongue ; memory seemed no less 
 treacherous than fancy, and deserted me the instant I at- 
 tempted to enter into those contests of knowledge in which I 
 had been not undistinguished before. I grew confused and 
 embarrassed in speech my words expressed a sense utterly 
 different to that which I had intended to convey, and at last, as 
 my apathy increased, I sat at my own board, silent and lifeless, 
 freezing into ice the very powers and streams of converse 
 which I had once been the foremost to circulate and to warm. 
 
 At the time I refer to, I was minister at one of the small con- 
 tinental courts, where life is a round of unmeaning etiquette 
 and wearisome ceremonials, a daily labor of trifles a ceaseless 
 pageantry of nothings I had been sent there upon one impor- 
 tant event, the business resulting from it had soon ceased, and 
 all the duties that remained for me to discharge were or a nega- 
 tive and passive nature. Nothing that could arouse nothing 
 that could occupy faculties that had for years been so perpetu- 
 ally wound up to a restless excitement was left for me in this 
 terrible reservoir of ennui. I had come thither at once from 
 the skirmishing and wild warfare of a Tartar foe ; a war in 
 which, though the glory was obscure, the action was perpetual 
 and exciting. I had come thither, and the change was as if I 
 had passed from a mountain stream to a stagnant pool. 
 
 Society at this court reminded me of a state funeral, everything 
 was pompous and lugubrious, even to the drapery even to the
 
 312 DEVEREUX. 
 
 feathers which, in other scenes, would have been consecrated 
 to associations of levity or of grace ; the hourly pageant swept 
 on, slow, tedious, mournful, and the object of the attendants was 
 only to entomb the Pleasure which they affected to celebrate. 
 What a change for the wild, the strange, the novel, the intrigu- 
 ing, the varying life, which, whether in courts or camps, I had 
 hitherto led. The internal change that came over myself is 
 scarcely to be wondered at ; the winds stood still, and the straw 
 they had blown from quarter to quarter, whether in anger or in 
 sport, began to moulder upon the spot where they had left it. 
 
 From this cessation of the aims, hopes, and thoughts of life, 
 I was awakened by the spreading, as it were, of another dis- 
 ease the dead, dull, aching pain at my heart, was succeeded 
 by one acute and intense ; the absence of thought gave way to 
 one thought more terrible more dark more despairing than 
 any which had haunted me since the first year of Isora's death; 
 and from a numbness and pause, as it were, of existence, exis- 
 tence became too keen and intolerable a sense. I will enter 
 into an explanation. 
 
 At the Court of , there was an Italian, not uncelebrated 
 
 for his wisdom, nor unbeloved for an innocence and integrity 
 of life, rarely indeed to be met with among his countrymen. 
 The acquaintance of this man, who was about fifty years of age, 
 and who was devoted, almost exclusively, to the pursuit of philo- 
 sophical science I had sedulously cultivated. His conversa- 
 tion pleased me ; his wisdom improved ; and his benevolence, 
 which reminded me of the traits of La Fontaine, it was so in- 
 fantine, made me incline to love him. Upon the growth of the 
 fearful malady of mind which seized me, I had discontinued 
 my visits and my invitations to the Italian : and Bezoni (so was 
 he called) felt a little offended by my neglect. As soon, how- 
 ever, as he discovered my state of mind, the good man's resent- 
 ment left him. He forced himself upon my solitude, and would 
 sit by me whole evenings sometimes without exchanging a 
 word sometimes with vain attempts to interest, to arouse, or 
 to amuse me. 
 
 At last one evening, it was the era of a fearful suffering to 
 me, our conversation turned upon those subjects which are at 
 once the most important, and the most rarely discussed. We 
 spoke of religion. We first talked upon the theology of revealed 
 religion. As Bezoni warmed into candor, I perceived that his 
 doctrines differed from my own, and that he inly disbelieved 
 that divine creed which Christians profess to adore. From a 
 dispute on the ground of faith, we came to one upon the more
 
 DEVEREUX. 313 
 
 debatable ground of reason. We turned from the subject of 
 revealed, to that of natural, religion ; and we entered long and 
 earnestly into that grandest of all earthly speculations the 
 metaphysical proofs of the immortality of the soul. Again the 
 sentiments of Bezoni were opposed to mine. He was a believer 
 in the dark doctrine which teaches that man is dust, and that 
 all things are forgotten in the grave. He expressed his opinions 
 with a clearness and precision the more impressive because 
 totally devoid of cavil and of rhetoric. I listened in silence, 
 but with a deep and most chilling dismay. Even now I think 
 I see the man as he sat before me, the light of the lamp falling 
 on his high forehead and dark features; even now I think I hear 
 his calm, low voice the silver voice of his country stealing to 
 my heart, and withering the only pure and unsullied hope which 
 I yet cherished there. 
 
 Bezoni left me, unconscious of the anguish he bequeathed 
 me, to think over all he had said. I did not sleep, nor even re- 
 tire to bed. I laid my head upon my hands, and surrendered 
 myself to turbulent, yet intense, reflection. Every man who has 
 lived much in the world, and conversed with its various tribes, 
 has, I fear, met with many who, on this momentous subject, pro- 
 fess the same tenets as Bezoni. But he was the first person I 
 had met of that sect who had evidently thought long and deep- 
 ly upon the creed he had embraced. He was not a voluptuary, 
 nor a boaster, nor a wit. He had not been misled by the de- 
 lusions either of vanity or of the senses. He was a man, pure, 
 innocent, modest, full of all tender charities, and meek dis- 
 positions towards mankind ; it was evidently his interest to be- 
 lieve in a future state: he could have had nothing to fear from 
 it. Not a single passion did he cherish which the laws of an- 
 other world would have condemned. Add to this, what I have 
 observed before, that he was not a man fond of the display of 
 intellect, nor one that brought to the discussions of wisdom the 
 artillery of wit. He was grave, humble, and self-diffident, be- 
 yond all beings. I would have given a kingdom to have found 
 something in the advocate by which I could have condemned 
 the cause. I could not, and I was wretched. 
 
 I spent the whole of the next week among my books. I ran- 
 sacked whatever in my scanty library the theologians had writ- 
 ten, or the philosophers had bequeathed upon that mighty secret. 
 I arranged their arguments in my mind. I armed myself with 
 their weapons. I felt my heart spring joyously within me as I 
 felt the strength I had acquired, and I sent to the philosopher 
 to visit me, that I might conquer and confute him. He came:
 
 314 DEVEREUX. 
 
 but he spoke with pain and reluctance. He saw that I had 
 taken the matter far more deeply to heart than he could have 
 supposed it possible in a courtier, and a man of fortune and the 
 world. Little did he know of me or my secret soul. I broke 
 down his reserve at last. I unrolled my arguments. I answered 
 his, and we spent the whole night in a controversy. He left 
 me, and I was more bewildered than ever. 
 
 To speak truth, he had devoted years to the subject : I had 
 devoted only a week. He had come to his conclusions step 
 by step ; he had reached the great ultimatum with slowness, 
 with care, and, he confessed, with anguish and with reluctance. 
 What a match was I, who brought a hasty temper, and a limited 
 reflection, on that subject, to a reasonerlike this ? His candor 
 staggered and chilled me even more than his logic. Arguments 
 that occurred not to me, upon my side of the question, /^stated 
 at length, and with force ; I heard, and, till he replied to them, 
 I deemed they were unanswerable the reply came, and I had 
 no counter- word. A meeting of this nature was often repeated ; 
 and when he left me, tears crept into my wild eyes, my heart 
 melted within me, and I wept ! 
 
 I must now enter more precisely than I have yet done into 
 my state of mind upon religious matters at the time this dispute 
 with the Italian occurred. To speak candidly, I had been far 
 less shocked with his opposition to me upon matters of doctri- 
 nal faith, than with that upon matters of abstract reasoning. 
 Bred a Roman Catholic, though pride, consistency, custom, 
 made me externally adhere to the Papal Church, I inly perceived 
 its errors, and smiled at its superstitions. And in the busy 
 world, where so little but present objects, or human anticipa- 
 tions of the future, engross the attention, I had never given the 
 subject that consideration which would have enabled me (as it 
 has since) to separate the dogmas of the priest from the pre- 
 cepts of the Saviour, and thus confirmed my belief as the Chris- 
 tian, by the very means which would have loosened it as the 
 Sectarian. So that at the time Bezoni knew me, a certain in- 
 difference to perhaps arising from an ignorance of doctrinal 
 points, rendered me little hurt by arguments against opinions 
 which I embraced indeed, but Avith a lukewarm and imperfect 
 affection. But it was far otherwise upon abstract points of rea- 
 soning ; far otherwise, when the hope of surviving this frail and 
 most unhallowed being was to be destroyed. I might have been 
 indifferent to cavil upon what was the word of God, but never 
 to question of the justice of God himself. In the whole world, 
 there was not a more ardent believer in our imperishable nature,
 
 DEVEREUX. 315 
 
 nor one more deeply interested in the belief. Do not let it be 
 supposed that because I have not often recurred to Isora's death 
 (or because I have continued my history in a jesting and light 
 tone), that that event ever passed from the memory which it had 
 turned to bitterness and gall. Never, in the mazes of intrigue, 
 in the festivals of pleasure, in the tumults of ambition, in the 
 blaze of a licentious court, or by the rude tents of a barbarous 
 host, never, my buried love, had I forgotten thee ! That re- 
 membrance, had no other cause existed, would have led me to 
 God. Every night in whatever toils or objects, whatever fail- 
 ures or triumphs, the day had been consumed every night, be- 
 fore I laid my head upon my widowed and lonely pillow, I had 
 knelt down, and lifted my heart to Heaven, blending the hopes 
 of that heaven with the memory and the vision of Isora. Prayer 
 had seemed to me a commune not only with the living God, but 
 with the dead by whom His dwelling is surrounded. Pleasant 
 and soft was it to turn to one thought, to which all the holiest 
 portions of my nature clung, between the wearying acts of this 
 hard and harsh drama of existence. Even the bitterness of 
 Isora's early and unavenged death passed away, when I thought 
 of the heaven to which she was gone, and in which, though I 
 journeyed now through sin and travail, and recked little if the 
 paths of others differed from my own, I yet trusted, with a 
 solemn trust, that I should meet her at last. There was I to 
 merit her with a love as undying, and at length as pure, as her 
 own. It was this that at the stated hour in which, after my 
 prayer for our reunion, I surrendered my spirit to the bright 
 and wild visions of her far, but not impassable home, it was 
 this which for that single hour made all around me a paradise 
 of delighted thoughts ! It was not the little earth, nor the cold 
 sky, nor the changing wave, nor the perishable turf no, nor 
 the dead wall, and the narrow chamber which were round me 
 then ! No dreamer ever was so far from the localities of flesh 
 and life as I was in that enchanted hour : a light seemed to 
 settle upon all things round me ; her voice murmured on my 
 ear, her kisses melted on my brow ; I shut my eyes, and I 
 fancied that I beheld her ! 
 
 Wherefore was this comfort ? whence came the spell which 
 admitted me to this fairy land ? What was the source of the 
 hope, and the rapture, and the delusion ? Was it not the deep 
 certainty that Isora yet existed that her spirit, her nature, her 
 love were preserved, were inviolate, were the same ? That they 
 watched over me yet, that she knew that in that hour I was with 
 her that she felt my prayer that even then she anticipated
 
 316 BEVEREUX. 
 
 the moment when my soul should burst the human prison- 
 house, and be once more blended with her own ? 
 
 What ! and was this to be no more ? Were those mystic and 
 sweet revealings to be mute to me for ever? Were my thoughts 
 of Isora to be henceforth bounded to the charnel house and the 
 worm ? Was she indeed no more ? No more O, intolerable 
 despair ! Why, there was not a thing I had once known, not a 
 dog that I had caressed, not a book that I had read, which I 
 could know that I should see no more, and, knowing, not feel 
 something of regret. No more ! were we, indeed, parted for- 
 ever and forever ? Had she gone in her young years, with her 
 warm affections, her new hopes, all green and unwithered at her 
 heart, at once into dust, stillness, ice? And had I known her 
 only for one year, one little year, to see her torn from me by a 
 violent and bloody death, and to be left a mourner in this vast 
 and eternal charnel, without a solitary consolation, or a gleam 
 of hope ? Was the earth to be henceforth a mere mass con- 
 jured from the bones and fattened by the clay of our dead 
 sires ? were the stars and the moon to be mere atoms and 
 specks of a chill light, no longer worlds, which the ardent spirit 
 might hereafter reach, and be fitted to enjoy ? Was the 
 heaven the tender, blue, loving heaven, in whose far regions 
 I had dreamt was Isora's home, and had, therefore, grown bet- 
 ter and happier when I gazed upon it, to be nothing but cloud 
 and air ? and had the love, which had seemed so immortal, and 
 so springing from that which had not blent itself with mortality, 
 been but a gross lamp fed only by the properties of a brute 
 nature, and placed in a dark cell of clay, to glimmer, to burn, 
 and to expire with the frail walls which it had illumined ? 
 Dust, death, worms, were these the heritage of love and hope, 
 of thought, of passion, of all that breathed, and kindled, and 
 exalted, and created within ? 
 
 Could I contemplate this idea, could I believe it possible ? 
 I could not. But against the abstract, the logical arguments 
 for that idea had I a reply ? I shudder as I write that at///#/ 
 time I had not ! I endeavored to fix my whole thoughts to the 
 study of those subtile reasonings which I had hitherto so im- 
 perfectly conned ; but my mind was jarring, irresolute, bewild- 
 ered, confused ; my stake seemed too vast to allow me coolness 
 for the game. 
 
 Whoever has had cause for some refined and deep study in 
 the midst of the noisy and loud world, may perhaps readily 
 comprehend that feeling which now possessed me ; a feeling 
 that it was utterly impossible to abstract and concentrate one's
 
 DEVEREUX, 317 
 
 thoughts, while at the mercy of every intruder, and fevered and 
 fretful by every disturbance. Men, early and long accustomed 
 to mingle such reflections with the avocations of courts and 
 cities, have grown callous to these interruptions, and it has been 
 in the very heart of the multitude that the profoundest specu- 
 lations have been cherished and produced ; but I was not of 
 this mould. The world, which before had been distasteful, 
 now grew insufferable ; I longed for some seclusion, some utter 
 solitude, some quiet and unpenetrated nook, that I might give 
 my undivided mind to the knowledge of these things, and build 
 the tower of divine reasonings by which I might ascend to 
 heaven. It was at this time, and in the midst of my fiercest 
 internal conflict, that the great Czar died, and I was suddenly 
 recalled to Russia. 
 
 " Now," I said, when I heard of my release, " now shall my 
 wishes be fulfilled." 
 
 I sent to Bezoni. He came, but he refused, as indeed he had 
 for some time done, to speak to me further upon the question 
 which so wildly engrossed me. " I forgive you," said I, when 
 we parted, " I forgive you for all that you have cost me ; I feel 
 that the moment is now at hand when my faith shall frame a 
 weapon wherewith to triumph over yours ! " 
 
 Father in Heaven ! thanks be to thee that my doubts were 
 at last removed, and the cloud rolled away from my soul. 
 
 Bezoni embraced me, and wept over me. " All good men," 
 said he, " have a mighty interest in your success ; for me there 
 is nothing dark, even in the mute grave, if it covers the ashes 
 of one who has loved and served his brethren, and done, with 
 a wilful heart, no living creature wrong." 
 
 Soon afterwards the Italian lost his life in attending the 
 victims of a fearful and contagious disease, whom even the 
 regular practitioners of the healing art hesitated to visit. 
 
 At this moment I am, in the strictest acceptation of the 
 words, a believer and a Christian. I have neither anxiety nor 
 doubt upon the noblest and the most comforting of all creeds, 
 and I am grateful, among the other blessings which faith has 
 brought me I am grateful that it has brought me CHARITY ! 
 Dark to all human beings was Bezoni's doctrine dark, above 
 all, to those who have mourned on earth ; so withering to all 
 the hopes which cling the most enduringly to the heart, was 
 his unhappy creed that he who knows how inseparably, though 
 insensibly, our moral legislation is woven with our supposed 
 self-interest, will scarcely marvel at, even while he condemns, 
 the unwise and unholy persecution which that creed univers-
 
 3lS DEVEREUX. 
 
 ally sustains ! Many a most wretched hour, many a pang of 
 agony and despair, did those doctrines inflict upon myself ; but 
 I know that the intention of Bezoni was benevolence, and that 
 the practice of his life was virtue : and while my reason tells 
 me that God will not punish the reluctant and involuntary 
 error of one to whom all God's creatures were so dear, my re- 
 ligion bids me hope that I shall meet him in that world where 
 no error is, and where the Great Spirit, to whom all human 
 passions are unknown, avenges the momentary doubt of His 
 justice by a proof of the infinity of His mercy. 
 
 BOOK VI. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 The Retreat. 
 
 I ARRIVED at St. Petersburgh, and found the Czarina, whose 
 conjugal perfidy was more than suspected, tolerably resigned to 
 the extinction of that dazzling life, whose incalculable and god- 
 like utility it is reserved for posterity to appreciate ! I have 
 observed, by the way, that, in general, men are the less 
 mourned by their families in proportion as they are the more 
 mourned by the community. The great are seldom amiable ; 
 and those who are the least lenient to our errors are invariably 
 our relations ! 
 
 Many circumstances at that time conspired to make my re- 
 quest to quit the imperial service appear natural and appropri- 
 ate. The death of the Czar, joined to a growing jealousy and 
 suspicion between the English monarch and Russia, which, 
 though long existing, was now become more evident and notor- 
 ious than heretofore, gave me full opportunity to observe that 
 my pardon had been obtained from King George three years 
 since, and that private as well as national ties rendered my 
 return to England a measure not only of expediency but neces- 
 sity. The imperial Catherine granted me my dismissal in the 
 most flattering terms, and added the high distinction of the order 
 founded in honor of the memorable feat by which she had
 
 DEVEREUX. 319 
 
 Saved her royal consort and the Russian army, to the order of 
 St. Andrew, which I had already received. 
 
 I transferred my wealth, now immense, to England, and, with 
 the pomp which became the rank and reputation Fortune had 
 bestowed upon me, I commenced the long land journey I had 
 chalked out to myself. Although I had alleged my wish to 
 revisit England as the main reason for my retirement from 
 Russia, I had also expressed an intention of visiting Italy pre- 
 vious to my return to England. The physicians, indeed, had 
 recommended to me that delicious climate as an antidote to the 
 ills my constitution had sustained in the freezing skies of the 
 north ; and in my own heart I had secretly appointed some 
 more solitary part of the Divine Land for the scene of my pur- 
 posed hermitage and seclusion. It is indeed astonishing how 
 those who have lived much in cold climates yearn for lands of 
 mellow light and summer luxuriance ; and I felt for a southern 
 sky the same resistless longing which sailors, in the midst of the 
 yast ocean, have felt for the green fields and various landscape 
 of the shore. 
 
 I traversed, then, the immense tracts of Russia passed 
 through Hungary entered Turkey, which I had wished to 
 visit, where I remained a short time ; and, crossing the Adri- 
 atic, hailed, for the first time, the Ausonian shore. It was the 
 month of May that month, of whose lustrous beauty none 
 in a northern clime can dream that I entered Italy. It may 
 serve as an instance of the power with which a thought, that, 
 however important, is deemed of too abstract and metaphysical 
 a nature deeply to engross the mind, possessed me then, that 
 I no cold nor unenthusiastic votary of the classic Muse made 
 no pilgrimage to city or ruin, but, after a brief sojourn at 
 Ravenna, where I dismissed all my train, set out alone to find 
 the solitary cell for which I now sickened with a hermit's 
 love. 
 
 It was in a small village at the foot of the Apennines that I 
 found the object of my search. Strangely enough, there 
 blended with my philosophical ardor a deep mixture of my old 
 romance. Nature, to whose voice the dweller in cities, and 
 struggler with mankind, had been so long obtuse, now pleaded 
 audibly at my heart, and called me to her embraces, as a 
 mother calls unto her wearied child. My eye, as with a new 
 vision, became opened to the mute yet eloquent loveliness of 
 this most fairy earth : and hill and valley the mirror of silent 
 waters the sunny stillness of woods, and the old haunts of 
 satyr and nymph revived in me the fountains of past poetry,
 
 320 DEVEREUX. 
 
 and became the receptacles of a thousand spells, mightier than 
 the charms of any enchanter save Love which was departed 
 Youth, which was nearly gone and Nature, which (more viv- 
 idly than ever) existed for me still. 
 
 I chose, then, my retreat. As I was fastidious in its choice, 
 I cannot refrain from the luxury of describing it. Ah, little did 
 I dream that I had come thither, not only to find a divine 
 comfort, but the sources of a human and most passionate woe ! 
 Mightiest of the Roman bards ! in whom tenderness and reason 
 were so entwined, and who didst sanctify even thine unholy 
 errors with so beautiful and so rare a genius ! what an invari- 
 able truth one line of thine has expressed : " Even in the fair- 
 est fountain of delight there is a secret and evil spring eternally 
 bubbling up and scattering its bitter waters over the very 
 flowers which surround its margin ! " 
 
 In the midst of a lovely and tranquil vale was a small cot- 
 tage ; that was my home. The good people there performed 
 for me all the hospitable offices I required. At a neighboring 
 monastery I had taken the precaution to make myself known 
 to the superior. Not all Italians no, nor all monks belong 
 to either of the two great tribes into which they are generally 
 divided knaves or fools. The Abbot Anselmo was a man of 
 rather a liberal and enlarged mind ; he not only kept my secret, 
 which was necessary to my peace, but he took my part, which 
 was, perhaps, necessary to my safety. A philosopher, who de- 
 sires only to convince himself, and upon one subject, does not 
 require many books. Truth lies in a small compass ; and for 
 my part, in considering any speculative subject, I would sooner 
 have with me one book of Euclid, as a model, than all the 
 library of the Vatican, as authorities. But then I am not fond 
 of drawing upon any resources but those of reason for reason- 
 ings ; wiser men than I am are not so strict. The few books 
 that I did require were, however, of a nature very illicit in 
 Italy ; the good father passed them to me from Ravenna, under 
 his own protection. " I was a holy man," he said, " who wished 
 to render the Catholic church a great service, by writing a vast 
 book against certain atrocious opinions ; and the works I read 
 were, for the most part, works that I was about to confute." 
 This report gained me protection and respect ; and, after I had 
 ordered my agent at Ravenna to forward to the excellent Abbot 
 a piece of plate, and a huge cargo of a rare Hungary wine, it 
 was not the Abbot's fault if I was not the most popular person 
 in the neighborhood. 
 
 But to my description : my home was a cottage the valley
 
 DEVEREUX. 3?I 
 
 in which it lay was divided by a mountain stream, which came 
 from the forest Apennine, a sparkling and wild stranger, and 
 softened into quiet and calm as it proceeded through its green 
 margin in the vale. And that margin, how dazzlingly green it 
 was ! At the distance of about a mile from my hut, the stream 
 was broken into a slight waterfall, whose sound was heard dis- 
 tinct and deep in that still place : and often I paused, from my 
 midnight thoughts, to listen to its enchanted and wild melody. 
 The fall was unseen by the ordinary wanderer, for there the 
 stream passed through a thick copse ; and even when you 
 pierced the grove, and gained the water-side, dark trees hung 
 over the turbulent wave, and the silver spray was thrown 
 upward through the leaves, and fell in diamonds upon the deep 
 green sod. 
 
 This was a most favored haunt with me ; the sun glancing 
 through the idle leaves the music of the water the solemn 
 absence of all other sounds, except the songs of birds, to 
 which the ear grew accustomed, and, at last, in the abstraction 
 of thought, scarcely distinguished from the silence the fragrant 
 herbs and the unnumbered and nameless flowers which formed 
 my couch were all calculated to make me pursue uninterrupt- 
 edly the thread of contemplation which I had, in the less volup- 
 tuous and harsher solitude of the closet, first woven from the 
 web of austerest thought. I say pursue, for it was too luxuri- 
 ous and sensual a retirement for the conception of a rigid and 
 severe train of reflection ; at least it would have been so to me. 
 But, when the thought is once born, such scenes seem to me the 
 most fit to cradle and to rear it. The torpor of the physical, 
 appears to leave to the mental, frame a full scope and power ; 
 the absence of human cares, sounds, and intrusions, becomes 
 the best nurse to contemplation ; and even that delicious and 
 vague sense of enjoyment which would seem, at first, more 
 genial to the fancy than the mind, preserves the thought 
 undisturbed, because contented ; so that all but the scheming 
 mind becomes lapped in sleep, and the mind itself lives distinct 
 and active as a dream ; a dream, not vague, nor confused, nor 
 unsatisfying, but endowed with more than the clearness, the 
 precision, the vigor of waking life. 
 
 A little way from this waterfall was a fountain, a remnant of 
 a classic and golden age. Never did Naiad gaze on a more 
 glassy mirror, or dwell in a more divine retreat. Through a 
 crevice in an overhanging mound of the emerald earth, the 
 father stream of the fountain crept out, born, like Love, among 
 flowers, and in the most sunny smiles ; it then fell, broadening
 
 322 DEVEREUX. 
 
 and glowing, into a marble basin, at whose bottom, in the 
 shining noon, you might see a soil which mocked the very hues 
 of gold, and the water insects, in their quaint shapes, and 
 unknown sports, grouping or gliding in the midmost wave. A 
 small temple, of the lightest architecture, stood before the 
 fountain ; and, in a niche therein, a mutilated statue possibly 
 of the Spirit of the Place. By this fountain, my evening walk 
 would linger till the short twilight melted away, and the silver 
 wave trembled in the light of the western star. Oh ! then, what 
 feelings gathered over me as I turned slowly homeward ; the 
 air still, breathless, shining the stars, gleaming over the woods 
 of the far Apennine the hills, growing huger in the shade 
 the small insects humming on the wing and, ever and anon, 
 the swift bat, wheeling round and amidst them the music of 
 the waterfall deepening on the ear ; and the light and hour 
 lending even a mysterious charm to the cry of the weird owl, 
 flitting after its prey, all this had a harmony in my thoughts, 
 and a food for the meditations in which my days and nights 
 were consumed. The World moulders away the fabric of our 
 early nature, and Solitude rebuilds it on a firmer base. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Victory. 
 
 O EARTH ! Reservoir of life, over whose deep bosom brood 
 the wings of the Universal Spirit, shaking upon thee a blessing 
 and a power a blessing and power to produce and reproduce 
 the living from the dead, so that our flesh is woven from the 
 same atoms which were once the atoms of our sires, and the 
 inexhaustible nutriment of Existence is Decay ! O eldest and 
 most solemn Earth, blending even thy loveliness and joy with 
 a terror and an awe ! thy sunshine is girt with clouds, and cir- 
 cled with storm and tempest : thy day cometh from the womb 
 of darkness, and returneth unto darkness, as man returns unto 
 thy bosom. The green herb that laughs in the valley, the water 
 that sings merrily along the wood ; the many-winged and all- 
 searching air, which garners life as a harvest, and scatters it as 
 a seed ; all are pregnant with corruption and carry the cradled 
 death within them, as an oak banqueteth the destroying worm. 
 But who that looks upon thee, and loves thee, and inhales thy 
 blessings, will ever mingle too deep a moral with his joy? Let 
 us not ask whence come the garlands that we wreathe around
 
 DEVEREUX. 323 
 
 our altars, or shower upon our feasts : will they not bloom as 
 brightly, and breathe with as rich a fragrance, whether they be 
 plucked from the garden or the grave ? O Earth, my Mother 
 Earth ! dark Sepulchre that closes upon all which the Flesh 
 bears, but Vestibule of the vast regions which the Soul shall 
 pass, ho\v leapt my heart within me when I first fathomed thy 
 real spell ! 
 
 Yes ! never shall I forget the rapture with which I hailed the 
 light that dawned upon me at last ! Never shall I forget the 
 suffocating the full the ecstatic joy, with which I saw the 
 mightiest of all human hopes accomplished ; arid felt, as if an 
 angel spoke, that there is a life beyond the grave ! Tell me 
 not of the pride of ambition tell me not of the triumphs of 
 science : never had ambition so lofty an end as the search after 
 immortality ! never had science so sublime a triumph as the 
 conviction that immortality will be gained ! I had been at 
 my task the whole night, pale alchemist, seeking from meaner 
 truths to extract the greatest of all ! At the first hour of day, 
 lo ! the gold was there : tlie labor for which I would have 
 relinquished life, was accomplished ; the dove descended upon 
 the waters of my soul. I fled from the house. I was possessed 
 as with a spirit. I ascended a hill, which looked for leagues 
 over the sleeping valley. A gray mist hung around me like a 
 veil ; 1 paused, and the great Sun broke slowly forth ; I gazed 
 upon its majesty, and my heart swelled. " So rises the soul," I 
 said, " from the vapors of this dull being ; but the soul waneth 
 riot, neither setteth it, nor knoweth it any night, save that from 
 which it dawneth ! " The mists rolled gradually away, the sun- 
 shine deepened, and the face of nature lay in smiles, yet silently, 
 before me. It lay before me, a scene that I had often witnessed, 
 and hailed, and worshipped ; but it was not the same : a glory 
 had passed over it ; it was steeped in a beauty and a holiness, 
 in which neither youth, nor poetry, nor even love, had ever 
 robed it before ! The change which the earth had undergone 
 was like that of some being we have loved when death is 
 past, and from a mortal it becomes an angel ! 
 
 I uttered a cry of joy, and was then as silent as all around 
 me. I felt as if henceforth there was a new compact between 
 nature and myself. I felt as if every tree, and blade of grass, 
 were henceforth to be eloquent with a voice, and instinct with 
 a spell. . I felt as if a religion had entered into the earth, and 
 made oracles of all that the earth bears ; the old fables of 
 Dodona were to become realized, and the very leaves to be hal- 
 lowed by a sanctity, and to murmur with a truth. I was no
 
 324 DEVEREUX. 
 
 longer only a part of that which withers and decays ; I was no 
 longer a machine of clay, moved by a spring, and to be trodden 
 into the mire which I had trod ; I was no longer tied to human- 
 ity by links which could never be broken, and which, if broken, 
 would avail me not. I was become, as by a miracle, a part of 
 a vast, though unseen, spirit. It was not to the matter, but to 
 the essence of things, that I bore kindred and alliance ; the 
 stars and the heavens resumed over me their ancient influence ; 
 and, as I looked along the far hills and the silent landscape, a 
 voice seemed to swell from the stillness, and to say, " I am the 
 life of these things, a spirit distinct from the things themselves. 
 It is to me that you belong forever and forever ; separate, 
 but equally indissoluble ; apart, but equally eternal ! " 
 
 I spent the day upon the hills. It was evening when I re- 
 turned. I lingered by the old fountain, and saw the stars rise, 
 and tremble, one by one, upon the wave. The hour was that 
 which Isora had loved the best, and that which the love of her 
 had consecrated the most to me. And never, oh, never did it 
 sink into my heart with a deeper sweetness, or a more soothing 
 balm. I had once more knit my soul to Isora's : I could once 
 more look from the toiling and the dim earth, and forget that 
 Isora had left me, in dreaming of our reunion. Blame me not, 
 you who indulge in a religious hope more severe and more 
 sublime you who miss no footsteps from the earth, nor pine 
 for a voice that your .human wanderings can hear no more 
 blame me not, you whose pulses beat not for the wild love of 
 the created, but whose spirit languishes only for a nearer com- 
 mune with the Creator blame me not too harshly for my mor- 
 tal wishes, nor think that my faith was the less sincere because 
 it was tinted in the most unchanging dyes of the human heart, 
 and indissolubly woven with the memory of the dead ! Often 
 from our weaknesses our strongest principles of conduct are 
 born ; and from the acorn, which a breeze has wafted, springs 
 the oak which defies the storm. 
 
 The first intoxication and rapture consequent upon the re- 
 ward of my labor passed away ; but, unlike other excitement, 
 it was followed not by languor, or a sated and torpid calm ; a 
 soothing and delicious sensation possessed me my turbulent 
 senses slept ; and Memory, recalling the world, rejoiced at the 
 retreat which Hope had acquired. 
 
 I now surrendered myself to a nobler philosophy than in 
 crowds and cities I had hitherto known. I no longer satirized 
 I inquired ; I no longer derided I examined. I looked from 
 the natural proofs, of immortality to the written promise of our
 
 DEVEREUX. 325 
 
 Father I sought not to baffle men, but to worship Truth I 
 applied myself more to the knowledge of good and evil I 
 bowed my soul before the loveliness of Virtue ; and though 
 scenes of wrath and passion yet lowered in the future, and I 
 was again speedily called forth to act to madden to con- 
 tend perchance to sin the Image is still unbroken, and the 
 Votary has still an offering for its Altar ! 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Hermit of the Well. 
 
 THE thorough and deep investigation of those principles 
 from which we learn the immortality of the soul, and the nature 
 of its proper ends, leads the mind through such a course of 
 reflection and of study it is attended with so many exalting, 
 purifying, and, if I may so say, etherealizing thoughts, that I do 
 believe no man has ever pursued it, and not gone back to the 
 world a better and a nobler man than he was before. Nay, 
 so deeply must these elevating and refining studies be conned, 
 so largely and sensibly must they enter the intellectual system, 
 that I firmly think that even a sensualist who has only consid- 
 ered the subject with a view to convince himself that he is 
 clay, and has therefore an excuse to the curious conscience for 
 his grosser desires ; nay, should he come to his wished for, yet 
 desolate confusion, from which the abhorrent nature shrinks 
 and recoils, I do nevertheless firmly think, should the study 
 have been long and deep, that he would wonder to find his de- 
 sires had lost .their poignancy, and his objects their charm. 
 He would descend from the Alp he had climbed to the low 
 level on which he formerly deemed it a bliss to dwell, with the 
 feeling of one who, having long drawn in high places an empy- 
 real air, has become unable to inhale the smoke and the thick 
 vapor he inhaled of yore. His soul once aroused would stir 
 within him, though he felt it not, and though he grew not a 
 believer, he would cease to be only the voluptuary. 
 
 I meant at one time to have here stated the arguments which 
 had perplexed me on one side, and those which afterwards 
 convinced me on the other. I do not do so for many reasons, 
 one of which will suffice, viz., the evident and palpable circum- 
 stance that a dissertation of that nature would, in a biography 
 like the present, be utterly out of place and season. Perhaps, 
 however, at a later period of life, I may collect my own opin-
 
 326 DEVEREUX. 
 
 ions on the subject into a separate work, and bequeath that 
 work to future generations, upon the same_conditions as the 
 present memoir. 
 
 One day I was favored by a visit from one of the monks at 
 the neighboring abbey. After some general conversation he 
 asked me if I had yet encountered the Hermit of the Well ! 
 "No," said I, and I was going to add, that I had not even 
 heard of him, "but I now remember that the good people of 
 the house have more than once spoken to me of him as a rigid 
 and self-mortifying recluse." 
 
 " Yes," said the holy friar ; " Heaven forbid that I should 
 say aught against the practice of the saints and pious men to 
 deny unto themselves the lusts of the flesh, but such penances 
 may be carried too far. However, it is an excellent custom, 
 and the Hermit of the Well is an excellent creature. Santa 
 Maria ! what delicious stuff is that Hungary wine your schol- 
 arship was pleased to bestow upon our father Abbot. He suf- 
 fered me to taste it the eve before last. I had been suffering 
 with a pain in the reins, and the wine acted powerfully upon 
 me as an efficacious and inestimable medicine. Do you find, 
 my son, that it bore the journey to your lodging here, as well 
 as to the convent cellars ? " 
 
 " Why, really, my father, I have none of it here ; but the 
 people of the house have a few flasks of a better wine than ordi- 
 nary, if you will deign to taste it in lieu of the Hungary wine." 
 
 "Oh oh ! " said the monk, groaning, " my reins trouble me 
 much perhaps the wine may comfort me ! " and the wine was 
 brought. 
 
 " It is not of so rare a flavor as that which you sent to our 
 reverend father," said the monk, wiping his mouth with his long 
 sleeve. " Hungary must be a charming place is it far from 
 hence ? It joins the heretical I pray your pardon it joins 
 the continent of England, I believe ? " 
 
 " Not exactly, father ; but whatever its topography, it is a 
 rare country for those who like it ! But tell me of this Her- 
 mit of the Well. How long has he lived here and how came 
 he by his appellation ? Of what country is he and of what 
 birth?" 
 
 " You ask me too many questions at once, my son. The 
 country of the holy man is a mystery to us all. He speaks the 
 Tuscan dialect well, but with a foreign accent. Nevertheless, 
 though the wine is not of Hungary, it has a pleasant flavor. I 
 wonder how the rogues kept it so snugly from the knowledge 
 and comfort of their pious brethren of the monastery."
 
 DEVEREUX. 327 
 
 "And how long has the hermit lived in your vicinity ? " 
 
 " Nearly eight years, my son. It was one winter's evening 
 that he came to our convent in the dress of a worldly traveller, 
 to seek our hospitality, and a shelter for the night, which was 
 inclement and stormy. He stayed with us a few days, and held 
 some conversation with our father Abbot ; and one morning, 
 after roaming in the neighborhood to look at the old stones and 
 ruins, which is the custom of travellers, he returned, put into 
 our box some certain alms, and two days afterwards he ap- 
 peared in the place he now inhabits, and in the dress he 
 assumes." 
 
 " And of what nature, my father, is the place, and of what 
 fashion the dress ? " 
 
 " Holy St. Francis ! " exclaimed the father, with a surprise 
 so great that I thought at first it related to the wine, " Holy 
 St. Francis have you not seen the well yet ? " 
 
 " No, father, unless you speak of the fountain about a mile 
 and a quarter distant." 
 
 " Tush tush ! " said the good man, " what ignoramuses you 
 travellers are ; you affect to know what kind of slippers Pres- 
 ter John wears and to have been admitted to the bed-chamber 
 of the Pagoda of China ; and yet when one comes to sound 
 you, you are as ignorant of everything a man of real learning 
 knows as an Englishman is of his missal. Why, I thought that 
 every fool in every country had heard of the Holy Well of St. 
 Francis, situated exactly two miles from our famous convent, 
 and that every fool in the neighborhood had seen it." 
 
 " What the fools, my father, whether in this neighborhood or 
 any other may have heard or seen, I, who profess not ostensi- 
 bly to belong to so goodly an order, cannot pretend to know ; 
 but be assured that the Holy Well of St. Francis is as unfa- 
 miliar to me as the Pagoda of China Heaven bless, him- is 
 to you." 
 
 Upon this the learned monk, after expressing due astonish- 
 ment, offered to show it to me ; and as I thought I might by 
 acquiescence get rid of him sooner, and as, moreover, I wished 
 to see the Abbot, to whom some books for me had been lately 
 sent, I agreed to the offer. 
 
 The well, said the monk, lay not a mile out of the custom- 
 ary way to the monastery ; and after we had finished the flask 
 of wine, we sallied out on our excursion, the monk upon a 
 stately and strong ass myself on foot. 
 
 The Abbot, on granting me his friendship and protection, 
 had observed that I was not the only stranger and recluse on
 
 328 DEVEREUX. 
 
 whom his favor was bestowed. He had then mentioned the 
 Hermit of the Well as an eccentric and strange being, who lived 
 an existence of rigid penance, harmless to others, painful only 
 to himself. This story had been confirmed in the few conver- 
 sations I had ever interchanged with my host and hostess, who 
 seemed to take a peculiar pleasure in talking of the Solitary ; 
 and from them I heard also many anecdotes of his charity to- 
 wards the poor, and his attention to the sick. All these circum- 
 stances came into my mind as the good monk indulged his 
 loquacity upon the subject, and my curiosity became, at last, 
 somewhat excited respecting my fellow recluse. 
 
 I now learned from the monk that the post of Hermit of the 
 Well was an office of which the present anchorite was by no 
 means the first tenant. The well was one of those springs fre- 
 quent in Catholic countries, to which a legend and a sanctity are 
 attached ; and twice a year, once in the spring, once in the 
 autumn, the neighboring peasants flocked thither, on a stated day, 
 to drink, and lose their diseases. As the spring most probably 
 did possess some medicinal qualities, a few extraordinary cures 
 had occurred ; especially among those pious persons who took 
 not biennial, but constant draughts ; and to doubt its holiness 
 was downright heresy. 
 
 Now, hard by this well was a cavern, which, whether first 
 formed by nature or art, was now, upon the whole, constructed 
 into a very commodious abode ; and here, for years beyond the 
 memory of man, some solitary person had fixed his abode to 
 dispense and to bless the water, to be exceedingly well fed by 
 the surrounding peasants, to wear a long gown of serge or sack- 
 cloth, and to be called the Hermit of the Well. So fast as each 
 succeeding anchorite died there were enough candidates eager 
 to supply his place ; for it was no bad mdtier to some penniless 
 impostor to become the quack and patentee of a holy specific. 
 The choice of these candidates always rested with the superior 
 of the neighboring monastery ; and it is not impossible that he 
 made an indifferently good percentage upon the annual advan- 
 tages of his protection and choice. 
 
 At the time the traveller appeared, the former hermit had 
 just departed this life, and it was, therefore, to the vacancy thus 
 occasioned, that he had procured himself to be elected. The 
 incumbent appeared quite of a different mould from the former 
 occupants of the hermitage. He accepted, it is true, the gifts 
 laid at regular periods upon a huge stone between the hermitage 
 and the well, but he distributed among the donors alms far more 
 profitable than their gifts. He entered no village, borne upon
 
 DEVEREUX. 329 
 
 an ass laden with twin sacks, for the purpose of sanctimoniously 
 robbing the inhabitants ; no profane songs were ever heard re- 
 sounding from his dwelling by the peasant incautiously linger- 
 ing at a late hour too near its vicinity ; my guide, the monk, 
 complained bitterly of his unsociability, and no scandalous legend 
 of nymph-like comforters and damsel visitants haunting the 
 sacred dwelling, escaped from the garrulous friar's well-loaded 
 budget. 
 
 "Does he study much?" said I with the interest of a 
 student. 
 
 " I fear me not," quoth the monk. " I have had occasion often 
 to enter his abode, and I have examined all things with a close 
 eye; for, praised be the Lord, I have faculties more than ordi- 
 narily clear and observant but I have seen no books therein, 
 excepting a missal, and a Latin or Greek Testament, I know 
 not well which ; nay, so incurious or unlearned is the holy man 
 that he rejected even a loan of the 'Life of St. Francis,' not- 
 withstanding it has many and rare pictures, to say nothing of 
 its most interesting and amazing tales." 
 
 More might the monk have said, had we not now suddenly 
 entered a thick and sombre wood. A path cut through it was 
 narrow, and only capable of admitting a traveller on foot or 
 horseback; and the boughs overhead were so darkly interlaced 
 that the light scarcely, and only in broken and erratic glimmer- 
 ings, pierced the canopy. 
 
 " It is the wood," said the monk, crossing himself, "wherein 
 the wonderful adventure happened to St. Francis, which I will 
 one day narrate at length to you." 
 
 " And we are near the well, I suppose ? " said I. 
 
 " It is close at hand," answered the monk. 
 
 In effect we had not proceeded above fifty yards before the 
 path brought us into a circular space of green sod, in the midst 
 of which was a small, square, stone building, of plain, but not 
 inelegant, shape, and evidently of great antiquity. At one side 
 of this building was an iron handle, for the purpose of raising 
 water, that cast itself into a stone basin, to which was affixed, 
 by a strong chain, an iron cup. An inscription, in monkish 
 Latin, was engraved over the basin, requesting the traveller to 
 pause and drink, and importing that what that water was to 
 the body, faith was to the soul ; near the cistern was a rude 
 seat, formed by the trunk of a tree. The door of the 
 well-house was of iron, and secured by a chain and lock ; per- 
 haps the pump was so contrived that only a certain quantum 
 of the snnctifie'l beverage could be drawn up at a time, without
 
 336 
 
 application to some mechanism within : and wayfarers were 
 thereby prevented from helping themselves ad libitum, and 
 thus depriving the anchorite of the profit and the necessity of 
 his office. 
 
 It was certainly a strange, lonely, and wild place ; and the 
 green sward, round as a fairy ring, in the midst of trees, which 
 black, close, and huge, circled it like a wall : and the solitary 
 gray building in the centre, gaunt and cold, and startling the 
 eye with the abruptness of its appearance, and the strong con- 
 trast made by its wan hues to the dark verdure and forest gloom 
 around it. 
 
 I took a draught of the water, which was very cold and taste- 
 less, and reminded the monk of his disorder in the reins, to 
 which a similar potation might possibly be efficacious. To this 
 suggestion the monk answered that he would certainly try the 
 water some other time ; but that at present the wine he had 
 drunk might pullute its divine properties. So saying, he 
 turned off the conversation by inviting me to follow him to the 
 hermitage. 
 
 In our way. thither he pointed out a large fragment of stone, 
 and observed that the water would do me evil instead of good 
 if I forgot to remunerate its guardian. I took the hint and 
 laid a piece of silver on the fragment. 
 
 A short journey through the wood brought us to the foot of 
 a hill covered with trees, and having at its base a strong stone 
 door, the entrance to the excavated home of the anchorite. The 
 monk gently tapped thrice at this door, but no answer came. 
 ' The holy man is from home," said he, " let us return." 
 
 We did so ; and the monk, keeping behind me, managed, as 
 he thought unseen, to leave the stone as naked as we had found 
 it ! We now struck through another path in the wood, and were 
 soon at the convent. I did not lose the opportunity to ques- 
 tion the Abbot respecting his tenant : I learnt from him little 
 more than the particulars I have already narrated, save that, in 
 concluding his details, he said : 
 
 " I can scarcely doubt but that the hermit is, like yourself, 
 a person of rank ; his bearing and his mien appear to denote 
 it. He has given, and gives yearly, large sums to the uses of 
 the convent : and, though he takes the customary gifts of the 
 pious villagers, it is only by my advice, and for the purpose of 
 avoiding suspicion. Should he be considered rich, it might 
 attract cupidity ; and there are enough bold hands and sharp 
 knives in the country to place the wealthy and the unguarded 
 in some peril. Whoever he may be, for he has not confided
 
 DEVEREUX. 331 
 
 his secret to me I do not doubt but that he is doing penance 
 for some great crime ; and, whatever be the crime, I suspect 
 that its earthly punishment is nearly over. The hermit is 
 naturally of a delicate and weak frame, and year after year I 
 have marked him sensibly wearing away ; so that when I last 
 saw him, three days since, I was shocked at the visible ravages 
 which disease or penance had engraven upon him. If ever 
 Death wrote legibly, its characters are in that brow and cheek." 
 
 " Poor man ! Know you not even whom to apprise of his 
 decease when he is no more ? " 
 
 "I do not yet ; but the last time I saw him he told me that 
 he found himself drawing near his end, and that he should not 
 quit life without troubling me with one request." 
 
 After this the Abbot spoke of other matters, and my visit 
 expired. 
 
 Interested in the recluse more deeply than I acknowledged 
 to myself, I found my steps insensibly leading me homeward 
 by the more circuitous road which wound first by the holy well. 
 I did not resist the impulse, but walked musingly onward by 
 the waning twilight, for the day was now over, until I came to 
 the well. As I emerged from the wood, I started involuntarily 
 and drew back. A figure, robed from head to foot in a long 
 sable robe, sate upon the rude seat beside the well ; sate so 
 still, so motionless, that coming upon it abruptly in that strange 
 place, the heart beat irregularly at an apparition so dark in 
 hue, and so death-like in its repose. The hat, large, broad, 
 and overhanging, which suited the costume, was lying on the 
 ground : and the face, which inclined upward, seemed to woo 
 the gentle air of the quiet and soft skies. I approached a few 
 steps, and saw the profile of the countenance more distinctly 
 than I had done before. It was of a marble whiteness ; the 
 features, though sharpened and attenuated by disease, were of 
 surpassing beauty ; the hair was exceedingly, almost effemi- 
 nately, long, and hung in waves of perfect jet on either side ; 
 the mouth was closed firmly, and deep lines or rather furrows, 
 were traced from its corners to either nostril. The stranger's 
 beard, of a hue equally black as the hair, was dishevelled and 
 neglected, but not very long; and one hand, which lay on the 
 sable robe, was so thin and wan you might have deemed the 
 very starlight could have shone through it. I did not doubt 
 that it was the recluse whom I saw ; I drew near and accosted 
 him. 
 
 "Your blessing, holy father, and your permission to taste the 
 healing of your well,"
 
 332 DEVEREUX. 
 
 Sudden as was my appearance, and abrupt my voice, the 
 hermit evinced by no startled gesture a token of surprise. He 
 turned very slowly round, cast upon me an indifferent glance, 
 and said, in a sweet and very low tone : 
 
 "You have my blessing, stranger; there is water in the 
 cistern drink, and be healed." 
 
 I dipped the bowl in the basin, and took sparingly of the 
 water. In the accent and tone of the stranger, my ear, accus- 
 tomed to the dialects of many nations, recognized something 
 English ; I resolved, therefore, to address him in my native 
 tongue, rather than the indifferent Italian in which I had first 
 accosted him : 
 
 " The water is fresh and cooling ; would, holy father, that it 
 could penetrate to a deeper malady than the ills of flesh : that 
 it could assuage the fever of the heart, or lave from the wearied 
 mind the dust which it gathers from the mire and travail of the 
 world." 
 
 Now the hermit testified surprise ; but it was slight and 
 momentary. He gazed upon me more attentively than he had 
 done before, and said, after a pause : 
 
 " My countryman ! and in this spot ! It is not often that the 
 English penetrate into places where no ostentatious celebrity 
 dwells to sate curiosity and flatter pride. My countryman ! 
 it is well, and perhaps fortunate. Yes," he said, after a second 
 pause, "yes ; it were indeed a boon, had the earth a fountain 
 for the wounds which fester, and the disease which consumes 
 the heart." 
 
 " The earth has oblivion, father, if not a cure." 
 
 " It is false ! " cried the hermit passionately, and starting 
 wildly from his seat; "the earth has no oblivion. The grave 
 is that forgetfulness? No, no there is no grave for the soul ! 
 The deeds pass the flesh corrupts but the memory passes 
 not, and withers not. From age to age, from world to world, 
 through eternity, throughout creation, it is perpetuated an 
 immortality a curse a hell /" 
 
 Surprised by the vehemence of the hermit, I was still more 
 startled by the agonizing and ghastly expression of his face. 
 
 " My father," said I, "pardon me, if I have pressed upon a 
 sore. I also have that within, which, did a stranger touch it, 
 would thrill my whole frame with torture, and I would fain ask 
 from your holy soothing, and pious comfort, something of 
 alleviation or of fortitude." 
 
 The hermit drew near to me ; he laid his thin hand upon my 
 arm, and looked long and wistfully in my face. It was then
 
 DEVEREUX. 333 
 
 that a suspicion crept through me which after-observation 
 proved to be true, that the wandering of those dark eyes, 
 and the meaning of that blanched brow were tinctured with 
 insanity. 
 
 " Brother, and fellow-man," said he mournfully, " hast thou 
 in truth suffered ? and dost thou still smart at the remembrance ? 
 We are friends then. If thou hast suffered as much as I have, 
 I will fall down and do homage to thee as a superior; for pain 
 has its ranks, and I think, at times, that none ever climbed the 
 height that I have done. Yet you look not like one who has 
 had nights of delirium, and days in which the heart lay in the 
 breast, as a corpse endowed with consciousness might lie in the 
 grave, feeling the worm gnaw it, and the decay corrupt, and yet 
 incapable of resistance or of motion. Your cheek is thin, but 
 firm ; your eye is haughty and bright ; you have the air of one 
 who has lived with men, and struggled and not been vanquished 
 in the struggle. Suffered ! No, man, no -you have not 
 suffered ! " 
 
 " My father, it is not in the countenance that Fate graves 
 her records. I have it is true, contended with my fellows ; 
 and if wealth and honor be the premium, not in vain : but I 
 have not contended against Sorrow with a like success ; and I 
 stand before you, a being who, if passion be a tormentor, and 
 the death of the loved a loss, has borne that which the most 
 wretched will not envy." 
 
 Again a fearful change came over the face of the recluse 
 he grasped my arm more vehemently, "You speak my own sor- 
 rows you utter my own curse I will see you again you may 
 do my last will better than yon monks. Can I trust you? If 
 you have in truth known misfortune, I will ! I will yea, even 
 to the outpouring Merciful, merciful God, what would I say 
 what would I reveal ! " 
 
 Suddenly changing his voice, he released me, and said, touch- 
 ing his forehead with a meaning gesture, and a quiet smile, 
 "You say you are my rival in pain ? Have you ever known the 
 rage and despair of the heart mount here ? It is a wonderful 
 thing to be calm as I am now, when that rising makes itself felt 
 in fire and torture ! " 
 
 "If there be aught, father, which a man who cares not what 
 country he visit, or what deed so it be not of guilt or shame 
 he commit, can do toward the quiet of your soul, say it, and I 
 will attempt your will." 
 
 " You are kind, my son," said the hermit, resuming his first 
 melancholy and dignified composure of mien and bearing, " and
 
 334 DEVEREUX. 
 
 there is something in your voice, which seems to me like a tone 
 that I have heard in youth. Do you live near at hand ?" 
 
 " In the valley, about four miles hence ; I am, like yourself 
 a fugitive from the world." 
 
 "Come to me then to-morrow at eve ; to-morrow ! No, that 
 is a holy eve, and I must keep it with scourge and prayer. The 
 next at sunset. I shall be collected then, and I would fain 
 know more of you than I do. Bless you my son- adieu." 
 
 " Yet stay, father, may I not conduct you home?" 
 
 "No my limbs are weak, but I trust they can carry me to 
 that home, till I be borne thence to my last. Farewell ! the 
 night grows, and man fills even these shades with peril. The 
 eve after next, at sunset, we meet again." 
 
 So saying, the hermit waved his hand, and I stood apart, 
 watching his receding figure, until the trees cloaked the last 
 glimpse from my view. I then turned homeward, and reached 
 my cottage in safety, despite of the hermit's caution. But I 
 did not retire to rest : a powerful foreboding, rather than sus- 
 picion, that, in the worn and wasted form which I had beheld, 
 there was identity with one whom I had not met for years, and 
 whom I had believed to be no more, thrillingly possessed me. 
 
 "Can can it be?" thought I "Can grief have a desolation, 
 or remembrance an agony, sufficient to create so awful a change ? 
 And of all human beings, for that one to be singled out ; that 
 one in whom passion and sin were, if they existed, nipped in 
 their earliest germ, and seemingly rendered barren of all fruit ! 
 If too, almost against the evidence of sight and sense, an innate 
 feeling has marked in that most altered form the traces of a 
 dread recognition, would not his memory have been yet more 
 vigilant than mine? Am I so changed that he should have 
 looked me in the face so wistfully, and found there nought 
 save the lineaments of a stranger?" And, actuated by this 
 thought, I placed the light by the small mirror which graced 
 my chamber. I recalled, as I gazed, my features as they had 
 been in earliest youth. <( No," I said, with a sigh, "there is 
 nothing here. that he should recognize." 
 
 And I said aright ; my features, originally small and delicate, 
 had grown enlarged and prominent. The long locks of my 
 youth (for only upon state occasions did my early vanity con- 
 sent to the fashion of the day) were succeeded by curls, short 
 and crisped ; the hues, alternately pale and hectic, that the 
 dreams of romance had once spread over my cheek, had settled 
 into the unchanging bronze of manhood ; the smooth lip and 
 unshaven chin were clothed with a thick hair ; the once un*
 
 DEVEREUX. 335 
 
 furrowed brow was habitually knit in thought ; and the ardent, 
 restless expression that boyhood wore had yielded to the quiet, 
 unmoved countenance of one in whom long custom has sub- 
 dued all outward sign of emotion, and many and various events 
 left no prevalent token of the mind, save that of an habitual, 
 but latent resolution. My frame, too, once scarcely less slight 
 than a woman's, was become knit and muscular, and nothing 
 was left by which, in the foreign air, the quiet brow, and the 
 athletic form, my very mother could have recognized the slen- 
 der figure and changeful face of the boy she had last beheld. 
 The very sarcasm of the eye was gone : and I had learnt the 
 world's easy lesson the dissimulation of composure. 
 
 I have noted one thing in others, and it was particularly 
 noticeable in me, viz., that few who mix very largely with men, 
 and with the courtier's or the citizen's design, ever retain the 
 key and tone of their original voice. The voice of a young 
 man is as yet modulated by nature, and expresses the passion 
 of the moment : that of the matured pupil of art expresses 
 rather the customary occupation of his life : whether he aims 
 at persuading, convincing, or commanding others, his voice 
 irrevocably settles into the key he ordinarily employs ; and, as 
 persuasion is the means men chiefly employ in their commerce 
 with each other, especially in the regions of a court, so a tone 
 of artificial blandness and subdued insinuation is chiefly that 
 in which the accents of worldly men are clothed ; the artificial 
 intonation, long continued, grows into nature, and the very 
 pith and basis of the original sound fritter themselves away. 
 The change was great in me, for, at that time which I brought 
 in comparison with the present, my age was one in which the 
 voice is yet confused and undecided, struggling between the 
 accents of youth and boyhood ; so that even this most power- 
 ful and unchanging of all claims upon the memory was in a 
 great measure absent in me ; and nothing but an occasional 
 and rare tone could have produced even that faint and uncon- 
 scious recognition which the hermit had confessed. 
 
 I must be pardoned these egotisms, which the nature of my 
 story renders necessary. 
 
 With what eager impatience did I watch the hours to the 
 appointed interview with the hermit languish themselves away ! 
 However, before that time arrived, and towards the evening of 
 the next day, I was surprised by the rare honor of a visit from 
 Anselmo himself. He came attended by two of the mendicant 
 friars of his order, and they carried between them a basket of 
 tolerable size, which, as mine hostess afterwards informed rrje,
 
 336 DEVEREUX. 
 
 with many a tear, went back somewhat heavier than it came, 
 from the load of certain receptacula of that rarer wine which 
 she had had, the evening before, the indiscreet hospitality to 
 produce. 
 
 The Abbot came to inform me that the hermit had been with 
 him that morning, making many inquiries respecting me. " I 
 told him," said he, "that I was acquainted with your name and 
 birth, but that I was under a solemn promise not to reveal them, 
 without your consent ; and I am now here, my son, to learn 
 from you whether that consent may be obtained ? " 
 
 "Assuredly not, holy father!" said I hastily; nor was I 
 contented until I had obtained a renewal of his promise to that 
 effect. This seemed to give the Abbot some little chagrin : 
 perhaps the hermit had offered a reward for my discovery. 
 However, I knew that Anselmo, though a griping, was a trust- 
 worthy man, and I felt safe in his renewed promise. I saw 
 him depart with great satisfaction, and gave myself once more 
 to conjectures respecting the strange recluse. 
 
 As, the next evening, I prepared to depart towards the her- 
 mitage, I took peculiar pains to give my person a foreign and 
 disguised appearance. A loose dress, of rude and simple ma- 
 terial, and a high cap of fur, were pretty successful in accom- 
 plishing this purpose. And, as I gave the last look at the 
 glass before I left the house, I said, inly, " If there be any 
 truth in my wild and improbable conjecture respecting the 
 identity of the anchorite, I think time and this dress are suffi- 
 cient wizards to secure me from a chance of discovery. I will 
 keep a guard upon my words and tones, until, if my thought 
 be verified, a moment fit for unmasking myself arrives. But 
 would to God that the thought be groundless ! In such cir- 
 cumstances, and after such an absence, to meet him! No ; 
 and yet Well, this meeting will decide." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Solution of many Mysteries a dark View of the Life and Nature of 
 
 Man. 
 
 POWERFUL, though not clearly developed in my own mind, 
 was the motive which made me so strongly desire to preserve 
 the incognito during my interview with the hermit. I have 
 before said that I could not resist a vague, but intense belief 
 that he was a person whom I had long believed in the grave ;
 
 DEVEREUX. 337 
 
 and I had more than once struggled, against a dark, but pass- 
 ing, suspicion that that person was in some measure mediate- 
 ly, though not directly connected with the mysteries of my 
 former life. If both these conjectures were true, I thought it 
 possible that the communication the hermit wished to make 
 might be made yet more willingly to me as a stranger than if 
 he knew who was in reality his confidant. And, at all events, 
 if I could curb the impetuous gushingsof my own heart, which 
 yearned for immediate disclosure, I might, by hint and prelude, 
 ascertain the advantages and disadvantages of revealing 
 myself. 
 
 I arrived at the well ; the hermit was already at the place of 
 rendezvous, seated in the same posture in which I had before 
 seen him. I made my reverence, and accosted him. 
 
 " I have not failed you, father." 
 
 " That is rarely a true boast with men," said the hermit, 
 smiling mournfully, but without sarcasm; "and were the prom- 
 ise of greater avail, it might not have been so rigidly kept." 
 
 " The promise, father, seemed to me of greater weight than, 
 you would intimate," answered I. 
 
 " How mean you ? " said the hermit, hastily. 
 
 " Why, that we may perhaps serve each other by our meet- 
 ing : you father, may comfort me by your counsels ; I, you by 
 my readiness to obey your request." 
 
 The hermit looked at me for some moments, and, as well as 
 I could, I turned away my face from his gaze. I might have 
 spared myself the effort. He seemed to recognize nothing 
 familiar in my countenance ; perhaps his mental malady as- 
 sisted my own alteration. 
 
 " I have inquired respecting you," he said, after a pause, " and 
 I hear that you are a learned and wise man, who have seen 
 much of the world, and played the part both of soldier and of 
 scholar, in its various theatres : is my information true ? " 
 
 " Not true with respect to the learning, father, but true with 
 regard to the experience. I have been a pilgrim in many 
 countries of Europe." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said the hermit eagerly. " Come with me to 
 my home, and tell me of the wonders you have seen." 
 
 I assisted the hermit to rise, and he walked slowly towards 
 the cavern, leaning upon my arm. Oh, how that light touch 
 thrilled through my frame ! How I longed to cry, " Are you 
 not the one whom I have loved, and mourned, and believed 
 buried in the tomb ? " But I checked myself. We moved on 
 in silence. The hermit's hand was on the door of the cavern,
 
 338 DEVEREUX. 
 
 when he said, in a calm tone, but with evident effort, and turn- 
 ing his face from me while he spoke : 
 
 " And did your wanderings ever carry you into the farther 
 regions of the north ? Did the fame of the great Czar ever 
 lead you to the city he has founded ? " 
 
 " I am right I am right ! " thought I, as I answered, " In 
 truth, holy father, I spent not a long time at Petersburg!! ; but 
 I am not a stranger either to its wonders, or its inhabitants." 
 
 " Possibly, then, you may have met with the English favorite 
 of the Czar of whom I hear in my retreat that men have lately 
 spoken somewhat largely ? " The hermit paused again. We 
 were now in a long, low passage, almost in darkness. I scarcely 
 saw him, yet I heard a convulsed movement in his throat, be- 
 fore he uttered the remainder of the sentence. " He is called 
 the Count Devereux." 
 
 " Father," said I calmly, " I have both seen and known the 
 man." 
 
 " Ha ! " said the hermit, and he leant for a moment against 
 the wall ; " known him and how how I mean, where is he 
 at this present time ?" 
 
 "That, father, is a difficult question, respecting one who has 
 
 led so active a life. He was ambassador at the court of , 
 
 just before I left it." 
 
 We had now passed the passage, and gained a room of tol- 
 erable size ; an iron lamp burnt within, and afforded a suffi- 
 cient, but somewhat dim, light. The hermit, as I concluded 
 my reply, sunk down on a long stone bench, beside a table of 
 the same substance, and leaning his face on his hand, so that 
 the long, large sleeve he wore perfectly concealed his features, 
 said, " Pardon me, my breath is short, and my frame weak I 
 am quite exhausted but will speak to you more, anon." 
 
 I uttered a short answer, and drew a small wooden stool 
 within a few feet of the hermit's seat. After a brief silence he 
 rose, placed wine, bread, and preserved fruits, before me, and 
 bade me eat. I seemed to comply with his request, and the 
 apparent diversion of my attention from himself somewhat re- 
 lieved the embarrassment tinder which he evidently labored. 
 
 " May I hope," he said, " that were my commission to this 
 to the Count Devereux you would execute it faithfully and 
 with speed ? Yet stay you have a high mien, as of one above 
 fortune, but your garb is rude and poor ; and if aught of gold 
 could compensate your trouble, the hermit has other treasuries 
 beside this cell." 
 v "I will do your bidding, father, without robbing the poor.
 
 DEVEkEUX. 339 
 
 You wish then that I should seek Morton Devereux you wish 
 that I should summon him hither you wish to see, and to 
 confer with him ! " 
 
 " God of mercy forbid ! " cried the hermit, and with such 
 vehemence that I was startled from the design of revealing my- 
 self, which I was on the point of executing. " I would rather 
 that these walls would crush me into dust, or that this solid 
 stone would crumble beneath my feet ay, even into a bottom- 
 less pit, than meet the glance of Morton Devereux ! " 
 
 " Is it even so ?" said I, stooping over the wine-cup ; " ye 
 have been foes then, I suspect. Well, it matters not tell me 
 your errand, and it shall be done." 
 
 " Done ! " cried the hermit, and a new, and certainly a most 
 natural, suspicion darted within him, "done ! and fool that I 
 am ! who, or what are you, that I should believe you take so 
 keen an interest in the wishes of a man utterly unknown to you ? 
 I tell you that my wish is that you should cross seas and trav- 
 erse lands until you find the man I have named to you. Will 
 a stranger do this, and without hire no no I was a fool, 
 and will trust the monks, and give gold, and then my errand 
 will be sped." 
 
 " Father, o.r rather, brother," said I, with a slow and firm 
 voice, " for you are of mine own age, and you have the passion 
 and the infirmity which make brethren of all mankind, I am 
 one to whom all places are alike : it matters not whether I visit 
 a northern or a southern clime I have wealth, which is suffi- 
 cient to smooth toil I have leisure, which makes occupation 
 an enjoyment. More than this, I am one, who in his gayest 
 and wildest moments has ever loved mankind, and would have 
 renounced at any time his own pleasure for the advantage of 
 another. But at this time, above all others, I am most dis- 
 posed to forget myself , and there is a passion in your words 
 which leads me to hope that it may be a great benefit which I 
 can confer upon you." 
 
 " You speak well," said the hermit musingly, " and I may 
 trust you ; I will consider yet a little longer, and to-morrow at 
 this hour, you shall have my final answer. If you execute the 
 charge I entrust to you, may the blessing of a dying and most 
 wretched man cleave to you forever ! But hush the clock 
 strikes it is my hour of prayer." 
 
 And, pointing to a huge black clock that hung opposite the 
 door, and indicated the hour of nine (according to our English 
 mode of numbering the hours), the hermit fell on his knees, 
 and, clasping his hands tightly, bent his face over them in the
 
 340 DEVEREUX. 
 
 attitude of humiliation and devotion. I followed his ex- 
 ample. After a few minutes he rose "Once in every 
 three hours," said he, with a ghastly expression, "for the 
 last twelve years have I bowed my soul in anguish before 
 God, and risen to feel that it was in vain I am cursed with- 
 out and within ! " 
 
 " My father, my father, is this your faith in the mercies of 
 the Redeemer who died for Man ?" 
 
 " Talk not to me of faith ! " cried the hermit wildly. "Ye 
 laymen and worldlings know nothing of its mysteries and its 
 powers. But begone ! the dread hour is upon me, when my 
 tongue is loosed, and my brain darkened, and I know not my 
 words, and shudder at my own thoughts. Begone ! no human 
 being shall witness those moments they are only for Heaven 
 and my own soul." 
 
 So saying, this unhappy and strange being seized me by the 
 arm and dragged me towards the passage we had entered. I 
 was in doubt whether to yield to, or contend with him ; but 
 there was a glare in his eye, and a flush upon his brow, which, 
 while it betrayed the dreadful disease of his mind, made me 
 fear that resistance to his wishes might operate dangerously 
 upon a frame so feeble and reduced. I therefore mechanically 
 obeyed him. He opened again the entrance to his rugged 
 home, and the moonlight streamed wanly over his dark robes 
 and spectral figure. 
 
 " Go," said he, more mildly than before " go, and forgive 
 the vehemence of one whose mind and heart alike are broken 
 within him. Go, but return to-morrow at sunset. Your air 
 disposes me to trust you." 
 
 So saying, he closed the door upon me, and I stood without 
 the cavern alone. 
 
 But did I return home ? Did I hasten to press my couch in 
 sleep and sweet forgetfulness, while he was in that gloomy se- 
 pulture of the living, a prey to anguish, and torn by the fangs 
 of madness and a fierce disease ? No on the damp grass, be- 
 neath the silent skies, I passed a night which could scarcely 
 have been less wretched than his own. My conjecture was 
 now, and in full, confirmed. Heavens ! how I loved that man 
 how, from my youngest years, had my soul's fondest affections 
 interlaced themselves with him ! with what anguish had I 
 wept his imagined death ? and now to know that he lay within 
 those walls, smitten from brain to heart with so fearful and 
 mysterious a curse to know, too, that he dreaded the sight of 
 me of me who would have laid down rav life for his! the
 
 DEVEREUX. 341 
 
 grave, which I imagined his home r had been a mercy to a 
 doom like this. 
 
 " He fears," I murmured, and I wept as I said it, " to look 
 on one who would watch over, and soothe, and bear with him, 
 with more than a woman's love ! By what awful fate has this 
 calamity fallen on one so holy and so pure ? or by what pre- 
 orded destiny did I come to these solitudes, to find at the same 
 time a new charm for the earth, and a spell to change it again 
 into a desert and a place of woe ? " 
 
 All night I kept vigil by the cave, and listened if I could 
 catch moan or sound ; but everything was silent; the thick 
 walls of the rock kept even the voice of despair from my ear. 
 The day dawned, and I retired among the trees, lest the hermit 
 might come out unawares and see me. At sunrise I saw him 
 appear for a few moments, and again retire, and I then hastened 
 home, exhausted and wearied by the internal conflicts of the 
 night, to gather coolness and composure for the ensuing inter- 
 view, which I contemplated at once with eagerness and 
 dread. 
 
 At the appointed hour, I repaired to the cavern : the door 
 was partially closed ; I opened it, hearing no answer to my 
 knock, and walked gently along the passage ; but I now heard 
 shrieks, and groans, and wild laughter as I neared the rude 
 chamber. I paused for a moment, and then in terror and dis- 
 may entered the apartment. It was empty ; but I saw near the 
 clock a small door, from within which the sounds that alarmed 
 me proceeded. I had no scruple in opening it, and found my- 
 self in the hermit's sleeping-chamber ; a small, dark room, 
 where, upon a straw pallet, lay the wretched occupant in a 
 state of frantic delirium. I stood mute and horror-struck, while 
 his exclamations of frenzy burst upon my ear. 
 
 " There there ! " he cried, " I have struck thee to the heart, 
 and now I will kneel and kiss those white lips, and bathe my 
 hands in that blood. Ha ! do I hate thee ? hate ay hate, 
 abhor, detest ! Have you the beads there? let me tell them. 
 Yes, I will go to the confessional confess? No, no all the 
 priests in the world could not lift up a soul so heavy with guilt. 
 Help help help ! I am falling falling there is the pit, and 
 the fire, and the devils ! Do you hear them laugh ? I can 
 laugh too ! ha ha ha ! Hush, I have written it all out in a 
 fair hand he shall read it and then, O God ! what curses he 
 will heap upon my head ! Blessed St. Francis, hear me .' 
 Lazarus, Lazarus, speak for me ! " 
 
 Thus did the hermit rave, while my flesh crept to hear him.
 
 342 DEVEREUX. 
 
 I stood by his bedside, and called on him, but he neither heard 
 nor saw me. Upon the ground, by the bed's head, as if it 
 had dropt from under the pillow, was a packet sealed and 
 directed to myself ; I knew the handwriting at a glance, even 
 though the letters were blotted and irregular, and possibly 
 traced in the first moment that his present curse fell upon the 
 writer. I placed the packet in my bosom ; the hermit saw not 
 the motion, he lay back on the bed, seemingly in utter exhaus- 
 tion. I turned away, and hastened to the monastery for assist- 
 ance. As I hurried through the passage, the hermit's shrieks 
 again broke upon me, with a fiercer vehemence than before. I 
 flew from them, as if they were sounds from the abyss of Hades. 
 I flew till, breathless, and half-senseless myself, 1 fell down 
 exhausted by the gate of the monastery. 
 
 The two most skilled in physic of the brethren were immedi- 
 ately summoned, and they lost not a moment in accompanying 
 me to the cavern. All that evening, until midnight, the frenzy 
 of the maniac seemed rather to increase than abate. But at 
 that hour, indeed, exactly, as the clock struck twelve, he fell 
 at once into a deep sleep. 
 
 Then for the first time, but not till the wearied brethren had, 
 at this favorable symptom, permitted themselves to return for 
 a brief interval to the monastery, to seek refreshment for 
 themselves, and to bring down new medicines for the patient, 
 then for the first time, I rose from the hermit's couch by which 
 I had hitherto kept watch, and, repairing to the outer chamber, 
 took forth the packet superscribed with my name. There, 
 alone, in that gray vault, and by the sepulchral light of the 
 single lamp, I read what follows. 
 
 THE HERMIT'S MANUSCRIPT. 
 
 " Morton Devereux, if ever this reach you, read it, shudder, 
 and whatever your afflictions, bless God that you are not as I 
 am. Do you remember my prevailing characteristics as a boy ? 
 No, you do not. You will say ' Devotion ! ' It was not ! 
 'Gentleness.' It was not it was JEALOUSY! Now does 
 the truth flash on you ? Yes, that was the disease that was in 
 my blood, and in my heart, and through whose ghastly medium 
 every living object was beheld. Did I love you ? Yes, I loved 
 you ay, almost with a love equal to your own. I loved my 
 mother I loved Gerald- I loved Montreuil. It was a part of 
 my nature to love, and I did not resist the impulse. You I 
 loved better than all ; but I was jealous of each. If my mother
 
 DEVEREUX. 343 
 
 caressed you or Gerald if you opened your heart to either, it 
 stung me to the quick. I it was who said to my mother, 
 ' Caress him not, or I shall think you love him better than me.' 
 I it was who widened, from my veriest childhood, the breach 
 between Gerald and yourself. I it was who gave to the child- 
 ish reproach a venom, and to the childish quarrel a barb. 
 Was this love ? Yes, it was love; but I could not endure that 
 ye should love one another as ye loved me. It delighted me 
 when one confided to my ear a complaint against the other, 
 and said, 'Aubrey, this blow could not have come from thee ! ' 
 
 " Montreuil early perceived my bias of temper ; he might 
 have corrected it, and with ease. I was not evil in disposition ; 
 I was insensible of my own vice. Had its malignity been re- 
 vealed to me, I should have recoiled in horror. Montreuil had 
 a vast power over me ; he could mould me at his will. Mon- 
 treuil, I repeat, might have saved me, and thyself, and a third 
 being, better and purer than either of us was, even in our cra- 
 dles. Montreuil did not ; he had an object to serve, and he 
 sacrificed our whole house to it. He found me one day weep- 
 ing over a dog that I had killed. ' Why did you destroy it ? ' 
 he said ; and I answered, 'Because it loved Morton betterthan 
 me ! ' And the priest said, ' Thou didst right, Aubrey !' Yes, 
 from that time he took advantage of my infirmity, and could 
 rouse or calm all my passions in proportion as he irritated or 
 soothed it. 
 
 "You know this man's object during the latter period of his 
 residence with us : it was the restoration of thehouse of Stuart- 
 He was alternately the spy and the agitator in that cause. Among 
 more comprehensive plans for effecting this object was that of 
 securing the heirs to the great wealth and popular name of Sir 
 William Devereux. This was only a minor mesh in the intricate 
 web of his schemes ; but it is the character of the man to take ex- 
 actly the same pains, and pursue the same laborious intrigues, for 
 a small object as for a great one. His first impression, on en- 
 tering our house, was in favor of Gerald : and I believe he really 
 likes him to this day better than either of us. Partly your sar- 
 casms, partly Gerald's disputes with you, partly my representa- 
 tions for I was jealous eVen of the love of Montreuil pre- 
 possessed him against you. He thought too, that Gerald had 
 more talent to serve his purposes than yourself, and more fa- 
 cility in being moulded to them ; and he believed our uncle's 
 partiality to you far from being unalienable. I have said that, 
 at the latter period of his residence with us, he was an agent 
 of the exiled cause, At the time I now speak of, he had not
 
 344 DEVEREUX. 
 
 entered into the great political scheme which engrossed him af- 
 terwards. He was merely a restless and aspiring priest, whose 
 whole hope, object, ambition, was the advancement of his or- 
 der. He knew that whoever inherited, or whoever shared my 
 uncle's wealth, could, under legitimate regulation, promote any 
 end which the heads of that order might select ; and he wished 
 therefore to gain the mastery over us all. Intrigue was essen- 
 tially woven with his genius, and by intrigue only did he ever 
 seek to arrive at any end he had in view.* He soon obtained 
 a mysterious and pervading power over Gerald and myself. 
 Your temper at once irritated him, and made him despair of 
 obtaining an ascendant over one who, though he testified in 
 childhood none of the talents for which he has since been noted, 
 testified, nevertheless, a shrewd, penetrating and sarcastic power 
 of observation and detection. You, therefore, he resolved to 
 leave to the irregularities of your own nature, confident that 
 they would yield him the opportunity of detaching your uncle 
 from you, and ultimately securing to Gerald his estates. 
 
 " The trial at school first altered his intentions. He imagined 
 that he then saw in you powers which might be rendered avail- 
 ing to him : he conquered his pride a great feature in his 
 character and he resolved to seek your affection. Your sub- 
 sequent regularity of habits, and success in study, confirmed him 
 in his resolution ; and when he learnt, from my uncle's own 
 lips, that the Devereux estates would devolve on you, he thought 
 that it would be easier to secure your affection to him than to 
 divert that affection which my uncle had conceived for you. 
 At this time I repeat, he had no particular object in view ; 
 none, at least, beyond that of obtaining, for the interest of his 
 order, the direction of great wealth and some political influence. 
 Some time after I know not exactly when, but before we re- 
 turned to take our permanent abode at Devereux Court a 
 share in the grand political intrigue which was then in so many 
 branches carried on throughout England, and even Europe, was 
 confided to Montreuil. 
 
 " In this I believe he was the servant of his order, rather than 
 immediately of the exiled house ; and I have since heard that 
 even at that day he had acquired a great reputation among the 
 professors of the former. You, Morton, he decoyed not into 
 this scheme before he left England : he had not acquired a 
 sufficient influence over you to trust you with the disclosure. 
 To Gerald and myself he was more confidential. Gerald 
 
 * It will be observed that Aubrey frequently repeats former assertions ; this is one of th? 
 most customary traits of insanity. Ep,
 
 DEVEREUX. 345 
 
 eagerly embraced his projects through a spirit of enterprise 
 I through a spirit of awe and of religion. RELIGION ! 
 Yes, then, long after, now, when my heart was and is the 
 home of all withering and evil passions, Religion reigned 
 reigns, over me a despot and a tyrant. Its terrors haunt meat 
 this hour they people the earth and the air with shapes of 
 ghastly menace ! They Heaven pardon me ! what would my 
 madness utter ? Madness ? madness ? Ay that is the real 
 scourge, the real fire, the real torture, the real hell, of this fair 
 earth ! 
 
 " Montreuil, then, by different pleas, won over Gerald and 
 myself. He left us, but engaged us in constant correspond- 
 ence. ' Aubrey,' he said, before he departed, and when he saw 
 that I was wounded by his apparent cordiality towards you and 
 Gerald 'Aubrey,' he said, soothing me on this point, 'think 
 not that I trust Gerald or the arrogant Morton as I trust you. 
 You have my real heart and my real trust. It is necessary to 
 the execution of this project, so important to the interests of 
 religion, and so agreeable to the will of Heaven, thatwe should 
 secure all co-operators ; but they, your brothers, Aubrey, are 
 the tools of that mighty design you are its friend.' Thus it 
 was that, at all times when he irritated too sorely the vice of 
 my nature, he flattered it into seconding his views ; and thus, 
 instead of conquering my evil passions, he conquered by them. 
 Curses No, no, no ! I will be calm. 
 
 " We returned to Devereux Court, and we grew from boy- 
 hood into youth. I loved youthen, Morton. Ah! what would 
 I not give now for one pure feeling, such as I felt in your love ? 
 Do you remember the day on which you had extorted from my 
 uncle his consent to your leaving us for the pleasures and 
 pomps of London ? Do you remember the evening of that day, 
 when I came to seek you, and we sat down on a little mound, 
 and talked over your projects, and you spoke then to me of 
 my devotion, and my purer and colder feelings ? Morton, at 
 that very moment my veins burnt with passion ! at that very 
 moment my heart was feeding the vulture fated to live and 
 prey within it forever! Thrice did I resolve to confide in you, 
 as we then sat together, and thrice did my evil genius forbid it. 
 You seemed, even in your affection to me, so wholly engrossed 
 with your own hopes you seemed so little to regret leaving 
 me you stung, so often and so deeply, in our short conference, 
 that feeling which made me desire to monopolize all things in 
 those I loved, that I said inly ' Why should I bare my heart 
 to one who can so little understand it ? ' And so we turned
 
 346 DEVEREUX. 
 
 home, and you dreamt not of that which was then within me, 
 and which was destined to be your curse and mine. 
 
 " Not many weeks previous to that night, I had seen one 
 whom to see was to love ! Love ! I tell you, Morton, that 
 that word is expressive of soft and fond emotions, and there 
 should be another expressive of all that is fierce, and dark, and 
 unrelenting in the human heart ! all that seems most like the 
 deadliest and the blackest hate, and yet is not hate ! I saw 
 this being, and from that moment my real nature, which had 
 slept hitherto, awoke ! I remember well, it was one evening in 
 the beginning of summer that I first saw her. She sat alone in 
 the little garden beside the cottage door, and 1 paused, and, 
 unseen, looked over the slight fence that separated us, and fed 
 my eyes with a loveliness that I thought till then, only twilight 
 or the stars could wear ! From that evening I came, night 
 after night, to watch her from the same spot ; and every time 
 I beheld her, the poison entered deeper and deeper into my 
 system. At length I had an opportunity of being known to 
 her of speaking to her of hearing her speak of touching the 
 ground she had hallowed of entering the home where she 
 dwelt ! 
 
 " I must explain ; I said that both Gerald and myself corre- 
 sponded privately with Montreuil we were both bound over to 
 secrecy with regard to you and this, my temper, and Gerald's 
 coolness with you, rendered an easy obligation to both; I say 
 my temper for I loved to think I had a secret not known to an- 
 other ; and I carried this reserve even to the degree of conceal- 
 ing from Gerald himself the greater part of the correspondence 
 between me and the Abbe. In his correspondence with each 
 of us, Montreuil acted with his usual skill ; to Gerald, as the 
 elder in years, the more prone to enterprise, and the manlier in 
 aspect and in character, was allotted whatever object was of 
 real trust or importance. Gerald it was who, under pretence of 
 pursuing his accustomed sports, conferred with the various agents 
 of intrigue who from time to time visited our coast ; and to me 
 the Abbe gave words of endearment, and affected the language 
 of more entire trust. ' Whatever,' he would say ' in our present 
 half-mellowed projects, is exposed to danger, but does not prom- 
 ise reward, I entrust to Gerald ; hereafter, far higher employ- 
 ment, under far safer and surer auspices, will be yours. We are 
 the heads be ours the nobler occupation to plan and let us 
 leave to inferior natures the vain and perilous triumph to exe- 
 cute what we design.' 
 
 "All this I readily assented to ; for, despite my acquiescence
 
 fcEVEREUX. 347 
 
 in Montreuil's wishes, I loved not enterprise, or rather I hated 
 whatever roused me from the dreamy and abstracted indolence 
 which was most dear to my temperament. Sometimes, how- 
 ever, with a great show of confidence, Montreuil would request 
 me to execute some quiet and unimportant commission ; and of 
 this nature was one I received while I was thus, unknown even 
 to the object, steeping my soul in the first intoxication of love. 
 The plots then carried on by certain ecclesiastics, I need not say 
 extended, in one linked chain, over the greater part of the con- 
 tinent. Spain, in especial, was the theatre of these intrigues; 
 and among the tools employed in executing them were some, 
 who, though banished from that country, still, by the rank they 
 had held in it, carried a certain importance in their very names. 
 Foremost of these was the father of the woman I loved' and 
 foremost, in whatever promised occupation to a restless mind, 
 he was always certain to be. 
 
 " Montreuil now commissioned me to seek out a certain Bar- 
 nard (an underling in those secret practices or services, for which 
 he afterwards suffered, and who was then in that part of the 
 country), and to communicate to him some messages, of which he 
 was to be the bearer to this Spaniard. A thought flashed upon 
 me Montreuil's letter mentioned, accidently, that the Spaniard 
 had never hitherto seen Barnard : could I not personate the 
 latter deliver the messages myself, and thus win that introduc- 
 tion to the daughter which I so burningly desired, and which, 
 from the close reserve of the father's habits, I might not other- 
 wise effect ? The plan was open to two objections : one that I 
 was known personally in the town in the environs of which 
 the Spaniard lived, and he might therefore very soon discover 
 who I really was ; the other, that I was not in possession of all 
 the information which Barnard might possess, and which the 
 Spaniard might wish to learn ; but these objections had not 
 much weight with me. To the first, I said inly, ' I will oppose 
 the most constant caution, I will go always on foot, and alone 
 I will never be seen in the town itself and even should the 
 Spaniard, who seems rarely to stir abroad, and who, possibly, 
 does not speak our language even should he learn, by acci- 
 dent, that Barnard is only another name for Aubrey Devereux, 
 it will not be before I have gained my object ; nor, perhaps, 
 before the time when I myself may wish to acknowledge my 
 identity.' To the second objection I saw a yet more ready an- 
 swer. ' I will acquaint Montreuil at once,' I said, 'with my 
 intention ; I will claim his connivance as a proof of his confi- 
 dence, and as an essay of my own genius of intrigue.' I did so;
 
 348 DEVEREUX. 
 
 the priest, perhaps delighted to involve me so deeply, and to 
 find me so ardent in his project, consented. Fortunately, as I 
 before said, Barnard was an underling young unknown and 
 obscure. My youth, therefore, was not so great a foe to my 
 assumed disguise as it might otherwise have been. Montreuil 
 supplied all requisite information. I tried (for the first time, 
 with a beating heart and a tremulous voice) the imposition ; it 
 succeeded I continued it. Yes, Morton, yes ! pour forth 
 upon me your bitterest execration in me in your brother 
 in the brother so dear to you in the brother whom you imag- 
 ined so passionless so pure so sinless behold that Barnard 
 the lover the idolatrous lover the foe the deadly foe of 
 Isora d'Alvarez ! " 
 
 Here the manuscript was defaced for some pages, by incoher- 
 ent and meaningless ravings. It seemed as if one of his dark 
 fits of frenzy had at that time come over the writer. At length, 
 in a more firm and clear character than that immediately pre- 
 ceding it, the manuscript continued as follows : 
 
 " I loved her, but even then it was with a fierce and ominous 
 love (ominous of what it became). Often in the still evenings, 
 when we stood together watching the sun set when my tongue 
 trembled but did not dare to speak when all soft and sweet 
 thoughts filled the heart and glistened in the eye of that most 
 sensitive and fairy being when my own brow, perhaps, seemed 
 to reflect the same emotions feelings, which I even shuddered 
 to conceive, raged within me. Had we stood together, in those 
 moments, upon the brink of a precipice, I could have wound 
 my arms around her, and leapt with her into the abyss. Every 
 thing but one nursed my passion ; nature solitude early 
 dreams all kindled and fed that fire : Religion only combated 
 it ; I knew it was a crime to love any of earth's creatures as I 
 loved. I used the scourge and the fast * I wept hot burn- 
 ing tears I prayed and the intensity of my prayer appalled 
 even myself, as it rose from my maddened heart, in the depth 
 and stillness of the lone night: but the flame burnt higher and 
 more scorchingly from the opposition ; nay, it was the very 
 knowledge that my love was criminal that made it assume so 
 fearful and dark a shape. ' Thou art the cause of my downfall 
 from Heaven ! ' I muttered, when I looked upon Isora's calm 
 
 * I need not point out to the Novel-reader how completely the character of Aubrey has 
 been stolen in a certain celebrated French Romance But the writer I allude to is not so 
 unmerciful as M. de Balzac, who has pillaged scenes in the Disowned, with a most gratify- 
 ing politeness.
 
 DEVEREUX. 34 
 
 face thou feelest it not, and I could destroy thee and myself 
 myself the criminal thee the cause of the crime ! ' 
 
 "It must have been that my eyes betrayed my feelings, that 
 Isora loved me not that she shrunk from me even at the first 
 why else should I not have called forth the same sentiments 
 which she gave to you ? Was not my form cast in a mould as 
 fair as yours ? did not my voice whisper in as sweet a tone ? 
 did I not love her with as wild a love ? Why should she not 
 have loved me? I was the first whom she beheld she would 
 ay, perhaps she would have loved me, if you had not come 
 and marred all. Curse yourself, then that you were my 
 rival ! curse yourself that you made my heart as a furnace, 
 and smote my brain with frenzy curse Oh, sweet Virgin for- 
 give me ! I know not I know not what my tongue titters or 
 my hand traces ! 
 
 " You came, then, Morton, you came you knew her you 
 loved her she loved you. I learned that you had gained ad- 
 mittance to the cottage, and the moment I learned it, I looked 
 on Isora, and felt my fate, as by intuition : I saw at once that 
 she was prepared to love you I saw the very moment when 
 that love kindled from conception into form I saw and at 
 that moment my eyes reeled and my ears rung as with the sound 
 of a rushing sea, and I thought I felt a chord snap within my 
 brain, which has never been united again. 
 
 " Once only, after your introduction to the cottage, did I 
 think of confiding to you my love and rivalship ; you remem- 
 ber one night when we met by the castle cave, and when your 
 kindness touched and softened me, despite of myself. The day 
 after that night I sought you, with the intention of communi- 
 cating to you all ; and while I was yet struggling with my em- 
 barrassment, and the suffocating tide of my emotions, you pre- 
 meditated me, by giving me your confidence. Engrossed with 
 your own feelings, you were not observant of mine ; and as 
 you dwelt and dilated upon your love for Isora, all emotions, 
 save those of agony and of fury, vanished from my breast. I 
 did not answer you then at any length, for I was too agitated 
 to trust to prolix speech ; but by the next day I had recovered 
 myself, and I resolved, as far as I was able, to play the hypo- 
 crite. ' He cannot love her as I do ! ' I said ; 'perhaps I may, 
 without disclosure of my rivalship, and without sin in the at- 
 tempt, detach him from her by reason.' Fraught with this idea, 
 I collected myself sought you remonstrated with you repre- 
 sented the worldlyjolly of your love, and uttered all that pru- 
 dence preaches in vain, where it preaches against passion !
 
 350 DEVEREUX. 
 
 "Let me be brief. I saw that it made no impression on 
 you I stifled my wrath I continued to visit and watch Isora. 
 I timed my opportunities well my constant knowledge of your 
 motions allowed me to do that ; besides, I represented to the 
 Spaniard the necessity, through political motives, of concealing 
 myself from you ; hence, we never encountered each other. 
 One evening, Alvarez had gone out to meet one of his coun- 
 trymen and confederates. J found Isora alone, in the most 
 sequestered part of the garden, her loveliness, and her ex- 
 ceeding gentleness of manner, melted me. For the first time 
 audibly, my heart spoke out, and I told her of my idolatry. 
 Idolatry ! ay, that is the only word, since it signifies both wor- 
 ship and guilt ! She heard me timidly, gently, coldly. She 
 spoke and I found confirmed, from her own lips, what my 
 reason had before told me that there was no hope for me. 
 The iron that entered, also roused, my heart. ' Enough ! ' I 
 cried fiercely, 'you love this Morton Devereux, and for him I 
 am scorned.' Isora blushed and trembled, and all my senses 
 fled from me. I scarcely know in what words my rage and my 
 despair clothed themselves ; but I know that I divulged myself 
 to her I know that I told her I was the brother the rival 
 the enemy of the man she loved, I know that I uttered the 
 fiercest and the wildest menaces and execrations I know that 
 my vehemence so overpowered and terrified her that her mind 
 was scarcely less clouded less lost, rather than my own. At 
 that moment the sound of your horse's hoofs was heard ; 
 Isora's eye brightened, and her mien grew firm. ' He comes,' 
 she said, ' and he will protect me ! ' ' Hark ! ' I said, sinking 
 my voice, and, as my drawn sword flashed in one hand, the 
 other grasped her arm with a savage force ' hark, woman ! ' 
 I said and an oath of the blackest fury accompanied my 
 threats ' swear that you will never divulge to Morton Deve- 
 reux who is his real rival that you will never declare to him 
 nor to anyone else, that the false Barnard and the true Aubrey 
 Devereux are the same swear this, or I swear (and I repeated 
 with a solemn vehemence, that dread oath) that I will stay 
 here that I will confront my rival that, the moment he be- 
 holds me, I will plunge this sword into his bosom and that, 
 before I perish myself, I will hasten to the town, and will utter 
 there a secret which will send your father to the gallows now, 
 your choice ? ' 
 
 " Morton, you have often praised, my uncle has often jested 
 at, the womanish softness of my face. There have been mo- 
 ments when I have seen that face in the glass, and known it
 
 DEVEREUX. 351 
 
 not, but started in wild affright, and fancied that I beheld a 
 a demon ; perhaps in that moment this change was over it. 
 Slowly Isora gazed upon me slowly blanched into .the hues of 
 death grew her cheek and lip slowly that lip uttered the oath 
 I enjoined. I released my gripe, and she fell to the earth, sud- 
 den and stunned as if struck by lightning. I stayed not to look 
 on what I had done I heard your step advance I fled by a 
 path that led from the garden to the beach and I reached my 
 home without retaining a single recollection of the space I had 
 traversed to attain it. 
 
 " Despite the .night I passed a night which I will leave you 
 to imagine I rose the next morning with a burning interest to 
 learn from you what had passed after my flight, and with a power, 
 peculiar to the stormiest passions, of an outward composure 
 while I listened to the recital. I saw that I was safe, and I 
 heard, with a joy so rapturous, that I question whether even 
 Isora's assent to my love would have given me an equal trans- 
 port, that she had rejected you. I uttered some advice to 
 you commonplace enough it displeased you, and we separated. 
 
 " That evening, to my surprise, I was privately visited by 
 Montreuil. He had some designs in hand which brought him 
 from France into the neighborhood, but which made him de- 
 sirous of concealment. He soon drew from me my secret ; 
 it is marvellous, indeed, what power he had of penetrating, 
 ruling, moulding my feelings and my thoughts. He wished, at 
 that time, a communication to be made, and a letter to be given, 
 to Alvarez. I could not execute this commission personally, 
 for you had informed me of your intention of watching if you 
 could not discover or meet with Barnard, and I knew you were 
 absent from home on that very purpose. Nor was Montreuil 
 himself desirous of incurring the risk of being seen by you 
 you over whom, sooner or later, he then trusted to obtain a 
 power equal to that which he held over your brothers. Gerald 
 then was chosen to execute the commission. He did so he 
 met Alvarez for the first and the only time on the beach, by the 
 
 town of ; . You saw him, and imagined you beheld the real 
 
 Barnard. 
 
 " But I anticipate for you did not inform me of that occur- 
 rence, nor the inference you drew from it, till afterwards. 
 You returned, however, after witnessing that meeting, and for two 
 days your passions (passions which, intense and fierce as mine, 
 show that, under similar circumstances, .you might have been 
 equally guilty) terminated in fever. You were confined to your 
 bed for three or four days ; meanwhile I took advantage of the
 
 352 DEVEREUX. 
 
 event. Montreuil suggested a plan which I readily embraced. 
 I sought [the Spaniard, and told him in confidence that 
 you were a suitor but a suitor upon the most dishonorable 
 terms to his daughter. I told him, moreover, that you had 
 detected his schemes, and in order to deprive Isora of protec- 
 tion, and abate any obstacles resulting from her pride, to betray 
 him to the government. I told him that his best and most pru- 
 dent, nay, his only, chance of safety for Isora and himself was 
 to leave his present home, and take refuge in the vast mazes of 
 the metropolis. I told him not to betray to you his knowl- 
 edge of your criminal intentions, lest it might needlessly exas- 
 perate you. I furnished him wherewithal to repay you the sum 
 which you had lent him, and by which you had commenced his 
 acquaintance : and I dictated to him the very terms of the note 
 in which the sum was to be enclosed. After this I felt happy. 
 You were separated from Isora she might forget you you 
 might forget her. I was possessed of the secret of her father's 
 present retreat I might seek it at my pleasure, and ultimately 
 so hope whispered prosper in my love. 
 
 " Some time afterwards you mentioned your suspicions of 
 Gerald ; I did not corroborate, but I did not seek to destroy, 
 them. ' They already hate each other,' I said : ' can the hate 
 be greater ? meanwhile, let it divert suspicion from me ! ' Ger- 
 ald knew of the agency of the real Barnard, though he did not 
 know that I had assumed the name of that person. When you 
 taxed him with his knowledge of the man, he was naturally con- 
 fused. You interpreted that confusion into the fact of his being 
 your rival, while in truth it arose from his belief that you had 
 possessed yourself of his political schemes. Montreuil, who 
 had lurked chiefly in the islet opposite ' the Castle Cave,' had 
 returned to France on the same day that Alvarez repaired to 
 London. Previous to this, we had held some conferences to- 
 gether upon my love. At first he had opposed and reasoned 
 with it, but, startled and astonished by the intensity with which 
 it possessed me, he gave way to my vehemence at last. I have 
 said that I had adopted his advice in one instance. The fact 
 of having received his advice the advice of one so pious so 
 free from human passion so devoted to one object, which ap- 
 peared to him the cause of Religion advice, too, in a love so 
 fiery and overwhelming, that fact made me think myself less 
 criminal than I had done before. He advised me yet further. 
 ' Do not seek Isora,' he said, ' till some time has elapsed till 
 her new-born love for your brother has died away till the im- 
 pression of fear you have caused in her is somewhat effaced
 
 ^ DEVEREUX. 353 
 
 till time and absence too have done their work in the mind of 
 Morton, and you will no longer have for your rival one who is 
 not only a brother, but a man of a fierce, resolute, and unre- 
 lenting temper.' 
 
 "1 yielded to this advice partly because it promised so fair ; 
 partly because I was not systematically vicious, and I wished, 
 if possible, to do away with our rivalship ; and principally be- 
 cause I knew, in the mean while, that if I was deprived of her 
 presence, so also were you ; and jealousy with me was a far 
 more intolerable and engrossing passion than the very love 
 from which it sprung. So time passed on you affected to 
 have conquered your attachment ; you affected to take pleas- 
 ure in levity, and the idlest pursuits of worldly men. I saw 
 deeper into your heart. For the moment I entertained the 
 passion of love in my awn breast, my eyes became gifted with 
 a second vision to penetrate the most mysterious and hoarded 
 secrets in the love of others. 
 
 " Two circumstances of importance happened before you 
 left Devereux Court for London ; the one was the introduc- 
 tion to your service of Jean Desmarais, the second was your 
 breach with Montreuil. I speak now of the first. A very early 
 friend did the priest possess, born in the same village as him- 
 self, and in the same rank of life ; he had received a good edu- 
 cation, and possessed natural genius. At a time when, from 
 some fraud in a situation of trust which he had held in a French 
 nobleman's family, he was in destitute and desperate circum- 
 stances, it occurred to Montreuil to provide for him by plac- 
 ing him in our family. Some accidental and frivolous remark 
 of yours, which I had repeated in my correspondence with Mon- 
 treuil, as illustrative of your manner, and your affected pur- 
 suits at that time, presented an opportunity to a plan before 
 conceived. Desmarais came to England in a smuggler's ves- 
 sel, presented himself to you as a servant, and was accepted. 
 In this plan Montreuil had two views first, that of securing 
 Desmarais a place in England, tolerably profitable to himself, 
 and convenient for any plot or scheme which Montreuil might 
 require of him in this country ; secondly, that of setting a per- 
 petual and most adroit spy upon all your motions. 
 
 "As to the second occurrence to which I have referred, viz., 
 your breach with Montreuil " 
 
 Here Aubrey, with the same terrible distinctness which had 
 characterized his previous details, and which shed a double 
 horror over the contrast of the darker and more frantic pas- 
 sages in the manuscript, related what the reader will remember
 
 354 DEVEREUX. 
 
 Oswald had narrated before, respecting the letter he had brought 
 from Madame de Balzac. It seems that Montreuil's abrupt 
 appearance in the hall had been caused by Desmarais, who had 
 recognized Oswald, on his dismounting at the gate, and had 
 previously known that he was in the employment of the Jan- 
 senistical intriguante, Madame de Balzac. 
 
 Aubrey proceeded then to say that Montreuil, invested with 
 far more direct authority and power than he had been hitherto, 
 in the projects of that wise order whose doctrines he had so 
 darkly perverted, repaired to London ; and that, soon after my 
 departure for the same place, Gerald and Aubrey left Devereux 
 Court in company with each other; but Gerald, whom very 
 trifling things diverted from any project, however important, 
 returned to Devereux Court, to accomplish the prosecution of 
 some rustic amour, without even reaching London. Aubrey, 
 on the contrary, had proceeded to the metropolis, sought the 
 suburb in which Alvarez lived, procured, in order to avoid any 
 probable chance of meeting me, a lodging in the same obscure 
 quarter, and had renewed his suit to Isora. The reader is 
 already in possession of the ill success which attended it. Au- 
 brey had at last confessed his real name to the father. The 
 Spaniard was dazzled by the prospect of so honorable an alli- 
 ance for his daughter. From both came Isora's persecution, 
 but in both was it resisted. Passing over passages in the man- 
 uscript of the most stormy incoherence and the most gloomy 
 passion, I come to what follows : 
 
 " I learned then, from Desmarais, that you had taken away 
 her and the dying father ; that you had placed them in a safe 
 and honorable home. That man, so implicitly the creature of 
 Montreuil, or rather of his own interest, with which Montreuil 
 was identified, was easily induced to betray you also to me 
 me whom he imagined, moreover, utterly the tool of the priest, 
 and of whose torturing interest in this peculiar disclosure he 
 was not at that time aware. I visited Isora in her new abode, 
 and again and again she trembled beneath my rage. Then, for 
 the second time, I attempted force. Ha ! ha ! Morton ! I 
 think I see you now ! I think I hear your muttered curse ! 
 Curse on ! When you read this I shall be beyond your ven- 
 geance beyond human power. And yet I think if I were mere 
 clay if I were the mere senseless heap of ashes that the grave 
 covers if I were not the thing that must live forever and 
 forever, far away in unimagined worlds, where nought that 
 has earth's life can come I should tremble beneath the 
 sod as your foot pressed, and your execration rung over it. A
 
 DEVEREUX. 355 
 
 second time I attempted force a second time I was repulsed 
 by the same means by a woman's hand and a woman's dagger. 
 But I knew that I had one hold ^ver Isora from which, while 
 she loved you, I could never be driven : I knew that by threat- 
 ening your life, I could command her will, and terrify her into 
 compliance with my own. I made her reiterate her vow of 
 concealment ; and I discovered, by some words dropping from 
 her fear, that she believed you already suspected me, and had 
 been withheld, by her entreaties^ from seeking me out. I 
 questioned her more, and soon perceived that it was (as indeed 
 I knew before) Gerald whom you suspected, not me ; but I did 
 not tell this to Isora. I suffered her to cherish a mistake profi- 
 table to my disguise ; but I saw at once that it might betray 
 me, if you ever met and conferred at length with Gerald upon 
 this point ; and I exacted from Isora a pledge that she would 
 effectually and forever bind you not to breathe a single sus- 
 picion to him. When I had left the room, I returned once 
 more to warn her against uniting herself with you. Wretch, 
 selfish, accursed wretch that you were, why did you suffer her 
 to transgress that warning ? 
 
 "I fled from the house, as a fiend flies from a being whom 
 he has possessed. I returned at night to look up at the win- 
 dow, and linger by the door, and keep watch beside the home 
 which held Isora. Such, in her former abode, had been my 
 nightly wont. I had no evil thought nor foul intent in this 
 customary vigil no, not one ! Strangely enough, with the 
 tempestuous and overwhelming emotions which constituted the 
 greater part of my love, was mingled, though subdued and 
 latent a stream of the softest, yea, I might add, almost of the 
 holiest tenderness. Often after one of those outpourings of 
 rage, and menace, and despair, I would fly to some quiet spot, 
 and weep, till all the hardness of my heart was wept away. 
 And often in those nightly vigils I would pause by the door and 
 murmur, ' This shelter, denied not to the beggar and the beggar's 
 child, this would you deny to me, if you could dream that I was 
 so near you. And yet, had you loved me, instead of lavishing 
 upon me all your hatred and your contempt had you loved 
 me, I would have served and worshipped you as man knows 
 not worship or service. You shudder at my vehemence now 
 I could not then have breathed a whisper to wound you. You 
 tremble now at the fierceness of my breast you would then 
 rather have marvelled at its softness.' 
 
 " I was already at my old watch when you encountered me 
 you addressed me, I answered not you approached me, and I
 
 356 DEVEREUX. 
 
 fled. Fled there there was the shame, and the sting of my 
 sentiments towards you. I am not naturally afraid of danger, 
 though my nerves are sometimes weak, and have sometimes 
 shrunk from it. I have known something of peril in late years, 
 when my frame has been bowed and broken peril by storms 
 at sea, and the knives of robbers upon land and I have looked 
 upon 'it with a quiet eye. But you, Morton Devereux, you I 
 always feared. I had seen from your childhood others, whose 
 nature was far stronger than mine, yield and recoil at yours I 
 had seen the giant and bold strength of Gerald quail before 
 your bent brow I had s.een even the hardy pride of Montreuil 
 baffled by your curled lip, and the stern sarcasm of your 
 glance I had seen you, too, in your wild moments of ungOverned 
 rage, and I knew that if earth held one whose passions were 
 fiercer than my own, it was you. But your passions were sus- 
 tained even in their fiercest excess your passions were the 
 mere weapons of your mind my passions were the torturers and 
 the tyrants of mine. Your passions seconded your will mine 
 blinded and overwhelmed it. From my infancy, even while I 
 loved you most, you awed me ; and years, in deepening the 
 impression, had made it indelible. I could not confront the 
 thought of your knowing all, and of meeting you after that 
 knowledge. And this fear, while it unnerved me at some mo- 
 ments, at others only maddened my ferocity the more by the 
 stings of shame and self-contempt. 
 
 " I fled from you you pursued you gained upon me you 
 remember now : how 1 was preserved. I dashed through the 
 inebriated revellers who obstructed your path, and reached my 
 own lodging, which was close at hand ; for the same day on 
 which I learned Isora's change of residence I changed my own 
 in order to be near it. Did I feel joy for my escape ? No I 
 could have gnawed the very flesh from my bones in the agony 
 of my shame. ' I could brave,' I said ; ' I could threat I could 
 offer violence to the woman who rejected me, and yet I could 
 not face the rival for whom I am scorned ! ' At that moment a 
 resolution flashed across my mind, exactly as if a train of living 
 fire had been driven before it. Morton, I resolved to murder 
 you, and in that very hour ! A pistol lay on my table I took 
 it, concealed it about my person, and repaired to the shelter of 
 a large portico, beside which I knew that you must pass to your 
 own home in the same street. Scarcely three minutes had 
 elapsed between the reaching my house and the leaving it on 
 this errand. I knew, for I had heard swords clash, that you 
 would be detained some time in the street by the rioters I
 
 DEVEREUX. 357 
 
 thought it probable also that you might still continue the search 
 for me ; and I knew even that, had you hastened at once to 
 your home, you could scarcely have reached it before I reached 
 my shelter. I hurried on I arrived at the spot I screened 
 myself and awaited your coming. You came, borne in the 
 arms of two men others followed in the rear I saw your face 
 destitute of the hue and aspect of life, and your clothes stream- 
 ing with blood. I was horror-stricken. I joined the crowd 
 I learnt that you had been stabbed, and it was feared mortally. 
 
 " I did not return home no, I went into the fields, and lay 
 out all night, and lifted up my heart to God, and wept aloud, 
 and peace fell upon me at least, what was peace compared to 
 the tempestuous darkness which had before reigned in my 
 breast. The sight of you, bleeding and insensible you, against 
 whom I had harbored a fratricide's purpose had stricken, as 
 it were, the weapon from my hand, and the madness from my 
 mind. I shuddered at what I had escaped I blessed God for 
 my deliverance and with the gratitude and the awe came 
 repentance and repentance brought a resolution to fly, since 
 I could not wrestle with my mighty and dread temptation : 
 the moment that resolution was formed, it was as if an incubus 
 were taken from my breast. Even the next morning I did not 
 return home my anxiety for you was such that I forgot all 
 caution I went to your house myself I saw one of your ser- 
 vants to whom I was personally unknown. I inquired respect- 
 ing you, and learnt that your wound had not been mortal, and 
 that the servant had overheard one of the medical attendants 
 say you were not even in danger. . 
 
 "At this news I felt the serpent stir again within me, but I 
 resolved to crush it at the first I would not even expose myself 
 to the temptation of passing by Isora's house I went straight 
 in search of my horse I mounted, and fled resolutely from the 
 scene of my soul's peril. ' I will go,' I said, ' to the home of 
 our childhood I will surround myself by the mute tokens of 
 the early love which my brother bore me I will think while 
 penance and prayer cleanse my soul from its black guilt I will 
 think that I am also making a sacrifice to that brother.' 
 
 " I returned then to Devereux Court, and I resolved to forego 
 all hope all persecution of Isora ! My brother my brother, 
 my heart yearns to you at this moment, even though years and 
 distance, and above all, my own crimes, place a gulf between us 
 which I may never pass it yearns to you when I think of those 
 quiet shades, and the scenes where, pure and unsullied, we 
 wandered together, when life was all verdure and freshness, and
 
 358 DEVEREUX. 
 
 we dreamt not of what was to come ! If even now my heart 
 yearns to you, Morton, when I think of that home and those 
 days, believe that it had some softness and some mercy for you 
 then. Yes, I repeat, I resolved to subdue my own emotions, 
 and interpose no longer between Isora and yourself. Full of 
 this determination, and utterly melted towards you, I wrote you 
 a long letter ; such as we would have written to each other in 
 our first youth. Two days after that letter, all my new purposes 
 were swept away, and the whole soil of evil thoughts which they 
 had covered, not destroyed, rose again as the tide flowed from 
 it, black and rugged as before. 
 
 " The very night on which I had writ that letter, came Mon- 
 treuil secretly to my chamber. He had been accustomed to 
 visit Gerald by stealth, and at sudden moments ; and there was 
 something almost supernatural in the manner in which he seemed 
 to pass from place to place, unmolested and unseen. He had 
 now conceived a villainous project ; and he had visited Devereux 
 Court in order to ascertain the likelihood of its success ; he there 
 found that it was necessary to involve me in his scheme. My 
 uncle's physician had said privately that Sir William could not 
 live many months longer. Either from Gerald, or my mother, 
 Montreuil learned this fact ; and he was resolved, if possible, 
 the family estates should not glide from all chance of his in- 
 fluence over them into your possession. Montreuil was literally 
 as poor as the rigid law of his order enjoins its disciples to be ; 
 all his schemes required the disposal of large sums, and in no 
 private source could he hope for such pecuniary power as he 
 was likely to find in the coffers of any member of our family 
 yourself only excepted. It was this man's boast, to want, and 
 yet to command, all things ; and he was now determined that if 
 any craft, resolution, or guilt could occasion the transfer of my 
 uncle's wealth from you to Gerald, or to myself, it should not be 
 wanting. 
 
 " Now, then, he found the advantage of the dissensions with 
 each other, which he had either sown or mellowed in our 
 breasts. He came to turn those wrathful thoughts which, when 
 he last saw me, I' had expressed towards you, to the favor and 
 success of his design. He found my mind strangely altered, but 
 he affected to applaud the change. He questioned me re- 
 specting my uncle's health, and I told him what had really 
 occurred, viz., that my uncle had, on the preceding day, read 
 over to me some part of a will which he had just made, and in 
 which the vast bulk of his property was bequeathed to you. 
 At this news Montreuil must have perceived at once the necessity
 
 DEVEREUX. 35<) 
 
 of winning my consent to his project ; for, since I had seen the 
 actual testament, no fraudulent transfer of the property therein 
 bequeathed could take place without my knowledge that some 
 fraud had been recurred to. Montreuil knew me well he knew 
 that avarice, that pleasure, that ambition, were powerless words 
 with me, producing no effect and affording no temptation ; but he 
 knew that passion, jealousy, spiritual terrors, were the springs that 
 moved every part and nerve of my moral being. The two former 
 then he now put into action the last he held back in reserve. 
 He spoke to me no further upon the subject he had then at 
 heart ; not a word further on the disposition of the estates he 
 spoke to me only of Isora and of you ; he aroused, by hint 
 and insinuation, the new sleep into which all those emotions 
 the furies of the heart had been for a moment lulled. He 
 told me he had lately seen Isora -he dwelt glowingly on her 
 beauty he commended my heroism in resigning her to a brother 
 whose love for her was little in comparison to mine who had, 
 in reality, neverloved me whose jests and irony had been levelled 
 no less at myself than at others. He painted your person 
 and your mind, in contrast to my own, in colors so covertly 
 depreciating as to irritate, more and more, that vanity with which 
 jealousy is so woven, and from which, perhaps (a Titan son of so 
 feeble a parent), it is born. He hung lingeringly over all the 
 treasure that you would enjoy, and that I I, the first discoverer, 
 had so nobly and so generously relinquished. 
 
 " ' Relinquished ! ' I cried, ' no, I was driven from it. I left 
 it not while a hope of possessing it remained.' The priest 
 affected astonishment. ' How ! was I sure of that ? I had, it 
 is true, wooed Isora; but would she, even if she had felt no 
 preference for Morton, would she have surrendered the heir 
 to a princely wealth for the humble love of the younger son ? 
 I did not know women ; with them all love was either wantonness, 
 custom, or pride it was the last principle that swayed Isora. 
 Had I sought to enlist it on my side? Not at all. Again, I 
 had only striven to detach Isora trom Morton ; had I ever 
 attempted the much easier task of detaching Morton from Isora? 
 No, never'; and Montreuil repeated his panegyric on my gene- 
 rous surrender of my rights. I interrupted him : ' I had not 
 surrendered I never would surrender while a hope remained. 
 But where was that hope, and how was it to be realized ?' 
 After much artful prelude, the priest explained. He proposed 
 to use every means to array against your union with Isora, all 
 motives of ambition, interest, and aggrandizement. ' I know 
 .Morton's character,' said he, ' to its very depths. His chief
 
 366 
 
 virtue honor his chief principle is ambition. He will not 
 attempt to win this girl otherwise than by marriage, for the very 
 reasons that would induce most men to attempt it, viz., her un- 
 friended state, her poverty, her confidence in him, and her love, 
 or that semblance of love which he believes to be the passion 
 itself. This virtue I call it so, though it is none, for there is 
 no virtue out of religion this virtue, then, will place before 
 him only two plans of conduct, either to marry her or to forsake 
 her. Now, then if we can bring his ambition, that great lever 
 of his conduct, in opposition to the first alternative, only the 
 last remains ; I say that we can employ that engine in your be- 
 half leave it to me, and I will do so. Then, Aubrey, in the 
 moment of her pique, her resentment, her outraged vanity, at 
 being thus left, you shall appear ; not as you have hitherto 
 done, in menace and terror, but soft, subdued, with looks all 
 love with vows all penitence vindicating all your past vehe- 
 mence, by the excess of your passion, and promising all future 
 tenderness by the influence of the same motive, the motive 
 which to a woman pardons every error, and hallows every crime. 
 Then will she contrast your love with your brother's then 
 will the scale fall from her eyes then will she see what hitherto 
 she has been blinded to, that your brother, to yourself, is a satyr 
 to Hyperion then will she blush and falter, and hide her cheek 
 in your bosom.' 'Hold, hold ! ' I cried ; 'do with me what 
 you will, counsel, and I will act !' ' 
 
 Here again the manuscript was defaced by a sudden burst of 
 execration upon Montreuil, followed by ravings that gradually 
 blackened into the most gloomy and incoherent outpourings of 
 madness ; at length, the history proceeded : 
 
 "You wrote to ask me to sound our uncle on the subject of 
 your intended marriage. Montreuil drew up my answer, and 
 I constrained myself, despite my revived hatred to you, to 
 transcribe its expressions of affection. My uncle wrote to you 
 also ; and we strengthened his dislike to the step you had pro- 
 posed, by hints from myself, disrespectful to Isora, and an 
 anonymous communication dated from London, and to the 
 same purport. All this while I knew not that Isora had been 
 in your house ; your answer to my letter seemed to imply that 
 you would not disobey my uncle. Montreuil, who was still 
 lurking in the neighborhood, and who at night privately met 
 or sought me, affected exultation at the incipient success of 
 his advice. He pretended to receive perpetual intelligence of 
 your motions and conduct, and he informed me now that Isora 
 had come to your house on hearing of your wound ; that you
 
 DEVEfcEUX. 361 
 
 had not (agreeably, Montreuil added to his view of your cha- 
 racter) taken advantage of her indiscretion ; that immediately 
 onreceivingyour uncle's and my own letters, you had separated 
 yourself from her; and that, though you still visited her, it 
 was apparently with a view of breaking off all connection by 
 gradual and gentle steps ; at all events, you had taken no 
 measures towards marriage. ' Now, then,' said Montreuil, 'for 
 one finishing stroke, and the prize is yours. Your uncle can- 
 not, you find, live long : could he but be persuaded to leave 
 his property to Gerald or to you, with only a trifling legacy 
 (comparatively speaking) to Morton, that worldly-minded and 
 enterprising person would be utterly prevented from marrying 
 a penniless and unknown foreigner. Nothing but his own 
 high prospects, so utterly above the necessity of fortune in a 
 wife, can excuse such a measure now, even to his own mind ; 
 if, therefore, we can effect this transfer of property, and in the 
 mean while prevent Morton from marrying, your rival is gone 
 forever, and with his brilliant advantages of wealth will also 
 vanish his merits in the eyes of Isora. . Do not be startled at 
 this thought ; there is no crime in it; I, your confessor, your 
 tutor, the servant of the church, am the last person to counsel, 
 to hint, even, at what is criminal ; but the end sanctifies all 
 means. By transferring this vast property, you do not only 
 ensure your object, but you advance the great cause of Kings, 
 the Church, and of the Religion which presides over both. 
 Wealth, in Morton's possession, will be useless to this cause, 
 perhaps pernicious : in your hands, or in Gerald's, it will be of 
 inestimable service. Wealth produced from the public should 
 be applied to the uses of the public, yea, even though a petty 
 injury to one individual be the price.' 
 
 "Thus, and in this manner, did Montreuil prepare my mind 
 for the step he meditated ; but I was not yet ripe for it. So 
 inconsistent is guilt, that I could commit murder wrong 
 almost all villainy that passion dictated, but I was struck aghast 
 by the thought of fraud. Montreuil perceived that I was not 
 yet wholly his, and his next plan was to remove me from a spot 
 where I might check his measures. He persuaded me to travel 
 for a few weeks. 'On. your return,' said he, 'consider Isora 
 yours ; meanwhile, let change of scene beguile suspense.' I 
 was passive in his hands, and I went whither he directed. 
 
 "Let me be brief here on the black fraud that ensued. 
 Among the other arts of Jean Desmarais, was that of copying 
 exactly, any handwriting. He was then in London, in your 
 service : Montreuil sent for him to come to the neighborhood
 
 362 DEVEREUX. 
 
 of Devereux Court. Meanwhile, the priest had procured from 
 the notary who had drawn up, and who now possessed, the will 
 of my unsuspecting uncle, that document. The notary had 
 been long known to, and sometimes politically employed by, 
 Montreuil, for he was half-brother to that Oswald, whom I have 
 before mentioned as the early comrade of the priest and Des- 
 marais. This circumstance, it is probable, first induced Mon- 
 treuil to contemplate the plan of a substituted will. Before 
 Desmarais arrived in order to copy those parts of the will 
 which my uncle's humor had led him to write in his own hand, 
 you, alarmed by a letter from my uncle, came to the Court, 
 and on the same day Sir William (taken ill the preceding even- 
 ing) died. Between that day and the one on which the funeral 
 occurred, the will was copied by Desmarais ; only Gerald's 
 name was substituted for yours, and the forty thousand pounds 
 left to him a sum equal to that bestowed on myself was cut 
 down into a legacy of twenty thousand pounds to you. Less 
 than this, Montreuil dared not insert as the bequest to you ; 
 and it is possible that the same regard to probabilities prevented 
 all mention of himself in the substituted will. This was all the 
 alteration made. My uncle's writing was copied exactly ; and, 
 save the departure from his apparent intentions in your favor, 
 I believe not a particle in the effected fraud was calculated to 
 excite suspicion. Immediately on the reading of the will, 
 Montreuil repaired to me, and confessed what had taken place. 
 "Aubrey,' he said, ' I have done this for your sake partly ; 
 but I have had a much higher end in view than even your hap- 
 piness, or my affectionate wishes to promote it. I live solely 
 for one object the aggrandizement of that holy order to \vhich 
 I belong ; the schemes of that order are devoted only to the 
 interests of Heaven, and by serving them, I serve Heaven itself. 
 Aubrey, child of my adoption and of my earthly hopes, 
 those schemes require carnal instruments, and work, even 
 through Mammon, unto the goal of righteousness. What I 
 have done is just before God and man. I have wrested 
 a weapon from the hand of an enemy, and placed it in 
 the hand of an ally. I have not touched one atom of this 
 wealth, though, with the same ease with which I have trans- 
 ferred it from Morton to Gerald, I might have made my own 
 private fortune. I have not touched one atom of it ; nor for 
 you, whom I love more than any living being, have I done 
 what my heart dictated. I might have caused the inheritance 
 to pass to you. I have not done so. Why ? Because, then, 
 I should have consulted a selfish desire at the expense of the in-
 
 DEVEREUX. 363 
 
 terests of mankind. Gerald is fitter to be the tool those interests 
 require than you are. Gerald I have made that tool. You, too, 
 I have spared the pangs which your conscience, so peculiarly, 
 so morbidly acute, might surfer at being selected as the instru- 
 ment of a seeming wrong to Morton. All required of you is 
 silence. If your wants ever ask more than your legacy, you 
 have as I have, a claim to that wealth which your pleasure al- 
 lows Gerald to possess. Meanwhile, let us secure to you that 
 treasure dearer to you than gold.' 
 
 " If Montreuil did not quite blind me by speeches of this 
 nature, my engrossing, absorbing passion required little to make 
 it cling to any hope of its fruition. I assented, therefore, 
 though not without many previous struggles, to Montreuil's- 
 project, or rather to its concealment ; nay, I wrote some time 
 after, at his desire, and his dictation, a letter to you, stating 
 feigned reasons for my uncle's alteration of former inten- 
 tions, and exonerating Gerald from all connivance at that al- 
 teration, or abetment in the fraud you professed that it was 
 your open belief had been committed. This was due to Gerald ; 
 for that time, and for aught I know, at the present, he was per- 
 fectly unconscious by what means he had attained his fortune ; 
 he believed that your love for Isora had given my uncle offence, 
 and hence your disinheritance ; and Montreuil took effectual 
 care to exasperate him against you, by dwelling on the malice 
 which your suspicions and your proceedings against him so 
 glaringly testified. Whether Montreuil really thought you 
 would give over all intention of marrying Isora upon your reverse 
 of fortune, which is likely enough, from his estimate of your 
 character, or whether he only wished by any means, to obtain 
 my acquiescence in a measure important to his views, I know 
 not, but he never left me, nor ever ceased to sustain my 
 fevered and unhallowed hopes, from the hour in which he first 
 communicated to me the fraudulent substitution of the will, till 
 we repaired to London. This we did not do so long as he could 
 detain me in the country, by assurances that I should ruin 
 all by appearing before Isora until you had entirely deserted 
 her. 
 
 " Morton, hitherto I have written as if my veins were filled 
 with water, instead of the raging fire that flows through them 
 until it reaches my brain, and there it stops, and eats away all 
 things even memory, that once seemed eternal ! Now I feel 
 as I approach the consummation of Ha of what ay, of 
 what ? Brother did you ever, when you thought yourself quite 
 alone at night not a breath stirring did you ever raise your
 
 364 DEVEREUX. 
 
 eyes and see, exactly opposite to you, a devil ! a dread tiling, 
 that moves not, speaks not, but glares upon you with a fixed, 
 dead, unrelenting eye? that thing is before me now, and wit- 
 nesses every word I write. But it deters me not ! no, nor terri- 
 fies me. I have said that I would fulfil this task, and I have 
 nearly done it ; though at times the gray cavern yawned, and 
 I saw its rugged walls stretch stretch away, on either side, 
 until they reached hell ; and there I beheld but I will not 
 tell you, till we meet there ! Now I am calm again read on ! 
 
 " We could not discover Isora, nor her home ; perhaps the 
 priest took care that it should be so ; for, at that time, what 
 with his devilish whispers and my own heart, I often scarcely 
 knew what I was or what I desired ; and I sat for hours 
 and gazed upon the air, and it seemed so soft and still 
 that I longed to make an opening in my forehead that it 
 might enter there, and so cool and quiet the dull, throbbing 
 anguish that lay like molten lead in my brain ; at length we 
 found the house. 'To-morrow,' said the Abbe, and he shed 
 tears over me for there were times when that hard man did 
 feel, ' to-morrow, my child, thou shalt see her but be soft 
 and calm.' The morrow came ; but Montreuil was pale, paler 
 than I had ever seen him, and he gazed upon me and said, 
 ' Not to-day, my son, not to-day ; she has gone out, and will 
 not return till nightfall.' My brother, the evening came, and 
 with it came Desmarais ; he came in terror and alarm. ' The 
 villain Oswald,' he said, 'has betrayed all'; he drew me aside 
 and told me so. ' Harkye, Jean,' he whispered, ' harkye your 
 master has my brother's written confession, and the real will ; 
 but I have provided for your safety, and if he pleases it, for 
 Montreuil's. The packet is not to be opened till the seventh day 
 fly before then.' ' But I know,' added Desmarais, 'where the 
 packet is placed'; and he took Montreuil aside, and for awhile 
 I heard not what they said ; but I did overhear Desmarais at 
 last, and learnt that it was your bridal night. 
 
 "What felt I then ? The same tempestuous fury the same 
 whirlwind and storm of heart that I had felt before, at the 
 mere anticipation of such an event ? No ; I felt a bright ray 
 of joy flash through me. Yes, joy : but it was that joy which a 
 conqueror feels when he knows his mortal foe is in his power, and 
 when he dooms that enemy to death. 'They shall perish and 
 on this night,' I said inly. ' I have sworn it I swore to Isora 
 that the bridal couch should be stained with blood, and I will 
 keep the oath ! ' I approached the pair- they were discussing 
 the means for obtaining the packet. Montreuil urged Desman-
 
 DEVEREUX. 365 
 
 ais to purloin it from the place where you had deposited it, and 
 then toabscond ; buttothis plan Desmarais was vehemently op- 
 posed. He insisted that there would be no possible chance of his 
 escape from a search so scrutinizing as that which would nec- 
 essarily ensue, and he was evidently resolved not alone to incur 
 the danger of the theft. ' The Count,' said he, ' saw that I was 
 present when he put away the packet. Suspicion will fall sole- 
 ly on me. Whither should I fly ? No I will serve you with 
 my talents, but not with my life.' ' Wretch ! ' said Montreuil, 
 'if that packet is opened, thy life is already gone.' ' Yes,' said 
 Desmarais ; ' but we may yet purloin the papers, and throw 
 the guilt upon some other quarter. What if I admit you when 
 the Count is abroad ? What if you steal the packet, and carry 
 away other articles of more seeming value ? What, too, if you 
 wound me in the arm or the breast, and I coin some terrible tale 
 of robbers, and of my resistance, could we not manage then to 
 throw suspicion upon common housebreakers nay, could we 
 not throw it upon Oswald himself ? Let us silence that traitor 
 by death, and who shall contradict our tale ? No danger shall 
 attend this plan. I will give you the key of the escritoire 
 the theft will not be the work of a moment.' Montreuil at 
 first demurred to this proposal, but Desmarais was, I repeat, 
 resolved not to incur the danger of the theft alone ; the stake 
 was great, and it was not Montreuil's nature to shrink from peril, 
 when once it became necessary to confront it. ' Be it so,' he 
 said at last, ' though the scheme is full of difficulty and dan- 
 ger : be it so. We have not a day to lose. To-morrow the 
 Count will place the document in some place of greater safety, 
 and unknown to us the deed shall be done to-night. Procure 
 the key of the escritoire admit me this night 1 will steal dis- 
 guised into the chamber I will commit the act from which 
 you, who alone could commit it with safety, shrink. Instruct 
 me exactly as to the place where the articles you speak of are 
 placed : I will abstract them also. See that, if the Count 
 wake, he has no weapon at hand. Wound yourself, as you say, 
 in some place not dangerous to life, and to-morrow, or within 
 an hour after my escape, tell what tale you will. I will go, 
 meanwhile, at once to Oswald ; I will either bribe his silence 
 ay, and his immediate absence from England or he shall die. 
 A death that secures our own self-preservation is excusable in 
 the reading of all law, divine, or human ! ' 
 
 "I heard, but they deemed me insensible: they had already 
 begun to grow unheeding of my presence. Montreuil saw me, 
 and his countenance grew soft. ' J know all,' I said, as J caught
 
 366 DEVEREUX. 
 
 his eye which looked on me in pity, ' I know all they are 
 married. Enough ! with all my hope ceases my love : care not 
 for me.' 
 
 " Montreuil embraced and spoke to me in kindness and in 
 praise. He assured me that you had kept your wedding so close 
 a secret that he knew it not, nor did even Desmarais, till the 
 evening before till after he had proposed that I should visit 
 Isora that very day. I know not, I care not, whether he was 
 sincere in this. In whatever way one line in the dread scroll 
 of his conduct be read, the scroll was written in guile, and in 
 blood was it sealed. I appeared not to notice Montreuil or his 
 accomplice any more. The latter left the house first. Mon- 
 treuil stole forth, as he thought, unobserved ; he was masked, 
 and in complete disguise. I, too, went forth. I hastened to a 
 shop where such things were procured ; I purchased a mask 
 and cloak similar to the priest's. I had heard Montreuil agree 
 with Desmarais that the door of the house should be left ajar, 
 in order to give greater facility to the escape of the former ; I 
 repaired to the house in time to see Montreuil enter it. A 
 strange, sharp sort of cunning, which I had never known before, 
 ran through the dark confusion of my mind. I waited for a 
 minute, till it was likely that Montreuil had gained your cham- 
 ber ; I then pushed open the door, and ascended the stairs. I 
 met no one the moonlight fell around me, and its rays seemed 
 to me like ghosts, pale and shrouded, and gazing upon me with 
 wan and lustreless eyes. I know not how I found your cham- 
 ber, but it was the only one I entered. I stood in the same 
 room with Isora and yourself ye lay in sleep Isora's face 
 Oh, God ! I know no more no more of that night of horror 
 save that I fled from the house reeking with blood a murderer 
 and the murderer of Isora ! 
 
 "Then came a long, long dream. I was in a sea of blood 
 blood-red was the sky, and one still, solitary star that gleamed 
 far away with a sickly and wan light, was the only spot, above 
 and around, which was not of the same intolerable dye. And I 
 thought my eyelids were cut off, as those of the Roman consul 
 are said to have been, and I had nothing to shield my eyes from 
 that crimson light, and the rolling waters of that unnatural sea. 
 And the red air burnt through my eyes into my brain, and then 
 that also, methought, became blood ; and all memory all images 
 of memory all idea 1 wore a material shape, and a material 
 color, and were blood, too. Everything was unutterably silent, 
 except when my own shrieks rang over the shoreless ocean, as 
 I drifted on. At last I fixed my eyes the eyes which I might
 
 DEVEREUX. 367 
 
 never close upon that pale and single star ; and after I had 
 gazed a little while, the star seemed to change slowly until it 
 grew like the pale face of that murdered girl, and then it van- 
 ished utterly, and all was blood ! 
 
 "This vision was sometimes broken sometimes varied by 
 others but it always returned ; and when at last I completely 
 woke from it, I was in Italy, in a convent. Montreuil had lost 
 no time in removing me from England. But once, shortly after 
 my recovery, for I was mad for many months, he visited me, 
 and he saw what a wreck I had become. He pitied me ; and 
 when I told him I longed above all things for liberty for the 
 green earth and the fresh air, and a removal from that gloomy 
 abode, he opened the convent gates, and blessed me and bade 
 me go forth. 'All I require of you,' said he, 'is a promise. If 
 it be understood that you live, you will be persecuted by in- 
 quiries and questions, which will terminate in a conviction of 
 your crime : let it therefore be reported in England that you 
 are dead. Consent to the report, and promise never to quit 
 Italy, nor to see Morton Devereux.' 
 
 "I promised and that promise I have kept ; but I promised 
 not that I would never reveal to you, in writing, the black tale 
 which I have now recorded. May it reach you. There is one 
 in this vicinity who has undertaken to bear it to you ; he says 
 he has known misery and when he said so, his voice sounded 
 in my ear like yours ; and I looked upon him, and thought his 
 features were cast somewhat in the same mould as your own 
 so I have trusted him. I have now told all. I have wrenched 
 the secret from my heart in agony and with fear. I have told 
 all though things which I believe are fiends, have started forth 
 from the grim walls around to forbid it though dark wings 
 have swept by me, and talons, as of a bird, have attempted to 
 tear away the paper on which I write though eyes, whose light 
 was never drunk from earth, have glared on me and mocking 
 voices and horrible laughter have made my flesh creep, and 
 thrilled through the marrow of my bones I have told all I 
 have finished my last labor in this world, and I will now lie 
 down and die. 
 
 "AUBREY DEVEREUX." 
 
 The paper dropped from my hands. Whatever I had felt in 
 reading it, I had not flinched once from the task. From the 
 first word even to the last, I had gone through the dreadful 
 tale, nor uttered a syllable, nor moved a limb. And now as I 
 rose, though I had found the being who to me had withered
 
 368 DEVEfcEUX. 
 
 this world into one impassable desert though I had found the 
 unrelenting foe and the escaped murderer of Isora the object 
 of the execration and vindictiveness of years not one single 
 throb of wrath not one single sentiment of vengeance, was in 
 my breast. I passed at once to the bedside of my brother ; he 
 was awake, but still and calm the calm and stillness of ex* 
 hausted nature. I knelt down quietly beside him. I took his 
 hand, and I shrank not from the touch, though by that hand 
 the only woman I ever loved had perished. 
 
 "Look up, Aubrey !" said I, struggling with tears which, 
 despite of my most earnest effort, came over me ; " look up, all is 
 forgiven. Who on earth shall withhold pardon from a crime 
 which on earth has been so awfully punished ? Look up Au- 
 brey ; I am your brother, and I forgive you. You are right 
 my childhood was harsh and fierce ; and had you feared me 
 less you might have confided in me, and you would not have 
 sinned and suffered as you have done now. Fear me no longer. 
 Look up, Aubrey, it is Morton who calls you. Why do you not 
 speak ? My brother, my brother a word, a single word, I im- 
 plore you." 
 
 For one moment did Aubrey raise his eyes one moment 
 did he meet mine. His lips quivered wildly I heard the 
 death-rattle he sunk back, and his hand dropped from my 
 clasp. My words had snapped asunder the last chord of life. 
 Merciful Heaven ! I thank thee that those words were the 
 words of pardon ! 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 In which the Histoiy makes a great Stride towards the final Catastrophe. 
 The Return to England, and the Visit to a Devotee. 
 
 AT night, and in the thrilling forms of the Catholic ritual, 
 was Aubrey Devereux consigned to earth. After that ceremony 
 I could linger no longer in the vicinity of the hermitage. I 
 took leave of the Abbot and richly endowed his convent in 
 return for the protection it had afforded to the anchorite and 
 the masses which had been said for his soul. Before I left 
 Anselmo, I questioned him if any friend to the hermit had ever, 
 during his seclusion, held any communication with the Abbot 
 respecting him. Anselmo, after a little hesitation, confessed 
 that a man, a Frenchman, seemingly of no high rank, had 
 several times visited the convent, as if to scrutinize the habits 
 andlifeofthe anchorite; he had declared himselfcommissioned
 
 MVEREUX. 369 
 
 by the hermits relations to make inquiry of him from time to 
 time ; but he had given the Abbot no clue to discover himself, 
 though Anselmo had especially hinted at the expediency of 
 being acquainted with some quarter to which he could direct 
 any information of change in the hermit's habits or health. 
 Thismanhad been last at the convent about two months before 
 the present date ; but one of the brothers declared that he had 
 seen him in the vicinity of the well on the very day on which 
 the hermit died. The description of this stranger was essentially 
 different from that which would have been given of Montreuil, 
 but I imagined that, if not the Abbe himself, the stranger was 
 one in his confidence or his employ. 
 
 I now repaired to Rome, where I made the most extensive, 
 though guarded, inquiries after Montreuil, and at length I 
 learned that he was lying concealed, or rather unnoticed, in 
 England, under a disguised name ; having, by friends or by 
 money, obtained therein a tacit connivance, though not an open 
 pardon. No sooner did I learn this intelligence, than I resolved 
 forthwith to depart to that country. I crossed the Alps- 
 traversed France and took ship at Calais for Dover. 
 
 Behold me then upon the swift seas bent upon a double 
 purpose reconciliation with a brother whom I had wronged, 
 and vengeance no not vengeance, but justice against the 
 criminal I had discovered ! No ! it was not revenge it was 
 no infuriate, no unholy desire of inflicting punishment upon a 
 personal foe, which possessed me it was a steady, calm, 
 unwavering resolution, to obtain justice against the profound 
 and systematized guilt of a villain who had been the bane of 
 all who had come within his contact, that nerved my arm and 
 engrossed my heart. Bear witaess, Heaven, I am not a vindic- 
 tive man ! I have, it is true, .been extreme in hatred as in love ; 
 but I have ever had the power to control myself from yielding 
 to its impulse. When the full persuasion of Gerald's crime 
 reigned within me, I had thralled my emotion, I had curbed it 
 within the circle of my own heart, though there, thus pent and 
 self-consuming, it was an agony and a torture ; I had resisted 
 the voice of that blood which cried from the earth against a 
 murderer, and which had consigned the solemn charge of 
 justice to my hands. Year after year I had nursed an unap- 
 peased desire; nor ever, when it stung the most, suffered it to 
 become an actual revenge. I had knelt in tears and in softness 
 by Aubrey's bed I had poured forth my pardon over him I 
 had felt, while I did so, no, not so much sternness as would 
 have slain a worm. By his hand had the murtherous stroke
 
 37 DEVEkEUX. 
 
 been dealt on his soul was the crimson stain of that blood 
 which had flowed through the veins of the gentlest and the 
 most innocent of God's creatures and yet the blow was un- 
 avenged and the crime forgiven. For him there was a palliative, 
 or even a gloomy but an unanswerable excuse. In the con- 
 fession which had so terribly solved the mystery of my life, the 
 seeds of that curse, which had grown at last into MADNESS, 
 might be discovered even in the first dawn of Aubrey's existence. 
 The latent poison might be detected in the morbid fever of 
 his young devotion in his jealous cravings of affection in the 
 first flush of his ill-omened love, even before rivalship and 
 wrath began. Then, too, his guilt had not been regularly 
 organized into one cold and deliberate system it broke forth 
 in impetuous starts, in frantic paroxysms it was often wrestled 
 with, though by a feeble mind it was often conquered by a 
 tender, though a fitful temper it might not have rushed into 
 the last and most awful crime, but for the damning instigation 
 and the atrocious craft of one, who (Aubrey rightly said) could 
 wield and mould the unhappy victim at his will. Might not, 
 did I say? Nay, but for Montreuil's accursed influence, had 
 I not Aubrey's own word that that crime never would have been 
 committed? He had resolved to stifle his love his heart had 
 already melted to Isora and to me he had already tasted the 
 sweets of a virtuous resolution, and conquered the first bitter- 
 ness of opposition to his passion. Why should not the resolu- 
 tion thus auspiciously begun have been mellowed into effect ? 
 Why should not the grateful and awful remembrance of the 
 crime he had escaped continue to preserve him from meditat- 
 ing crime anew? And (O, thought, which, while I now write, 
 steals over me and brings with it an unutterable horde of emo- 
 tions !) but for that all-tainting, all-withering, influence, Aubrey's 
 soul might at this moment have been pure from murder, and 
 Isora the living Isora by my side ! 
 
 What wonder, as these thoughts came over me, that sense, 
 feeling, reason, gradually shrunk and hardened into one stern 
 resolve ? I looked as from a height over the whole conduct of 
 Montreuil : I saw him in our early infancy with no definite 
 motive (beyond the general policy of intrigue), no fixed design, 
 which might somewhat have lessened the callousness of the 
 crime, not only fomenting dissensions in the hearts of brothers 
 not only turning the season of warm affections, and yet of 
 unopened passion, into strife and rancor but seizing upon 
 the inherent and reigning vice of our bosoms, which he should 
 have seized to crush in order only by that master-vice tQ
 
 37 f 
 
 weave our characters and sway our conduct to his will, when- 
 ever a cool-blooded and merciless policy required us to be of 
 that will the minions and the tools. Thus had he taken hold 
 of the diseased jealousy of Aubrey, and by that handle, joined 
 to the latent spring of superstition, guided him on his wretched 
 course of misery and guilt. Thus by a moral irresolution in 
 Gerald had he bowed him also to his purposes, and, by an 
 infantine animosity between that brother and myself, held us 
 both in a state of mutual hatred which I shuddered to recall. 
 Readily could I now perceive that my charges or my suspicions 
 against Gerald, which, in ordinary circumstances, he might 
 have dispassionately come forward to disprove, had been repre- 
 sented to him by Montreuil in the light of groundless and wilful 
 insults ; and thus he had been led to scorn that full and cool 
 explanation which, if it had not elucidated the mystery of my 
 afflictions, would have removed the false suspicion of guilt from 
 himself, and the real guilt of wrath and animosity from me. 
 
 The crime of the forged will, and the outrage to the dead 
 and to myself, was a link in his woven guilt which I regarded 
 the least. I looked rather to the black and the consummate 
 craft by which Aubrey had been implicated in that sin ; and 
 my indignation became mixed with horror when I saw Mon- 
 treuil working to that end of fraud by the instigation not only 
 of a guilty and unlawful passion, but of the yet more unnatural 
 and terrific engine of frenzy, of a maniac's despair. Over 
 the peace the happiness the honor the virtue of a whole 
 family, through fraud and through blood, this priest had marched 
 onward to the goal of his icy and heartless ambition, unrelent- 
 ing and unrepenting ; "but not," I said, as I clenched my hand 
 till the nails met in the flesh, "not forever unchecked and un- 
 requited ! " 
 
 But in what manner was justice to be obtained ? A public 
 court of law ? What ! drag forward the deep dishonor of my 
 house the gloomy and convulsive history of my departed 
 brother his crime and his insanity ? What! bring that history, 
 connected as it was with the fate of Isora, before the curious 
 and the insolent gaze of the babbling world ? Bare that awful 
 record to the jests, to the scrutiny, the marvel and the pity, of 
 that most coarse of all tribunals an English court of law ? and 
 that most torturing of all exposures the vulgar comments of 
 an English public ? Could I do this? Yea, in the sternness 
 of my soul, I felt that I could submit even to that humiliation, 
 if no other way presented itself by which I could arrive at 
 justice. Was there no other way? at that question conjee-
 
 tf2 MVEREUX. 
 
 ture paused I formed no scheme, or rather, I formed a hundred 
 and rejected them all ; my mind settled, at last, into an indis- 
 tinct, unquestioned, but prophetic, resolution, that, whenever my 
 path crossed Montreuil's, it should be to his destruction. I 
 asked not how, nor when, the blow was to be dealt ; I felt only 
 a solemn and exultant certainty that, whether it borrowed the 
 sword of the law, or the weapon of private justice, mine should 
 be the hand which brought retribution to the ashes of the dead 
 and the agony of the survivor. 
 
 So soon as my mind had subsided into this determination, I 
 suffered my thoughts to dwell upon subjects less sternly agitat- 
 ing. Fondly did I look forward to a meeting with Gerald, and 
 a reconciliation of all our early and most frivolous disputes. 
 As an atonement for the injustice my suspicions had done him, 
 I resolved not to reclaim my inheritance. My fortune was 
 already ample, and all that I cared to possess of the hereditary 
 estates were the ruins of the old house and the copses of the 
 surrounding park ; these Gerald would in all likelihood easily 
 yield to me : and with the natural sanguineness of my tempera- 
 ment, I already planned the reconstruction of the ancient 
 building, and the method of that solitary life in which I resolved 
 that the remainder of my years should be spent. 
 
 Turning from this train of thought, I recurred to the mysteri- 
 ous and sudden disappearance of Oswald : that I was now 
 easily able to account for. There could be no doubt but that 
 Montreuil had (immediately after the murder), as he declared 
 he would, induced Oswald to quit England, and preserve 
 silence, either by bribery or by threats. And when I recalled 
 the impression which the man had made upon me an impres- 
 sion certainly not favorable to the elevation or the rigid honesty 
 of his mind I could not but imagine that one or the other of 
 these means Montreuil found far from difficult of success. 
 The delirious fever into which the wounds and the scene of 
 that night had thrown me, and the long interval that conse- 
 quently elapsed before inquiry was directed to Oswald, gave 
 him every opportunity and indulgence in absenting himself 
 from the country, and it was not improbable that he had 
 accompanied Aubrey to Italy. 
 
 Here I paused, in deep acknowledgment of the truth of 
 Aubrey's assertion, that "under similar circumstances, I might 
 perhaps have been equally guilty." My passions had indeed been 
 "intense and fierce as his own"; and there was a dread coin- 
 cidence in the state of mind into which each of us had been 
 thrown by the event of that night, which made the epoch of a
 
 373 
 
 desolated existence to both of us ; if mine had been but a pass- 
 ing delirium, and his a confirmed and lasting disease of the in- 
 tellect, the causes of our malady had been widely different. He 
 had been the criminal /only the sufferer. 
 
 Thus as I leant over the deck, and the waves bore me home- 
 wards, after so many years and vicissitudes, did the shadows of 
 tiiought and memory flit across me. How seemingly apart, yet 
 how closely linked, had been the great events in my wandering 
 and wild life. My early acquaintance with Bolingbroke, whom 
 for more than nine years I had not seen, and who, at a superficial 
 glance, would seem to have exercised influence over my public 
 rather than my private life, how secretly, yet how powerfully had 
 that circumstance led even to the very thoughts which now pos- 
 sessed me, and to the very object on which I was now bound. But 
 for that circumstance, I might not have learnt of the retreat of Don 
 Diego D' Alvarez in his last illness ; I might never have renewed 
 my love to Isora ; and whatever had been her fate, destitution 
 and poverty would have been a less misfortune than her union 
 with me. But for my friendship for Bolingbroke, I might not 
 have visited France, nor gained the favor of the Regent, nor 
 the ill offices of Dubois, nor the protection and kindness of the 
 
 Czar. I might never have been ambassador at the Court of , 
 
 nor met with Bezoni, nor sought an asylum for a spirit sated 
 with pomp and thirsting for truth, at the foot of the Apennines, 
 nor read that history (which, indeed, might then never have 
 occurred), that now rankled at my heart, urging my movements 
 and coloring my desires. Thus, by the finest, but the strongest, 
 meshes, had the thread of my political honors been woven with 
 that of my private afflictions. And thus, even at the licentious 
 festivals of the Regent of France, or the lifeless parade of the Court 
 
 of , the dark stream of events had flowed onward beneath 
 
 my feet, bearing me insensibly to that very spot of time from 
 which I now surveyed the past and looked upon the mist and 
 shadows of the future. 
 
 Adverse winds made the little voyage across the Channel a 
 business of four days. On the evening of the last we landed at 
 Dover. Within thirty miles of that town was my mother's 
 retreat; and I resolved, before I sought a reconciliation with 
 Gerald, or justice against Montreuil, to visit her seclusion. 
 Accordingly, the next day, I repaired to her abode. 
 
 What a contrast is there between the lives of human beings ! 
 Considering the beginning and the end of all mortal careers 
 are the same, how wonderfully is the interval varied ! Some, the 
 weeds of the world, dashed from shore to shore all vicissitude
 
 374 DEVEfcEUX. 
 
 enterprise strife disquiet ; others, the world's lichens rooted 
 to some peaceful rock growing flourishing withering on the 
 same spot, scarce a feeling expressed scarce a sentiment called 
 forth scarce a tithe of the properties of their very nature ex- 
 panded into action. 
 
 There was an air of quiet and stillness in the red quadrangular 
 building, as my carriage stopped at its porch, which struck upon 
 me, like a breathing reproach to those who sought the abode of 
 peace with feelings opposed to the spirit of the place. A small 
 projecting porch was covered with ivy, and thence issued an 
 aged portress in answer to my summons. 
 
 " The Countess Devereux," said she, "is now the superior of 
 this society" (convent they called it not), " and rarely admits 
 any stranger." 
 
 I gave in my claim to admission, and was ushered into a small 
 parlor : all there, too, was still the brown oak wainscoting the 
 huge chairs the few antique portraits the uninhabited aspect 
 of the chamber all were silently eloquent of quietude but 
 a quietude comfortless and sombre. At length, my mother 
 appeared, I sprung forward my childhood was before me 
 years care change were forgotten 1 was a boy again I 
 sprung forward, and was in my mother's embrace ! It was 
 long before, recovering myself, I noted how lifeless and chill 
 was that embrace, but I did so at last, and my enthusiasm withered 
 at once. 
 
 We sate down together, and conversed long and uninterrupt- 
 edly, but our conversation was like that of acquaintances, not the 
 fondest and closest of all relations (for I need scarcely add 
 that I told her not of my meeting with Aubrey, nor undeceived 
 her with respect to the date of his death). Every monastic 
 recluse that I had hitherto seen, even in the most seeming 
 content with retirement, had loved to converse of the exterior 
 world, and had betrayed an interest in its events for my mother 
 only, worldly objects and interests seemed utterly dead. She 
 expressed little surprise to see me little surprise at my altera- 
 tion ; she only said that my mien was improved, and that I 
 reminded her of my father; she testified no anxiety to hear of my 
 travels or my adventures she testified even no willingness to 
 speak of herself she described to me the life of one day, and then 
 said that the history of ten years was told. A close cap con- 
 fined all the locks for whose rich luxuriance and.golden hue she 
 had once been noted for here they were not the victim of a vow, 
 as in a nunnery they would have been and her dress was plain, 
 simple, and unadorned: save these alterations of attire, none
 
 DEVEREUX. 375 
 
 were visible in her exterior the torpor of her life seemed to 
 have paralyzed even time the bloom yet dwelt in her unwrinkled 
 cheek the mouth had not fallen the faultless features were 
 faultless still. But there was a deeper stillness than ever breath- 
 ing through this frame : it was as if the soul Ji ad been lulled to 
 sleep her mien was lifeless her voice was lifeless her gesture 
 was lifeless the impression she produced was like that of enter- 
 ing some chamber which has not been entered before for a 
 century. She consented to my request to stay with her all the 
 day a bed was prepared for me, and at sunrise the next morning 
 I was folded once more in the chilling mechanism of her em- 
 brace and dismissed on my journey to the metropolis. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Retreat of a celebrated Man, and a Visit to a great Poet. 
 
 I ARRIVED in town, and drove at once to Gerald's house ; it 
 was not difficult to find it, for in my young day it had been the 
 
 residence of the Duke of ; and wealthy as I knew was the 
 
 owner of the Devereux lands, I was somewhat startled at the 
 extent and the magnificence of his palace. To my inexpressi- 
 ble disappointment, I found that Gerald had left London a day 
 or two before my arrival on a visit to a nobleman nearly con- 
 nected with our family, and residing in the same county as that 
 in which Devereux Court was situated. Since the fire, which 
 had destroyed all of the old house but the one tower which I had 
 considered as peculiarly my own, Gerald, I heard, had always, 
 in visiting his estates, taken up his abode at the mansion of one 
 or other of his neighbors ; and to Lord 's house I now re- 
 solved to repair. My journey was delayed for a day or two, by 
 accidentally seeing at the door of the hotel, to which I drove from 
 Gerald's house, the favorite servant of Lord Bolingbroke. This 
 circumstance revived in me, at once, all my attachment to that 
 personage, and hearing he was at his country house, within a 
 few miles from town, I resolved the next morning to visit him. 
 It was not only that I contemplated with an eager, yet a melan- 
 choly interest, an interview with one whose blazing career I had 
 long watched, and whose letters (for during the years we had 
 been parted, he wrote to me often) seemed to testify the same 
 satiety of the triumphs and gauds of ambition which had brought 
 something of wisdom to myself ; it was not only that I wished 
 to commune with that Bolingbroke in retirement whom 1 had
 
 370 DEVEREUX. 
 
 known the oracle of statesmen, and the pride of courts ; nor 
 even that I loved the man, and was eager once more to embrace 
 him ; a fiercer and more active motive urged me to visit one 
 whose knowledge of all men, and application of their various 
 utilities, were so remarkable, and who, even in his present peace 
 and retirement, would not improbably be acquainted with the 
 abode of that unquiet and plotting ecclesiastic whom I now 
 panted to discover, and whom Bolingbroke had of old often 
 guided or employed. 
 
 When my carriage stopped at the statesman's door, I was in- 
 formed that Lord Bolingbroke was at his farm. Farm ! how 
 oddly did that word sound in my ear, coupled as it was with 
 the name of one so brilliant and so restless. I asked the ser- 
 vant to direct me where 1 should find him, and, following the 
 directions, I proceeded to the search alone. It was a day to- 
 wards the close of autumn, bright, soft, clear, and calm as the 
 decline of a vigorous and genial age. I walked slowly through 
 a field robbed of its golden grain, and as I entered another, I 
 saw the object of my search. He had seemingly just given 
 orders to a person in a laborer's dress, who was quitting him, 
 and with downcast eyes he was approaching towards me. I 
 noted how slow and even was the pace which, once stately, yet 
 rapid and irregular, had betrayed the haughty, but wild, char- 
 acter of his mind. He paused often, as if in thought, and I ob- 
 served that'once he stopped longer than usual, and seemed to 
 gaze wistfully on the ground. Afterwards (when I had joined 
 him) we passed that spot, and I remarked, with a secret smile, 
 that it contained one of those little mounds in which that busy 
 and herded tribe of the insect race, which have been held out 
 to man's social state at once as a mockery and a model, held 
 their populous home. There seemed a latent moral in the pause 
 and watch of the disappointed statesman by that mound, which 
 afforded a clue to the nature of his reflections. 
 
 He did not see me till I was close before him, and had called 
 him by his name, nor did he at first recognize me, for my garb 
 was foreign, and my upper lip unshaven ; and, as I said before, 
 years had strangely altered me : but when he did, he testified 
 all the cordiality I had anticipated. I linked my arm in his, 
 and we walked to and fro for hours, talking of all that had 
 passed since and before our parting, and feeling our hearts 
 warm to each other as we talked. 
 
 "The last time I saw you," said he, "how widely did our 
 hopes and objects differ ! yours from my own-r-you seemingly 
 had the vantage-ground, but it was an artificial eminence,
 
 DEVEREUX. 377 
 
 my level state, though it appeared less tempting, was more se- 
 cure. I had just been disgraced by a misguided and ungrate- 
 ful prince. 1 had already gone into a retirement, where my 
 only honors were proportioned to my fortitude in bearing con- 
 demnation and my only flatterer was the hope of finding a 
 companion and a Mentor in myself. You, my friend, parted 
 with life before you ; and you only relinquished the pursuit of 
 Fortune at one court, to meet her advances at another. Nearly 
 ten years have flown since that. time my situation is but little 
 changed I am returned, it is true, to my native soil, but not to 
 a soil more indulgent to ambition and exertion than the scene 
 of my exile. My sphere of action is still shut from me my 
 mind is still banished* You return young in years, but full of 
 successes. Have they brought you happiness, Devereux? or 
 have you yet a temper to envy my content?" . 
 
 "Alas!" said I, "who can bear too close a search beneath 
 the mask and robe ? Talk not of me now. It is ungracious 
 for the fortunate to repine and I reserve whatever may dis- 
 quiet me within for your future consolation and advice. At 
 present speak to me of yourself you are happy, then?" 
 
 "I am !" said Bolingbroke emphatically. "Life seems to me 
 to possess two treasures one glittering and precarious, the 
 other of less rich a show, but of more solid value. The one is 
 Power, the other Virtue ; and there is the main difference be- 
 tween the two Power is entrusted to us as a loan ever required 
 again, and with a terrible arrear of interest Virtue obtained 
 by us as a boon which we can only lose through our own folly, 
 when once it is acquired. In my youth I was caught by the for- 
 mer hence my errors and my misfortunes ! In my declining 
 years I have sought the latter ; hence my palliatives and my 
 consolation. But you have not seen my home and all its attrac- 
 tions," added Bolingbroke, with a smile, which reminded me 
 of his former self. " I will show them to you." And we turned 
 our steps to the house. 
 
 As we walked thither, I wondered to find how little melan- 
 choly was the change Bolingbroke had undergone. Ten years, 
 which bring man from his prime to his decay, had indeed left 
 their trace upon his stately form, and the still unrivalled beauty 
 of his noble features ; but the manner gained all that the form 
 had lost. In his days of more noisy greatness, there had been 
 something artificial and unquiet in the sparkling alternations 
 he had loved to adopt. He had been too fond of changing wis- 
 
 * I need scarcely remind the reader that Lord Bolingbroke, though he had received 9 
 full pardon, was forbidden to resume his seat in the Hoqse of Lords En.
 
 378 DEVEREUX. 
 
 dom by a quick turn into wit too fond of the affectation of 
 bordering the serious with the gay business with pleasure. If 
 this had not taken from the polish of his manner, it had dimin- 
 ished its dignity and given it the air of being assumed and in- 
 sincere. Now all was quiet, earnest, and impressive ; there was 
 tenderness even in what was melancholy : and if there lingered 
 the affectation of blending the classic character with his own, 
 the character was more noble, and the affectation more unseen. 
 But this manner was only the faint mirror of a mind which, 
 retaining much of its former mould, had been embellished 
 and exalted by adversity, and which, if it banished not its 
 former frailties, had acquired a thousand new virtues to 
 redeem them. 
 
 "You see," said my companion, pointing to the walls of the 
 hall, which we had now entered, "the subject which at present 
 occupies the greater part of my attention. I am meditating 
 how to make the hall most illustrative of its owner's pursuits. 
 You see the desire of improving, of creating, and of associating 
 the improvement and the creation with ourselves, follows us 
 banished men even to our seclusion. I think of having those 
 walls painted with the implements of husbandry, and through 
 pictures of spades and ploughshares, to express my employ- 
 ments, and testify my content in them." 
 
 "Cincinnatus is a better model than Aristippus, confess it," 
 said I, smiling. "But if the senators come hither to summon 
 you to power, will you resemble the Roman, not only in being 
 found at your plough, but in your reluctance to leave it, and 
 your eagerness to return?" 
 
 "What shall I say to you?" replied Bolingbroke. "Will 
 you play the cynic if I answer no? We should not boast of 
 despising power, when of use to others, but of being contented 
 to live without it. This is the end of my philosophy ! But 
 let me present you to one whom I value more now than I 
 valued power at any time." 
 
 As he said this, Bolingbroke threw open the door of an 
 apartment, and introduced me to a lady with whom he had found 
 that domestic happiness denied him in his first marriage. The 
 niece of Madame de Maintenon, this most charming woman 
 possessed all her aunt's wit, and far more than all her aunt's 
 beauty.* She was in weak health ; but her vivacity was ex- 
 
 * " I am not ashamed to say to you that I admire her more every hour of my life." 
 Letter from Lord Kolingfrroke to Sivi ft. 
 
 Bolingbroke loved her to the last ; and perhaps it is just to a man so celebrated for his 
 gallantries, to add that this beautiful and accomplished woman seems to have admired 
 and esteemed as much as she Ipved him, Ep,
 
 DEVEREUX. 379 
 
 treme, and her conversation just what should be the conversa- 
 tion of a woman who shines without striving for it. 
 
 The business on which I was bound only allowed me to stay 
 two days with Bolingbroke, and this I stated at first, lest he 
 should have dragged me over his farm. 
 
 " Well," said my host, after vainly endeavoring to induce 
 me to promise a longer stay, "if you can only give us two days, 
 I must write and excuse myself to a great man with whom I 
 was to dine to-day : yet, if it were not so inhospitable, I should 
 like much to carry you with me to his house ; for I own that I 
 wish you to see my companions, and to learn that if I still 
 consult the oracles, they are less for the predictions of fortune 
 than as the inspirations of the god." 
 
 "Ah!" said Lady Bolingbroke, who spoke in French, "I 
 know whom you allude to. Give him my homage, and assure 
 him, when he next visits us, we will appoint six dames du 
 palais to receive and pet him." 
 
 Upon this I insisted upon accompanying Bolingbroke to the 
 house of so fortunate a being, and he consented to my wish 
 with feigned reluctance, but evident pleasure. 
 
 "And who," said I to Lady Bolingbroke, "is the happy ob- 
 ject of so much respect?" 
 
 Lady Bolingbroke answered laughing, that nothing was so 
 pleasant as suspense, and that it would be cruel in her to de- 
 prive me of it ; and we conversed with so much zest, that it 
 was not till Bolingbroke had left the room for some moments, 
 that I observed he was not present. I took the opportunity to 
 remark that I was rejoiced to find him so happy, and with so 
 much cause for happiness. 
 
 " He is happy, though, at times, he is restless. How, chained 
 to this oar, can he be otherwise?" answered Lady Boling- 
 broke, with a sigh ; "but his friends," she added, "who most 
 enjoy his retirement, must yet lament it. His genius is not 
 wasted here, it is true; where could it be wasted? But who 
 does not feel that it is employed in too confined a sphere? 
 And yet " and I saw a tear start to her eye " I, at least, 
 ought not to repine. I should lose the best part of my happi- 
 ness if there was nothing I could console him for." 
 
 "Believe me, " said I, " I have known Bolingbroke in the 
 zenith of his success ; but never knew him so worthy of con- 
 gratulation as now!" 
 
 " Is that flattery to him or to me ? " said Lady Bolingbroke, 
 smiling archly, for her smiles were quick successors to her 
 tears.
 
 380 DEVEREUX. 
 
 " Detur digniori!" answered I ; "but you must allow that, 
 though it is a fine thing to have all that the world can give, it 
 is still better to gain something that the world cannot take 
 away ! " 
 
 " And you are also a Philosopher ! " cried Lady Bolingbroke 
 gayly. "Ah, poor me ! In my youth my portion was the 
 cloister ;* in my later years I am banished to the porch! You 
 have no conception, Monsieur Devereux, what wise faces and 
 profound maxims we have here ; especially as all who come to 
 visit my lord think it necessary to quote Tully, and talk of 
 solitude as if it were a heaven! Les pauvres bons gens ! \\\zy 
 seem a little surprised when Henry receives them smilingly 
 begs them to construe the Latin gives them good wine, and 
 sends them back to London with faces half the length they 
 were on their arrival. Mais void Monsieur le fermier phil- 
 osophe ! " 
 
 And Bolingbroke entering, I took my leave of this lively 
 and interesting lady, and entered his carriage. 
 
 As soon as we were seated, he pressed me for my reasons for 
 refusing to prolong my visit. As I thought they would be 
 more opportune after the excursion of the day was over, and 
 as, in truth, I was not eager to relate them, I begged to defer 
 the narration till our return to his house at night, and then I 
 directed the conversation into a new channel. 
 
 " My chief companion," said Bolingbroke, after describing 
 to me his course of life, "is the man you are about to visit ; 
 he has his frailties and infirmities and in saying that, I only 
 imply that he is human but he is wise, reflective, generous, 
 and affectionate ; add these qualities to a dazzling wit, and a 
 genius deep, if not sublime, and what wonder that we forget 
 something of vanity and something of fretfulness effects j 
 rather of the frame than of the mind ; the wonder only is that, 
 with a body the victim to every disease, crippled and imbecile 
 from the cradle, his frailties should not be more numerous, and 
 his care, his thoughts, and attentions not wholly limited to his 
 own complaints for the sickly are almost of necessity selfish 
 and that mind must have a vast share of benevolence which 
 can always retain the softness of charity and love for others, 
 when pain and disease constitute the morbid links that per- 
 petually bind it to self. If this great character is my chief 
 companion, my chief correspondent is not less distinguished ; 
 in a word, no longer to keep you in suspense, Pope is my com- 
 panion, and Swift my correspondent." 
 
 * She was brought up at St. Cyr. ED.
 
 DEVEREUX. 381 
 
 "You are fortunate but so also are they. Your letter in- 
 formed me of Swift's honorable exile in Ireland how does he 
 bear it?" 
 
 "Too feelingly his disappointments turn his blood to acid. 
 He said, characteristically enough, in one of his letters, that in 
 fishing once when he was a little boy, he felt a great fish at the 
 end of his line, which he drew up almost to the ground, but it 
 dropt in, and the disappointment, he adds, vexes him to this 
 day, and he believes it to be the type of all his future dis- 
 appointments :* it is wonderful how reluctantly a very active 
 mind sinks into rest." 
 
 "Yet why should retirement be rest? Do you recollect in 
 the first conversation we ever had together, we talked of 
 Cowley ? Do you recollect how justly, and even sublimely, he 
 has said, 'Cogitation is that which distinguishes the solitude of 
 a God from that of a wild beast ? ' ' 
 
 " It is finely said," answered Bolingbroke, " but Swift was 
 born not for .cogitation, but action -for turbulent times, not 
 for calm. He ceases to be great directly he is still ; and his 
 bitterness at every vexation is so great that I have often 
 thought, in listening to him, of the Abbe de Cyran, who,attempt- 
 ing to throw nutshells out of the bars of his window, and con- 
 stantly failing in the attempt, exclaimed in a paroxysm of rage, 
 'Thus does Providence delight in frustrating my designs ! ' ' 
 
 * In this letter Swift adds, " I should be ashamed to say this if you (Lord Bolingbroke) 
 had not a spirit fitter to bear your own misfortunes than I have to think oi them "; and 
 this is true. Nothing can be more striking, or more honorable to Lord Bolingbroke, than 
 the contrast between Swift's letters and that nobleman's upon the subject of their mutual 
 disappointments. I especially note the contrast, because it has been so grievously the cant 
 of Lord Bolingbroke's decriers to represent his affection for retirement as hollow, and his 
 resignation in adversity as a boast rather than a fact. Now I will challenge any one thor- 
 oughly and dispassionately to examine what is left to us of the life of this great man, and 
 nfter having done so, to select from all modern history an example of one who, in the prims 
 if life and height of ambition, ever passed from a very active and exciting career into 
 
 in proportion as- it is the less passive that 
 hibit exertions for others ; that it is only 
 
 ment is only a morbid selfishness if it pro 
 
 in covei or commena. j. ne very pnnosopny wnicn maKes sucn a man seeK tne quiet, 
 nakes him eschew the inutility of the hermitage. Very little praiseworthy to me would 
 lave seemed Lord Bolingbroke among his haymakers and ploughmen, if among haymakers 
 md ploughmen he had looked with an indifferent eye upon a profligate minister and a venal
 
 382 DEVEREUX. 
 
 "But you are fallen from a far greater height of hope than 
 Swift could ever have attained you bear this change well, but 
 not, I hope, without a struggle." 
 
 "You are right not without a struggle; while corruption 
 thrives, I will not be silent ; while bad men govern, I will not 
 be still." 
 
 In conversation of this sort passed the time, till we arrived 
 at Pope's villa. 
 
 We found the poet in his study indued, as some of his 
 pictures represent him, in a long gown and a velvet cap. He 
 received Bolingbroke with great tenderness, and being, as he 
 said, in robuster health than he had enjoyed for months, he 
 insisted on carrying us to his grotto. I know nothing more 
 common to poets than a pride in what belongs to their houses, 
 and perhaps, to a man not ill-natured, there are few things 
 more pleasant than indulging the little weaknesses of those we 
 admire. We sat down in a small temple made entirely of shells; 
 and whether it was that the Creative Genius gave an undue 
 charm to the place, I know not : but as the murmur of a rill, 
 glassy as the Blandusian fountain, was caught, and re-given 
 from side to side by a perpetual echo, and through an arcade 
 of trees, whose leaves, ever and anon, fell startlingly to the 
 ground beneath the light touch of the autumn air, you saw the 
 sails on the river pass and vanish, like the cares which breathe 
 over the smooth glass of wisdom, but may not linger to dim it, 
 it was not difficult to invest the place, humble as it was, with a 
 classic interest, or to recall the loved retreats of the Roman 
 bards, without smiling too fastidiously at the" contrast. 
 
 " Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph, that liv'st unseen, 
 
 Within thy airy shell, 
 By slow Meander's margin green. 
 Or by the violet-embroidered vale, 
 Where the lovelorn nightingale 
 Nightly to thee her sad song mourneth well ; 
 
 Sweet Echo, dost thou shun those haunts of yore, 
 And in the dim caves of a northern shore 
 Delight to dwell ! " 
 
 *' Let the compliment to you, Pope," said Bolingbroce, 
 "atone for the profanation of weaving three wretched lines of 
 mine with those most musical notes of Milton." 
 
 "Ah," said Pope, "would that you could give me a fitting 
 inscription for my fount and grotto ! The only one I re- 
 member is hackneyed, and yet it has spoilt me, I fear, for all 
 others :
 
 DEVEREUX. 38? 
 
 " Hujus Nympha loci, sacri custodia fontis 
 Dormio dum blandse sentio murmur aquae ; 
 Parce meum, quisquis tanges cava marmora, somnurn 
 Rumpere ; sive bibas, sive lavere, lace."* 
 
 "We cannot hope to match it," said Bolingbroke, "though 
 you know I value myself on these things. But tell me your 
 news of Gay is he growing wiser ? " 
 
 " Not a whit ; he is forever a dupe to the spes credula ; al- 
 ways talking of buying an annuity that he may be independent, 
 and always spending as fast as he earns, that he may appear 
 munificent." 
 
 " Poor Gay ! but he is a common example of the improv- 
 idence of his tribe, while you are an exception. Yet mark, 
 Devereux, the inconsistency of Pope's thrift and carefulness : 
 he sends a parcel of fruit to some ladies with this note, 'Take 
 care of the papers that wrap the apples, and return them 
 safely ; they are the only copies I have of one part of the 
 Iliad.' Thus, you see, our economist saves his paper, and 
 hazards his epic ! " 
 
 Pope, who is always flattered by an allusion to his negligence 
 of fame, smiled slightly and answered, "What man, alas, ever 
 profits by the lessons of his friends? How many exact rules 
 has our good Dean of St. Patrick laid down for both of us 
 how angrily still does he chide us for our want of prudence 
 and our love of good living. I intend, in answer to his charges 
 on the latter score, though I vouch, as I well may, for our 
 temperance, to give him the reply of the sage to the foolish 
 courtier " 
 
 " What was that?" asked Bolingbroke. 
 
 " Why, the courtier saw the sage picking out the best dishes 
 at table. 'How,' said he, with a sneer, 'are sages such epi- 
 cures?" 'Do you think, sir,' replied the wise man, reaching 
 over the table to help himself, 'do you think, sir, that the 
 Creator made the good things of this world only for fools?" 
 
 " How the dean will pish and pull his wig when he reads 
 your illustration," said Bolingbroke, laughing. " We shall 
 never agree in our reasonings on that part of philosophy. 
 Swift loves to go out of his way to find privation or distress, 
 
 * Thus very inadequately translated by Pope (see his Letter to Edward Blount, Esq w 
 
 descriptive of his grotto) : 
 
 " Nymph of the grot, these sacred springs I keep, 
 And to the murmur of these waters sleep : 
 Ah, spare my slumbers ; gently tread the cave, 
 And drink in silence, or in silence lave." 
 
 And drink in silence, or in silence lave." 
 
 It is, however, quite impossible to convey to an unlearned reader the exquisite 
 Spirit-like beauty of the Latin verses. ED. 
 
 and
 
 384 PEVEREUX. 
 
 and has no notion of epicurean wisdom ; for my part, I think 
 the use of knowledge is to make us happier. I would compare 
 the mind to the beautiful statue of Love by Praxiteles when 
 its eyes were bandaged the countenance seemed grave and sad, 
 but the moment you removed the bandage, the most serene 
 and enchanting smile diffused itself over the whole face." 
 
 So passed the morning till the hour of dinner, and this 
 repast was served with an elegance and luxury which the sons 
 of Apollo seldom command.* As the evening closed our con- 
 versation fell upon friendship, and the increasing disposition 
 towards it, which comes with increasing years. " Whilst my 
 mind," said Bolingbroke, "shrinks inore and more from the 
 world, and feels in its independence less yearning to external 
 objects, the ideas of friendship return oftener, they busy me, 
 they warm me more. Is it that we grow more tender as the 
 moment of our great separation approaches? or is it that they 
 who are to live together in another state (for friendship exists 
 not but for the good) begin to feel more strongly that divine 
 sympathy which is to be the great bond of their future 
 society?" f 
 
 While Bolingbroke was thus speaking, and Pope listened 
 with all the love and reverence which he evidently bore to his 
 friend stamped upon his worn but expressive countenance, I 
 inly said, " Surely the love between minds like these should 
 live and last without the changes that ordinary affections feel ! 
 Who would not mourn for the strength of all human ties, if 
 hereafter these are broken, and asperity succeed to friendship, 
 or aversion to esteem ? /, a wanderer, without heir to my 
 memory and wealth, shall pass away and my hasty and un- 
 mellowed fame will moulder with my clay ; but will the names 
 of those whom I now behold ever fall languidly on the ears of 
 a future race, and will there not forever be some sympathy 
 with their friendship, softer and warmer than admiration for 
 their fame ?" 
 
 We left our celebrated host about two hours before midnight, 
 and returned to Dawley. 
 
 On our road thither I questioned Bolingbroke respecting 
 Montreuil, and I found that, as I had surmised, he was able to 
 give me some information of that arch-schemer. Gerald's 
 money and hereditary influence had procured, tacit connivance 
 
 * Pope seems to have been rather capricious in this respect ; but in general he must be 
 considered open to the sarcasm of displaying the bounteous host to those who did not want 
 a dinner, and the niggard to those who did. ED. 
 
 t This beautiful sentiment is to be found, with very slight alteration, in a letter from 
 Bolingbroke to Swift. ED.
 
 DEVEREUX. 385 
 
 at the Jesuit's residence in England, and Montreuil had for 
 some years led a quiet and unoffending life in close retirement. 
 " Lately, however," said Bolingbroke, " I have learned that the 
 old spirit has revived, and I accidentally heard, three days ago, 
 when conversing with one well informed on state matters, that 
 this most pure administration have discovered some plot or 
 plots with which Montreuil is connected ; I believe he will be 
 apprehended in a few days." 
 
 "And where lurks he?" 
 
 "He was, I heard, last seen in the neighborhood of your 
 brother's property at Devereux Court, and I imagine it probable 
 that he is still in that neighborhood." 
 
 This intelligence made me resolve to leave Dawley even 
 earlier than I had intended, and I signified to Lord Boling- 
 broke my intention of quitting him by sunrise the next 
 morning. He endeavored in vain to combat my resolution. 
 I was too fearful lest Montreuil, hearing of his danger from the 
 state, might baffle my vengeance by seeking some impenetrable 
 asylum, to wish to subject my meeting with him, and with 
 Gerald, whose co-operation I desired, to any unnecessary 
 delay. I took leave of my host therefore that night, and 
 ordered my carriage to be in readiness by the first dawn of 
 morning. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Plot approaches its Denouement. 
 
 ' ALTHOUGH the details of my last chapter have somewhat 
 retarded the progress of that denouement with which this volume 
 is destined to close, yet I do not think the destined reader will 
 regret lingering over a scene in which, after years of restless 
 enterprise and exile, he beholds the asylum which fortune had 
 prepared for the most extraordinary character with which I 
 have adorned these pages. 
 
 It was before daybreak that I commenced my journey. The 
 shutters of the house were as yet closed ; the gray mists rising 
 slowly from the earth, and the cattle couched beneath the trees, 
 the cold, but breezeless freshness of the morning, the silence of 
 the unwakened birds, all gave an inexpressible stillness and 
 quiet to the scene. The horses slowly ascended a little emi- 
 nence, and I looked from the window of the carriage on the 
 peaceful retreat I had left. I sighed as I did so, and a sick 
 sensation, coupled with the thought of Isora, came chill upon
 
 386 DEVEREUX. 
 
 my heart. No man happily placed in this social world can 
 guess the feelings of envy with which a wanderer like me, with- 
 out tie or home, and for whom the roving eagerness of youth is 
 over, surveys those sheltered spots in which the breast garners 
 up all domestic bonds, its household and holiest delights; the 
 companioned hearth, the smile of infancy, and, dearer than all, 
 the eye that glasses our purest, our tenderest, our most secret 
 thoughts; these, oh, none who enjoy them know how they for 
 whom they are not have pined and mourned for them ! 
 
 I had not travelled many hours, when, upon the loneliest 
 part of the road, my carriage, which had borne me without an 
 accident from Rome to London, broke down. The postillions 
 said there was a small inn about a mile from the spot ; thither 
 I repaired : a blacksmith was sent for, and I found the ac* 
 cident to the carriage would require several hours to repair. 
 No solitary chaise did the inn afford; but the landlord, who 
 was a freeholder and a huntsman, boasted one valuable and 
 swift horse, which he declared was fit for an emperor or a high- 
 wayman. I was too impatient of delay not to grasp at this in- 
 telligence. I gave mine host whatever he demanded for the 
 loan of his steed, transferred my pistols to an immense pair of 
 holsters, which adorned a high demipique saddle, wherewith 
 he obliged me, and, within an hour from the date of the acci- 
 cident, recommenced my journey. 
 
 The evening closed, as I became aware of the presence of a 
 fellow traveller. He was, like myself, on horseback. He wore 
 a short, dark gray cloak, a long wig of raven hue, and a large 
 hat, which, napping over his face, conspired, with the increasing 
 darkness, to allow me a very imperfect survey of his features. 
 Twice or thrice he had passed me, and always with some salu- 
 tation, indicative of a desire for further acquaintance; but my 
 mood is not naturally too much inclined to miscellaneous 
 society, and I was at that time peculiarly covetous of my own 
 companionship. I had, therefore, given but a brief answer to 
 the horseman's courtesy, and had ridden away from him with 
 a very unceremonious abruptness. At length, when he had come 
 up to me for the fourth time, and for the fourth time had ac- 
 costed me, my ear caught something in the tones of his voice 
 which did not seem to me wholly unfamiliar. I regarded him 
 with more attention than I had as yet done, and replied to him 
 more civilly and at length. Apparently encouraged by this 
 relaxation from my reserve, the man speedily resumed : 
 
 "Your horse, sir," said he, "is a fine animal, but he seems 
 jaded: you have ridden far to-day, I'll venture to guess."
 
 DEVEREUX. 387 
 
 " I have, sir; but the town where I shall pass the night is 
 not above four miles distant, I believe." 
 
 "Hum ha ! you sleep at D , then ? " said the horseman 
 
 inquisitively. 
 
 A suspicion came across me we were then entering a very 
 lonely road, one notoriously infested with highwaymen. My 
 fellow equestrian's company might have some sinister meaning 
 in it. I looked to my holsters, and leisurely taking out one of 
 my pistols, saw to its priming, and returned it to its depository. 
 The horseman noted the motion, and he moved his horse rather 
 uneasily, and I thought timidly, to the other side of the road. 
 
 "You travel well armed, sir," said he, *er a pause. 
 
 " It is a necessary precaution, sir," answered I composedly, 
 " in a road one is not familiar with, and with companions one 
 has never had the happiness to meet before." 
 
 " Ahem ! ahem ! Parbleu, Monsieur le Comte, you allude 
 to me; but I warrant this is not the first time we have met." 
 
 " Ha ! " said I, riding closer to my fellow-traveller, " you 
 know me then and we have met before. I thought I recognized 
 your voice, but I cannot remember when or where I last 
 heard it." 
 
 " Oh, Count, I believe it was only by accident that we com- 
 menced acquaintanceship, and only by accident, you see, do 
 we now resume it. But I perceive that I intrude on your soli- 
 tude. Farewell, Count, and a pleasant night at your inn." 
 
 " Not so fast, sir," said I, laying firm hand on my companion's 
 shoulder,*' I know you now, and I thank Providence that I 
 have found you. Marie Oswald, it is not lightly that I will 
 part with you ! " 
 
 " With all my heart, sir, with all my heart. But morbleu, 
 Monsieur le Comie, do take your hand from my shoulder I am 
 a nervous man, and your pistols are loaded and perhaps you 
 are choleric and hasty. I assure you I am far from wishing to 
 part with you abruptly, for I have watched you for the last 
 two days, in order to enjoy the honor of this interview." 
 
 "Indeed ! your wish will save both of us a world of trouble. 
 I believe you may serve me effectually if so, you will find me 
 more desirous and more able than ever to show my gratitude." 
 
 " Sir, you are too good," quoth Mr. Oswald, with an air far 
 more respectful than he had yet shown me. " Let us make to 
 your inn, and there I shall be most happy to receive your com- 
 mands." So saying, Marie pushed on his horse, and I urged 
 my own to the same expedition. 
 
 " But tell me," said I, as we rode on, " why you have wished
 
 388 DEVEREUX. 
 
 to meet me? me whom you so cruelly deserted and for- 
 sook ? " 
 
 " Qh,parblcu spare me there ! it was not I who deserted 
 you I was compelled to fly death murder on one side; 
 safety, money, and a snug place in Italy, as a lay-brother of the 
 Institute, on the other ! What could I do ! You were ill in 
 bed not likely to recover not able to protect me from my 
 present peril in a state that in all probability never would re- 
 quire my services for the future. Oh, Monsieur le Comte, it 
 was not desertion that is a cruel word it was self-preserva- 
 tion, and common prudence." 
 
 "Well," said I, complaisantly, "you apply words better than 
 I applied them. And how long have you been returned to 
 England ?" 
 
 " Some few weeks, Count, not more. I was in London when 
 you arrived I heard of that event I immediately repaired to 
 your hotel you were gone to my Lord Bolingbroke's I fol- 
 lowed you thither you had left Dawley when I arrived there 
 I learnt your route and followed you. Parbleu and morbleu, I 
 find you, and you take me for a highwayman ! " 
 
 " Pardon my mistake : the clearest-sighted men are subject 
 to commit such errors, and the most innocent to suffer by them. 
 So Montreuil persuaded you to leave England did he also per- 
 suade you to return ? " 
 
 " No I was charged by the Institute with messages to him 
 and others. But we are near the town, Count, let us defer our 
 conversation till then." 
 
 We entered D , put up our horses, called for an apart- 
 ment to which summons Oswald added another for wine 
 and then the virtuous Marie commenced his explanations. I 
 was deeply anxious to ascertain whether Gerald had ever been 
 made acquainted with the fraud by which he had obtained 
 possession of the estates of Devereux ; and I found that, from 
 Desmarais, Oswald had learned all that had occurred to Gerald 
 since Marie had left England. From Oswald's prolix com- 
 munication, I ascertained that Gerald was, during the whole 
 of the interval between my uncle's death and my departure 
 from England, utterly unacquainted with the fraud of the will. 
 He readily believed that my uncle had found good reason for 
 altering his intentions with respect to me; and my law pro- 
 ceedings, and violent conduct towards himself, only excited his 
 indignation, not aroused his suspicions. During this time, he 
 lived entirely in the country, indulging the rural hospitality 
 and the rustic sports which he especially affected, and secretly,
 
 DEVEREUX. 389 
 
 but deeply, involved with Montreuil in political intrigues. All 
 this time the Abbe made no farther use of him than to borrow 
 whatever sums he required for his purposes. Isora's death, and 
 the confused story of the document given me by Oswald, Mon- 
 treuil had interpreted to Gerald according to the interpretation 
 of the world ; viz., he had thrown the suspicion upon Oswald, 
 as a common villain, who had taken advantage of my credulity 
 about the will introduced himself into the house on that pre- 
 tence attempted the robbery of the most valuable articles 
 therein which, indeed, he had succeeded in abstracting and 
 who, on my awaking and contesting with him and his accom- 
 plice, had, in self-defence, inflicted the wounds which had 
 ended in my delirium, and Isora's death. This part of my tale 
 Montreuil never contradicted, and Gerald believed it to the 
 present day. The affair of 1715 occurred; the government, 
 aware of Gerald's practices, had anticipated his design of join- 
 ing the rebels he was imprisoned no act of overt guilt on his 
 part was proved, or at least brought forward and the govern- 
 ment not being willing, perhaps, to proceed to violent measures 
 against a very young man, and the head of a very powerful 
 house, connected with more than thirty branches of the English 
 hereditary nobility, he received his acquittal just before Sir 
 William Wyndham, and some other suspected tories, received 
 their own. 
 
 Prior to the breaking out of that rebellion, and on the eve of 
 Montreuil's departure for Scotland, the priest summoned Des- 
 marais, whom, it will be remembered, I had previously dis- 
 missed, and whom Montreuil had since employed in various 
 errands, and informed him that he had obtained, for his services, 
 the same post under Gerald which the Fatalist had filled under 
 me. Soon after the failure of the rebellion, Devereux Court 
 was destroyed by accidental fire ; and Montreuil, who had 
 come over in disguise, in order to renew his attacks on my 
 brother's coffers (attacks to which Gerald yielded very sullenly, 
 and with many assurances that he would no more incur the 
 danger of political and seditious projects), now advised Gerald 
 to go up to London, and, in order to avoid the suspicion of the 
 government, to mix freely in the gayeties of the court. Gerald 
 readily consented ; for, though internally convinced that the 
 charms of the metropolis were not equal to those of the country, 
 yet he liked change, and Devereux Court being destroyed, he 
 shuddered a little at the idea of rebuilding so enormous a pile. 
 Before Gerald left the old tower (my tower), which was alone 
 spared by the flames, and at which he had resided, though
 
 390 DEVEREUX. 
 
 without his household, rather than quit a place where there was 
 such "excellent shooting," Montreuil said to Desmarais, "This 
 ungrateful seigneur de village already shows himself the niggard ; 
 he must know what we know that is our only sure hold of him 
 but he must not know it yet," and he proceeded to observe 
 that it was for the hot-beds of courtly luxury to mellow and 
 hasten an opportunity for the disclosure. He instructed Des- 
 marais to see that Gerald (whom even a valet, at least one so 
 artful as Desmarais, might easily influence) partook to excess 
 of every pleasure, at least of every pleasure which a gentleman 
 might, without derogation to his dignity, enjoy. Gerald went 
 to town, and very soon became all that Montreuil desired. 
 
 Montreuil came again to England ; his great project, Al- 
 beroni's project, had failed. Banished France and Spain, and 
 excluded Italy, he was desirous of obtaining an asylum in Eng- 
 land, until he could negotiate a return to Paris. For the first 
 of these purposes (the asylum) interest was requisite ; for the 
 latter (the negotiation) money was desirable. He came to seek 
 both necessaries in Gerald Devereux. Gerald had already ar- 
 rived at that prosperous state when money is not lightly given 
 away. A dispute arose ; and Montreuil raised the veil, and 
 showed the heir on what terms his estates were held. 
 
 Rightly Montreuil had read the human heart. So long as 
 Gerald lived in the country, and tasted not the full enjoyments 
 of his great wealth, it would have been highly perilous to have 
 made this disclosure ; for, though Gerald had no great love for 
 me, and was bold enough to run any danger, yet he was neither 
 a Desmarais nor a Montreuil. He was that most capricious 
 thing, a man of honor ; and at that day, he would instantly 
 have given up the estate to me, and Montreuil and the philoso- 
 pher to the hangman. But, after two or three years of every 
 luxury that wealth could purchase after living in those circles, 
 too, where wealth is the highest possible merit, and public 
 opinion, therefore, only honors the rich, fortune became far more 
 valuable, and the conscience far less nice. Living at Devereux 
 Court, Gerald had only ^"30,000 a year ; living in London, he 
 had all that ^30,000 a year can purchase ; a very great differ- 
 ence this indeed ! Honor is a fine bulwark against a small 
 force ; but, unbacked by other principle, it is seldom well 
 manned enough to resist a large one. When, therefore, Mon- 
 treuil showed Gerald that he could lose his estate in an instant 
 that the world would never give him credit for innocence, when 
 guilt would have conferred on him such advantages that he 
 would therefore part with all those et ccetera which, now in the
 
 DEVEfcEUX. 391 
 
 very prime of life, made his whole idea of human enjoyments 
 that he would no longer be the rich, the powerful, the honored, 
 the magnificent, the envied, the idolized lord of thousands, but 
 would sink at once into a younger brother, dependent on the 
 man he most hated for his very subsistence since his debts 
 would greatly exceed his portion and an object through life 
 of contemptuous pity, or of covert suspicion that all this change 
 could happen at a word of Montreuil's, what wonder that he 
 should be staggered, should hesitate and yield ? Montreuil 
 obtained, then, whatever sums he required ; and, through 
 Gerald's influence, pecuniary and political, procured from the 
 minister a tacit permission for him to remain in England, under 
 an assumed name, and in close retirement. Since then, Mon- 
 treuil (though secretly involved in treasonable practices) had 
 appeared to busy himself solely in negotiating a pardon at 
 Paris. Gerald had lived the life of a man who, if he has parted 
 with peace of conscience, will make the best of the bargain, by 
 procuring every kind of pleasure in exchange ; and le petit Jean 
 Desmarais, useful to both priest and spendthrift, had passed 
 his time very agreeably laughing at his employers, studying 
 philosophy, and filling his pockets ; for I need scarcely add 
 that Gerald forgave him without much difficulty for his share 
 in the forgery. A man, as Oswald shrewdly observed, is sel- 
 dom inexorable to those crimes by which he has profited. " And 
 where lurks Montreuil now ? " I asked ; " in the neighborhood 
 of Devereux Court ? " 
 
 Oswald looked at me with some surprise. " How learned 
 you that, sir? It is true. He lives quietly and privately in the 
 vicinity. The woods around the house, the caves in the beach, 
 and the little isle opposite the castle afforded him in turn an 
 asylum ; and the convenience with which correspondence with 
 France can be there carried on makes the scene of his retire- 
 ment peculiarly adapted to his purposes." 
 
 I now began to question Oswald respecting himself ; for I 
 was not warmly inclined to place implicit trust in the services 
 of a man who had before shown himself at once mercenary 
 and timid. There was little cant or disguise about that gentle- 
 man ; he made few pretences to virtues which he did not 
 possess ; and he seemed now, both by wine and familiarity, 
 peculiarly disposed to be frank. It was he who in Italy 
 (among various other and less private commissions) had 
 been appointed by Montreuil to watch over Aubrey ; on my 
 brother's death, he had hastened to England, not only to ap- 
 prise Montreuil of that event, but charged with some especial
 
 39* DEVEREUX. 
 
 orders to him from certain members of the Institute. He had 
 found Montreuil busy, restless, intriguing, even in seclusion, 
 and cheered by a recent promise from Fleuri himself that he 
 should speedily obtain pardon and recall. It was at this part 
 of Oswald's story easy to perceive the causes of his renewed 
 confidence in me. Montreuil, engaged in new plans and schemes, 
 at once complicated and vast, paid but slight attention to the 
 wrecks of his past projects. Aubrey dead myself abroad 
 Gerald at his command, he perceived, in our house, no cause 
 for caution or alarm. This apparently rendered him less care- 
 ful of retaining the venal services of Oswald, than his knowl- 
 edge of character should have made him ; and when that 
 gentleman, then in London, accidentally heard of my sudden 
 arrival in this country, he at once perceived how much more 
 to his interest it would be to serve me than to maintain an ill- 
 remunerated fidelity to Montreuil. In fact, as I have since 
 learned, the priest's discretion was less to blame than I then 
 imagined ; for Oswald was of a remarkably imprudent, profli- 
 gate, and spendthrift turn, and his demands for money were 
 considerably greater than the value of his services ; or perhaps, 
 as Montreuil thought, when Aubrey no longer lived, than the 
 consequences of his silence. When, therefore, I spoke seri- 
 ously to my new ally of my desire of wreaking ultimate justice 
 on the crimes of Montreuil, I found that his zeal was far from 
 being chilled by my determination nay, the very cowardice of 
 the man made him ferocious ; and the moment he resolved to 
 betray Montreuil, his fears of the priest's vengeance made him 
 eager to destroy where he betrayed. I am not addicted to un- 
 necessary procrastination. Of the unexpected evidence I had 
 found I was most eager to avail myself. I saw at once how 
 considerably Oswald's testimony would lessen any difficulty I 
 might have in an explanation with Gerald, as well as in bring- 
 ing Montreuil to justice ; and the former measure seemed to 
 me necessary to ensure or at least expedite the latter. I 
 proposed, therefore, to Oswald that he should immediately ac- 
 company me to the house in which Gerald was then a visitor ; 
 the honest Marie, conditioning only for another bottle, which 
 he termed a travelling comforter, readily acceded to my wish. 
 I immediately procured a chaise and horses, and in less than 
 two hours from the time we entered the inn, we were on the 
 road to Gerald. What an impulse to the wheel of destiny had 
 the event of that one day given ! 
 
 At another time I might have gleaned amusement from the 
 shrewd roguery of my companion, but he found me then but a
 
 DEVEfeEUX. 393 
 
 dull listener. I served him in truth as men of his stamp are 
 ordinarily served ; so soon as I had extracted from him what- 
 ever was meet for present use, I favored him with little farther 
 attention. He had exhausted all the communications it was 
 necessary for me to know; so, in the midst of a long story 
 about Italy, Jesuits, and the wisdom of Marie Oswald, I affected 
 to fall asleep ; my companion soon followed my example in 
 earnest, and left me to meditate undisturbed over all that I 
 had heard, and over the schemes now the most promising of 
 success. I soon taught myself to look with a lenient eye on 
 Gerald's after-connivance in Montreuil's forgery ; and I felt 
 that I owed to my surviving brother so large an arrear of af- 
 fection for the long injustice I had rendered him, that I was 
 almost pleased to find something set upon the opposite score. 
 All men, perhaps, would rather forgive than be forgiven. I 
 resolved, therefore, to affect ignorance of Gerald's knowledge 
 of the forgery, and even should he confess it, to exert all my 
 art to steal from the confession its shame. From this train of 
 reflection my mind soon directed itself to one far fiercer and 
 more intense ; and I felt my heart pause, as if congealing into 
 marble, when I thought of Montreuil and anticipated justice. 
 
 It was nearly noon the following day when we arrived at 
 
 Lord 's house. We found that Gerald had left it the 
 
 day before for the enjoyment of the field-sports at Devereux 
 Court, and thither we instantly proceeded. 
 
 It has often seemed to me that if there be, as certain ancient 
 philosophers fabled, one certain figure pervading all nature, 
 human and universal, it is the circle. Round in one vast mo- 
 notony, one eternal gyration, roll the orbs of space. Thus 
 moves the spirit of creative life, kindling, progressing, ma- 
 turing, decaying, perishing, reviving and rolling again, and 
 so on forever through the same course ; and thus even would 
 seem to revolve the mysterious mechanism of human events 
 and actions. Age, ere it returns to "the second childishness, 
 the mere oblivion " from which it passes to the grave, returns 
 also to the memories and the thoughts of youth ; its buried loves 
 arise its past friendships rekindle. The wheels of the tired 
 machine are past the meridian, and the arch through which 
 th'ey now decline has a correspondent likeness to the opposing 
 segment through which they had borne upward in eager- 
 ness and triumph. Thus it is, too, that we bear within us an 
 irresistible attraction to our earliest home. Thus it is that we 
 say, " It matters not where our mid-course is run, but we will 
 die in the place where we were born ; in the point of space.
 
 394 DEVEREtiX. 
 
 whence began the circle, there also shall it end!" This is the 
 grand orbit through which Mortality passes only once ; but 
 the same figure may pervade all through which it moves on its 
 journey to the grave. * Thus one peculiar day of the round 
 year has been to some an era, always coloring life with an 
 event. Thus to others some peculiar place has been the theatre 
 of strange action, influencing all existence whenever in the re- 
 currence of destiny that place has been revisited. Thus was 
 it said by an arch-sorcerer of old, whose labors yet exist, 
 though perhaps at the moment I write there are not three 
 living beings who know of their existence that there breathes 
 not that man who would not find, did he minutely investigate 
 the events of life, that in some fixed and distinct spot, or hour, 
 or person, there lived, though shrouded and obscure, the per- 
 vading demon of his fate ; and- whenever in their several paths 
 the two circles of being touched, that moment made, the un- 
 noticed epoch of coming prosperity or evil. I remember well 
 that this bewildering, yet not unsolemn reflection, or rather 
 fancy, was in my mind, as after the absence of many years I saw 
 myself hastening to the home of my boyhood, and cherishing 
 the fiery hope of there avenging the doom of that love which I 
 had there conceived. Deeply and in silence did I brood over 
 the dark shapes which my thoughts engendered ; and I woke 
 not from my reverie till, as the gray of the evening closed around 
 us, we entered the domains of Devereux Court. The road 
 was rough and stony, and the horses moved slowly on. How 
 familiar was everything before me ! the old pollards which lay 
 scattered in dense groups on either side, and which had lived 
 on from heir to heir, secure in the little temptation they afforded 
 to cupidity, seemed to greet me with a silent but intelligible 
 welcome. Their leaves fell around us in the autumn air, and 
 the branches as they waved towards me seemed to say, " Thou 
 art returned, and thy change is like our own ; the green leaves 
 of thy heart have fallen from thee one by one like usthou sur- 
 vivest, but thou art desolate !" The hoarse cry of the rooks 
 gathering to their rest came fraught with the music of young 
 associations on my ear. Many a time in the laughing spring 
 had I lain in these groves watching, in the young brood of those 
 citizens of air, a mark for my childish skill and careless disre- 
 
 * I have not assumed the editorial license to omit these incoherent observations, notwith- 
 standing their close approximation \.ojj.rgon, not only because they seem to occur with a 
 sort of dramatic propriety in the winding up of the count's narrative. the reappearance of 
 Oswald the return to Devereux Court, and the scene that happens there ; but also because 
 they appear to be strikingly characteristic of the vague aspirings, the restless and half- 
 analyzed longings after something " beyond the visible diurnal sphere," which are so inti- 
 mately blended with the worldlier traits of the Count's peculiar organization of mind, .!>,
 
 DEVEREUX. 395 
 
 gard of life. We acquire mercy as we acquire thought. I would 
 not now have harmed one of those sable creatures for a king's 
 ransom ! 
 
 As we cleared the more wooded belt of the park, and entered 
 the smooth space, on which the trees stood alone and at rarer 
 intervals, while the red clouds, still tinged with the hues of the 
 departed sun, hovered on the far and upland landscape like 
 Hope flushing over Futurity a mellowed, yet rapid murmur, 
 distinct from the more distant dashing of the sea, broke abrupt- 
 ly upon my ear. It was the voice of the brook whose banks 
 had been the dearest haunt of my childhood ; and now, as it 
 burst thus suddenly upon me, I longed to be alone, that I might 
 have bowed down my head and wept as if it had been the wel- 
 come of a living thing ! At once, and as by a word, the hard- 
 ened lava, the congealed stream of the soul's Etna, was up- 
 lifted from my memory, and the bowers and palaces of old, the 
 world of a gone day, lay before me ! With how wild an enthu' 
 siasm had 1 apostrophized that stream on the day in which I 
 first resolved to leave its tranquil regions and fragrant margin 
 for the tempest and tumult of the world. On that same eve, 
 too, had Aubrey and I taken sweet counsel together on that 
 same eve had we sworn to protect, to love, and to cherish one 
 another ! AND NOW ! I saw the very mound on which we had 
 sat a solitary deer made it his couch, and as the carriage ap- 
 proached, the deer rose, and I then saw that he had been 
 wounded, perhaps in some contest with his tribe, and that he 
 could scarcely stir from the spot. I turned my face away, and 
 the remains of my ancestral house rose gradually in view. That 
 house was indeed changed ; a wide and black heap of ruins 
 spread around ; the vast hall, with its oaken rafters and huge 
 hearth, was no more I missed t/iat, and I cared not for the rest. 
 The long galleries, the superb chambers, the scenes of revel- 
 ry or of pomp, were like the court companions who amuse, yet 
 attach us not; but the hall the old hall the old hospitable 
 hall had been as a friend in all seasons, and to all comers, and 
 its mirth had been as open to all as the heart of its last owner ! 
 My eyes wandered from the place where it had been, and the 
 tall, lone, gray tower, consecrated to my ill-fated namesake, and 
 in which my own apartments had been situated, rose, like the 
 last of a warrior band, stern, gaunt, and solitary, over the ruins 
 around. 
 
 The carriage now passed more rapidly over the neglected 
 road, and wound where the ruins, cleared on either side, per- 
 mitted access to the tower. In two minutes more I was in the
 
 396 DEVEREUX. 
 
 same chamber with my only surviving brother. Oh, why why 
 can I not dwell upon that scene that embrace, that reconcilia- 
 tion ? alas ! the wound is not yet scarred over. 
 
 I found Gerald, at first, haughty and sullen ; he expected 
 my reproaches and defiance against them he was hardened ; 
 he was not prepared for my prayers for our future friendship, 
 and my grief for our past enmity, and he melted at once ! 
 
 But let me hasten over this. I had well-nigh forgot that at 
 the close of my history I should find one remembrance so en- 
 dearing, and one pang so keen. Rapidly I sketched to Gerald 
 the ill fate of Aubrey ; but lingeringly did I dwell upon Mon- 
 treuil's organized and most baneful influence over him, and 
 over us all ; and I endeavored to arouse in Gerald some sympa- 
 thy with my own indignation against that villain. I succeeded 
 so far as to make him declare that he was scarcely less desir- 
 ous of justice than myself ; but there was an embarrassment in 
 his tone of which I was at no loss to perceive the cause. To 
 accuse Montreuil publicly of his forgery might ultimately bring 
 to light Gerald's latter knowledge of the fraud. I hastened to 
 say that there was now no necessity to submit to a court of 
 justice a scrutiny into our private, gloomy, and eventful records. 
 No, from Oswald's communications I had learned enough to 
 prove that Bolingbroke had been truly informed, and that Mon- 
 treuil had still, and within the few last weeks, been deeply in- 
 volved in schemes of treason full proof of which could be ad- 
 duced, far more than sufficient to ensure his death by the pub- 
 lic executioner. Upon this charge I proposed at the nearest 
 
 town (the memorable sea-port of ) to accuse him, and to 
 
 obtain a warrant for his immediate apprehension upon this 
 charge I proposed alone to proceed against him, and by it alone 
 to take justice upon his more domestic crimes. 
 
 My brother yielded at last his consent to my suggestions. 
 " I understand," said I, " that Montreuil lurks in the neighbor- 
 hood of these ruins, or in the opposite islet. Know you if he 
 has made his asylum in either at this present time ? " 
 
 "No, my brother," answered Gerald, "but I have reason to 
 believe that he is in our immediate vicinity, for I received a 
 
 letter from him three days ago, when at Lord 's, urging a 
 
 request that I would give him a meeting here, at my earliest 
 leisure, previous to his leaving England." 
 
 " Has he really then obtained permission to return to France ? " 
 
 "Yes," replied Gerald, "he informed me in this letter that 
 he had just received intelligence of his pardon." 
 
 " May it fit him the better," said I, with a stern smile, " for
 
 DEVEREUX. 397 
 
 a more lasting condemnation. But if this be true we have not 
 a moment to lose : a man so habitually vigilant and astute will 
 speedily learn my visit hither, and forfeit even his appointment 
 with you, should he, which is likely enough, entertain any sus- 
 picion of our reconciliation with each other moreover, he may 
 hear that the government have discovered his designs, and may 
 instantly secure the means of flight. Let me, therefore, im- 
 mediately repair to , and obtain a warrant against him, as 
 
 well as officers to assist our search. In the mean while you 
 shall remain here, and detain him, should he visit you : but 
 where is the accomplice? let us seize him instantly, for I con- 
 clude he is with you ! " 
 
 " What, Desmarais ?" rejoined Gerald. " Yes, he is the only 
 servant, beside the old portress, which these poor ruins will 
 allow me to entertain in the same dwelling with myself : the 
 
 rest of my suite are left behind at Lord 's. But Desmarais 
 
 is not now within ; he went out about two hours ago." 
 
 " Ha ! " said I, " in all likelihood to meet the priest shall 
 we wait his return, and extort some information of Montreuil's 
 lurking-hole ? " 
 
 Before Gerald could answer, we heard a noise without, and 
 presently I distinguished the bland tones of the hypocritical 
 Fatalist, in soft expostulation with the triumphant voice of Mr. 
 Marie Oswald. I hastened out, and discovered that the lay- 
 brother, whom I had left in the chaise, having caught a glimpse 
 of the valet gliding among the ruins, had recognized, seized, 
 and by the help of the postillions, dragged him to the door of 
 the tower. The moment Desmarais saw me, he ceased to 
 struggle : he met my eye with a steady, but not disrespectful, 
 firmness ; he changed not even the habitual hue of his coun- 
 tenance he remained perfectly still in the hands of his arrest- 
 ers ; and if there was any vestige of his mind discoverable in 
 his sallow features and glittering eye, it was not the sign of 
 fear, or confusion, or even surprise ; but a ready promptness 
 to meet danger, coupled, perhaps, with a little doubt whether 
 to defy or to seek first to diminish it. 
 
 Long did I gaze upon him struggling with internal rage and 
 loathing the mingled contempt and desire of destruction with 
 which we gaze upon the erect aspect of some small, but venom- 
 ous and courageous reptile long did I gaze upon him before I 
 calmed and collected my voice to speak : 
 
 " So I have thee at last ! First comes the base tool, and that 
 will I first break, before I lop off the guiding hand." 
 
 " So please Monsieur my Lord the Count," answered Des-
 
 398 DEVEREUX. 
 
 marais, bowing to the ground ; " the tool is a file, and it would 
 be useless to bite against it." 
 
 "We will see that," said I, drawing my sword : "prepare to 
 die ! " and I pointed the blade to his throat with so sudden and 
 menacing a gesture that his eyes closed involuntarily, and the 
 blood left his thin cheek as white as ashes : but he shrank not. 
 
 " If Monsieur," said he, with a sort of smile, "'/// kill his 
 poor old, faithful servant, let him strike. Fate is not to be re- 
 sisted ; and prayers are useless ! " 
 
 " Oswald," said I, " release your prisoner ; wait here, and 
 keep strict watch. Jean Desmarais, follow me ! " 
 
 I ascended the stairs, and Desmarais followed. " Now," I 
 said, when he was alone with Gerald and myself, " your days 
 are numbered : you will fall, not by my hand, but by that of 
 the executioner. Not only your forgery, but your robbery, your 
 abetment of murder, are known to me ; your present lord, with 
 an indignation equal to my own, surrenders you to justice. 
 Have you aught to urge, not in defence for to that I will not 
 listen but in atonement ? Can you now commit any act which 
 will cause me to forego justice on those which you have com- 
 mitted ? " Desmarais hesitated. " Speak," said I. He raised 
 his eyes to mine with an inquisitive and wistful look. 
 
 II Monsieur," said the wretch, with his obsequious smile, 
 " Monsieur has travelled has shone has succeeded Monsieur 
 must have made enemies : let him name them, and his poor old 
 faithful servant will do his best to become the humble instru- 
 ment of their fate!" 
 
 Gerald drew himself aside, and shuddered. Perhaps till then 
 he had not been fully aware how slyly murder, as well as fraud, 
 can lurk beneath urbane tones and laced ruffles. 
 
 "I have no enemy," said I, "but one ; and the hangman will 
 do my office upon him ; but point out to me the exact spot 
 where at this moment he is concealed, and you shall have full 
 leave to quit this country forever. That enemy is Julian Mon- 
 treuil ! " 
 
 "Ah, ah!" said Desmarais musingly, and in -a tone very 
 different from that in which he usually spoke ; "must it be so, 
 indeed ? For twenty years of youth and manhood, I have clung 
 to that man, and woven my destiny with his, because I believed 
 him born under the star which shines on statesmen and on 
 pontiffs. Does dread Necessity now impel me to betray him? 
 Him, the only man I ever loved. So so so ! Count Dever- 
 <ux, strike me to the core I will not betray Bertrand Collinot ! " 
 
 " Mysterious heart of man," I exclaimed inly, as I gazed upon
 
 the low brow, the malignant eye, the crafty lip of this wretch, 
 who still retained one generous and noble sentiment at the bot- 
 tom of so base a breast. But if sprung there, it only sprung to 
 wither ! 
 
 "As thou wilt," said I ; "remember, death is the alternative. 
 By thy birth-star, Jean Desmarais, I should question whether 
 perfidy be not better luck than hanging but time speeds fare- 
 well ; I shall meet thee on thy day of trial." 
 
 I turned to the door to summon Oswald to his prisoner. 
 Desmarais roused himself from the reverie in which he appeared 
 to have sunk. 
 
 " Why do I doubt ? " said he slowly. " Were the alterna- 
 tive his, would he not hang me as he would hang his dog if it 
 went mad and menaced danger ? My very noble and merciful 
 master," continued the Fatalist, turning to me, and relapsing 
 into his customary manner, " it is enough ! I can refuse noth- 
 ing to a gentleman who has such insinuating manners. Mon- 
 treuil may be in your power this night ; but that rests solely 
 with me. If I speak not, a few hours will place him irrevoca- 
 bly beyond your reach. If I betray him to you, will Mon- 
 sieur swear that I shall have my pardon for past errors? " 
 
 "On condition of leaving England," I answered, for slight 
 was my comparative desire of justice against Desmarais; and 
 since I had agreed with Gerald not to bring our domestic rec- 
 ords to the glare of day, justice against Desmarais was not easy 
 of attainment ; while on the other hand, so precarious seemed the 
 chance of discovering Montreuil before he left England, with- 
 out certain intelligence of his movements, that I was willing to 
 forego any less ardent feeling, for the speedy gratification of 
 that which made the sole surviving passion of my existence. 
 
 " Be it so," rejoined Desmarais ; " there is better wine in 
 France! And Monsieur, my present master Monsieur Ger- 
 ald, will you too pardon your poor Desmarais for his proof of 
 the great attachment he always bore to you?" 
 
 "Away, wretch!" cried Gerald, shrinking back; "your 
 villainy taints the very air ! " 
 
 Desmarais lifted his eyes to Heaven, with n look of appeal- 
 ing innocence ; but I was wearied with this odious farce. 
 
 " The condition is made," said I : " remember, it only holds 
 good if Montreuil's person is placed in our power. Now 
 explain." 
 
 "This night, then," answered Desmarais "Montreuil pro- 
 poses to leave England by means of a French privateer, or 
 pirate, if that please you better. Exactly at the hour of twelve,
 
 400 DEVEREUX. 
 
 he will meet some of the sailors upon the seashore, by the Cas- 
 tle Cave ; thence they proceed in boats to the islet, off which 
 the pirate's vessel awaits them. If you would seize Montreuil, 
 you must provide a force adequate to conquer the companions 
 he will meet. The rest is with you ; my part is fulfilled." 
 
 " Remember ! I repeat if this be one of thy inventions, thou 
 wilt hang." 
 
 " I have said what is true," said Desmarais bitterly ; " and 
 were not life so very pleasant to me, I would sooner have met 
 the rack." 
 
 I made no reply ; but summoning Oswald, surrendered Des- 
 marais to his charge. I then held a hasty consultation with 
 Gerald, whose mind, however, obscured by feelings of gloomy 
 humiliation, and stunned perhaps by the sudden and close fol- 
 lowing order of events, gave me but little assistance in my pro- 
 jects. I observed his feelings with great pain ; but that was no 
 moment for wrestling with them. I saw that I could not de- 
 pend upon his vigorous co-operation ; and that even if Mon- 
 treuil sought him, he might want the presence of mind and the 
 energy to detain my enemy. I changed therefore the arrange- 
 ment we had first proposed. 
 
 " I will remain here," said I, " and I will instruct the old 
 portress to admit to me any one who seeks audience with you. 
 Meanwhile, Oswald and yourself, if you will forgive, and grant 
 my request to that purport, will repair to , and inform- 
 ing the magistrate of our intelligence, procure such armed 
 assistance as may give battle to the pirates, should that be nec- 
 essary, and succeed in securing Montreuil ; this assistance 
 may be indispensable ; at all events, it will be prudent to secure 
 it ; perhaps for Oswald alone the magistrates would not use 
 that zeal and expedition, which a word of yours can command." 
 
 " Of mine," said Gerald, " say rather of yours ; you are the 
 lord of these broad lands ! " 
 
 " Never, my dearest brother, shall they pass to me from their 
 present owner ; but let us hasten now to execute justice, we will 
 talk afterwards of friendship." 
 
 I then sought Oswald, who, if a physical coward, was morally 
 a ready, bustling, and prompt man ; and I felt that 1 could rely 
 more upon him than I could at that moment upon Gerald : I 
 released him therefore of his charge, and made Desmarais a 
 close prisoner, in the inner apartment of the. tower; I then 
 gave Oswald the most earnest injunctions to procure the assist- 
 ance we might require, and to return with it as expeditiously 
 ^s possible ; and, cheered by the warmth and decision o* hU
 
 DEV-EREUX. 46 i 
 
 answer, I saw him depart with Gerald, and felt my heart beat 
 high with the anticipation of midnight and retribution. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Catastrophe. 
 
 IT happened, unfortunately, that the mission to was in- 
 dispensable. The slender accommodation of the tower forbade 
 Gerald the use of his customary attendants, and the neighbor- 
 ing villagers were too few in number, and too ill provided with 
 weapons, to encounter men cradled in the very lap of danger ; 
 moreover, it was requisite, above all things, that no rumor or 
 suspicion of our intended project should obtain wind, and, by 
 reaching Montreuil's ears, give him some safer opportunity of 
 escape. I had no doubt of the sincerity of the Fatalist's com- 
 munication, and if I had, the subsequent conversation I held 
 with him, when Gerald and Oswald were gone, would have 
 been sufficient to remove it. He was evidently deeply stung 
 by the reflection of his own treachery, and singularly enough, 
 with Montreuil seemed to perish all his worldly hopes and 
 aspirations. Desmarais, I found, was a man of much higher 
 ambition than I had imagined, and he had linked himself 
 closely to Montreuil, because, from the genius and the resolu- 
 tion of the priest, he had drawn the most sanguine auguries of 
 his future power. As the night advanced, he grew visibly 
 anxious, and, having fully satisfied myself that I might count 
 indisputably upon his intelligence, I once more left him to his 
 meditations, and, alone in the outer chamber, I collected my- 
 self for the coming event. I had fully hoped that Montreuil 
 would have repaired to the tower in search of Gerald, and this 
 was the strongest reason which had induced me to remain be- 
 hind ; but time waned, he came not, and at length it grew so 
 late that I began to tremble lest the assistance from 
 should not arrive in time. 
 
 It struck the first quarter after eleven ; in less than an hour 
 my enemy would be either in my power, or beyond its reach ; 
 still Gerald and our allies came not my suspense grew intol- 
 erable, my pulse raged with fever ; I could not stay for two 
 seconds in the same spot ; a hundred times had I drawn my 
 sword, and looked eagerly along its bright blade. "Once," 
 thought I, as I looked, " thou didst cross the blade of my 
 Iftortal foe, and to my danger, rather than victory : years have
 
 402 
 
 brought skill to the hands which then guided thee, and in the 
 red path of battle thou hast never waved in vain. Be stained 
 but once more with human blood, and I will prize every drop 
 of that blood beyond all the triumphs thou hast brought me ! " 
 Yes, it had been with a fiery and intense delight that I had 
 learned that Montreuil would have companions to his flight in 
 lawless and hardened men, who would never yield him a pris- 
 oner without striking for his rescue ; and I knew enough of 
 the courageous and proud temper of my proposed victim to 
 feel assured that, priest as he was, he would not hesitate to 
 avail himself of the weapons of his confederates, or to aid them 
 with his own. Then would it be lawful to oppose violence to 
 his resistance, and with my own hand to deal the death-blow 
 of retribution. Still as these thoughts flashed over me, my 
 heart grew harder, and my blood rolled more burningly through 
 my veins. "They come not, Gerald returns not," I said, as 
 my eye dwelt on the clock, and saw the minutes creep one after 
 the other " it matters not HE at last shall not escape ! 
 were he girt by a million, I would single him from the herd ; 
 one stroke of this right hand is all that I ask of life, then let them 
 avenge him if they will." Thus resolved, and despairing at 
 last of the return of Gerald, I left the tower, locked the outer 
 door, as a still further security against my prisoner's escape, 
 and repaired with silent, but swift, strides to the beach by the 
 Castle Cave. It wanted about half an hour to midnight; the 
 night was still and breathless, a dim mist spread from sea to 
 sky, through which the stars gleamed forth heavily, and at dis- 
 tant intervals. The moon was abroad, but the vapors that sur- 
 rounded her gave a watery and sicklied dulness to her light, 
 and wherever in the niches and hollows of the cliff, the shad- 
 ows fell, all was utterly dark, and unbroken by the smallest 
 ray ; only along the near waves of the sea, and the whiter parts 
 of the level sand were objects easily discernible. I strode to 
 and fro, for a few minutes, before the Castle Cave ; I saw no 
 one, and I seated myself in stern vigilance upon a stone, in a 
 worn recess of the rock, and close by the mouth of the Castle 
 Cave. The spot where I sat was wrapt in total darkness, 
 and I felt assured that I might wait my own time for dis- 
 closing myself. I had not been many minutes at my place 
 of watch before I saw the figure of a man approach from the 
 left ; he moved with rapid steps, and once when he passed 
 along a place where the wan light of the skies was less obscured 
 I saw enough of his form and air to recognize Montreuil. He 
 neared the cave he paused he was within a few paces of
 
 403 
 
 me I was about to rise, when another figure suddenly glided 
 from the mouth of the cave itself. 
 
 "Ha!" cried the latter, "it is Bertrand Collinot Fate be 
 lauded ! " 
 
 Had a voice from the grave struck my ear, it would have 
 scarcely amazed me more that which I now heard. Could I 
 believe my senses? the voice was that of Desmarais, whom I 
 left locked within the inner chamber of the tower. " Fly," he 
 resumed, "fly instantly; you have not a moment to lose 
 already the stern Morton waits thee already the hounds of 
 justice are on thy track ; tarry not for the pirates, but begone 
 at once." 
 
 "You rave, man ! What mean you? the boats will be here 
 immediately. While you yet speak methinks I can descry them 
 on the sea. Something of this I dreaded when, some hours 
 
 ago, I caught a glimpse of Gerald on the road to . I 
 
 saw not the face of his companion, but I would not trust my- 
 self in the tower yet I must await the boats flight is indeed 
 requisite, but they make the only means by which flight is 
 safe ! " 
 
 " Pray, then, thou who believest, pray that they may come 
 soon, or thou diest and I with thee ! Morton is returned 
 is reconciled to his weak brother. Gerald and Oswald are 
 
 away to , for men to seize and drag thee to a public 
 
 death. I was arrested threatened ; but one way to avoid 
 prison and cord was shown me. Curse me, Bertrand, for I em- 
 braced it. I told them thou wouldst fly to-night, and with 
 whom. They locked me in the inner chamber of the tower 
 Morton kept guard without. At length I heard him leave the 
 room I heard him descend the stairs, and lock the gate of the 
 tower. Ha ! ha ! little dreamt he of the wit of Jean Desmarais. 
 Thy friend must scorn bolt and bar, Bertrand Collinot. They 
 had not searched me I used my instruments thou knowest 
 that with those instruments I could glide through stone 
 walls! I opened the door I was in the outer room I lifted 
 the trap-door which old Sir William had boarded over, and 
 which thou hadst so artfully and imperceptibly replaced, when 
 thou wantedst secret intercourse with thy pupils I sped along 
 the passage came to the iron door touched the spring thou 
 liadst inserted in the plate which the old knight had placed 
 over the keyhole and have come to repair my coward 
 treachery to save and to fly with thee. But, while I speak, 
 we tread on a precipice. Morton has left the house, and is 
 even now, perhaps, in search of thee."
 
 404 DEVEREtfX. 
 
 " Ha ! I care not if he be," said Montreuil, in a low, but 
 haughty tone. " Priest though I am, I have not assumed the 
 garb without assuming also the weapon of the layman. Even 
 now I have my hand upon the same sword which shone under 
 the banners of Mar ; and which once, but for my foolish 
 mercy, would have rid me forever of this private foe." 
 
 " Unsheath it now, Julian Montreuil ! " said I, coming from 
 my retreat, and confronting the pair. 
 
 Montreuil recoiled several paces. At that instant a shot 
 boomed along the waters. 
 
 " Haste, haste," cried Desmarais, hurrying to the waves, as 
 a boat, now winding the cliff, became darkly visible ; " haste, 
 Bertrand, here are Bonjean and his men but they are pur- 
 sued ! " 
 
 Once did Montreuil turn as if to fly, but my sword was at 
 his breast, and, stamping fiercely on the ground, he drew his 
 rapier and parried and returned my assault ; but he retreated 
 rapidly towards the water while he struck ; and wild and 
 loud came the voices from the boat, which now touched the 
 shore. 
 
 " Come come come the officers are upon us ; we can 
 wait not a moment ! " and Montreuil, as he heard the cries, 
 mingled with oaths and curses, yet quickened his pace towards 
 the quarter whence they came. His steps were tracked by his 
 blood twice had my sword passed through his flesh ; but 
 twice had it failed my vengeance, and avoided a mortal part. 
 A second boat, filled also with the pirates, followed the first ; 
 but then another and a larger vessel bore black and fast over 
 the water the rush and cry of men were heard on land again 
 and nearer a shot broke over the heavy air another and 
 another a continued fire. The strand was now crowded with 
 the officers of justice. The vessel beyond forbade escape to 
 the opposite islet. There was no hope for the pirates but in 
 contest, or in dispersion among the cliffs or woods on the 
 shore. They formed their resolution at once, and stood pre- 
 pared and firm, partly on their boats, partly on the beach 
 around them. Though the officers were far more numerous, 
 the strife fierce, desperate, and hand to hand seemed equally 
 sustained. Montreuil, as he retreated before me, bore back 
 into the general m$lee, and, as the press thickened, we were for 
 some moments separated. It was at this time that I caught a 
 glimpse of Gerald ; he seemed also then to espy me, and made 
 eagerly towards me. Suddenly he was snatched from my view. 
 The fray relaxed ; the officers, evidently worsted, retreated
 
 DEVEREUX. 405 
 
 towards the land, and the pirates appeared once more to enter- 
 tain the hope of making their escape by water. Probably they 
 thought that the darkness of the night might enable them to 
 baffle the pursuit of the adverse vessel, which now lay expectant 
 and passive on the wave. However this be, they made simul- 
 taneously to their boats, and among their numbers I descried 
 Montreuil. I set my teeth with a calm and prophetic wrath. 
 But three strokes did my good blade make through that throng 
 before I was by his side ; he had at that instant his hold upon 
 the boat's edge, and he stood knee-deep in the dashing waters. 
 I laid my grasp upon his shoulder, and my cheek touched his 
 own as I hissed in his ear, "I am with thee yet ! " He turned 
 fiercely he strove, but he strove in vain, to shake off my 
 grasp. The boat pushed away, and his last hope of escape 
 was over. At this moment the moon broke away from the 
 mist, and we saw each other plainly, and face to face. There 
 was a ghastly but set despair in Montreuil's lofty and proud 
 countenance, which changed gradually to a fiercer aspect as he 
 met my gaze. Once more, foot to foot and hand to hand, we 
 engaged ; the increased light of the skies rendered the contest 
 more that of skill than it had hitherto been, and Montreuil 
 seemed to collect all his energies, and to fight with a steadier 
 and a cooler determination. Nevertheless the combat was 
 short. Once my antagonist had the imprudence to raise his 
 arm and expose his body to my thrust : his sword grazed my 
 cheek I shall bear the scar to my grave mine passed twice 
 through his breast, and he fell, bathed in his blood, at my 
 feet. 
 
 " Lift him ! " I said, to the men who now crowded round. 
 They did so, and he unclosed his eyes and glared upon me as 
 the death-pang convulsed his features, and gathered in foam to 
 his lips. But his thoughts were not upon his destroyer, nor 
 upon the wrongs he had committed, nor upon any solitary 
 being in the linked society which he had injured. 
 
 " Order of Jesus," he muttered, " had I but lived three 
 months longer, I " 
 
 So died Julian Montreuil. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 MONTREUIL was not the only victim in the brief combat of 
 that night ; several of the pirates and their pursuers perished, 
 and among the bodies we found Gerald. He had been pierced 
 by a shot through the brain, and was perfectly lifeless when 
 his body was discovered. By a sort of retribution, it seems
 
 406 DEVEREUX. 
 
 that my unhappy brother received his death-wound from' a 
 shot fired (probably at random) by Desmarais ; and thus the 
 instrument of the fraud he had tacitly subscribed to became 
 the minister of his death. Nay, the retribution seemed even 
 to extend to the very method by which Desmarais had escaped : 
 and, as the reader has perceived, the subterranean communica- 
 tion which had been secretly reopened to deceive my uncle, 
 made the path which had guided Gerald's murderer to the 
 scene which afterwards ensued. The delay of the officers had 
 been owing to private intelligence, previously received by the 
 magistrate to whom Gerald had applied, of the number and 
 force of the pirates, and his waiting in consequence for a 
 military reinforcement to the party to be despatched against 
 them. Those of the pirates who escaped the conflict escaped 
 also the pursuit of the hostile vessel ; they reached the islet and 
 gained their captain's ship. A few shots between the two 
 vessels were idly exchanged, and the illicit adventurers reached 
 the French shore in safety ; with them escaped Desmarais, and 
 of him, from that hour to this, I have heard nothing so 
 capriciously plays Time with villains ! 
 
 Marie Oswald has lately taken unto himself a noted inn on 
 the Nortli Road, a place eminently calculated for the display 
 of his various talents; he has also taken unto himself a WIFE, 
 of whose tongue and temper he has been known already to 
 complain with no Socratic meekness ; and we may therefore 
 opine that his misdeeds have not altogether escaped their fitting 
 share of condemnation. 
 
 Succeeding at once, by the death of my poor brother, to the 
 DEVEREUX estates, I am still employed in rebuilding, on a yet 
 more costly scale, my ancestral mansion. So eager and im- 
 patient is my desire for the completion of my undertaking, that 
 I allow rest neither by night or day, and half the work will be 
 done by torchlight. With the success of this project termi- 
 nates my last scheme of Ambition. 
 
 Here, then, at the age of thirty-four, I conclude the history 
 of my life. Whether in the star which, as I now write, shines 
 in upon me, and which a romance, still urisubdued, has often 
 dreamed to be the bright prophet of my fate, something of 
 future adventure, suffering, or excitement is yet predestined to 
 me ; or whether life will muse itself away in the solitudes which 
 surround the home of my past childhood and the scene of my 
 present retreat, creates within me but slight food for anticipa- 
 tion or conjecture. I have exhausted the sources of those 
 feelings which flow, whether through the channels of anxiety or
 
 DEVEREUX. 407 
 
 of hope, towards the future ; and the restlessness of my man- 
 hood, having attained its last object, has done the labor of 
 time and bequeathed to me the indifference of age. 
 
 If love exists for me no longer, I know well that the memory 
 of that which has been is to me far more than a living love is 
 to others ; and perhaps there is no passion so full of tender, of 
 soft, and of hallowing associations as the love which is stamped 
 by death. If I have borne much, and my spirit has worked 
 out its earthly end in travail and in tears, yet I would not fore- 
 go the lessons which my life has bequeathed me, even though 
 they be deeply blended with sadness and regret. No! were I 
 asked what best dignifies the present, and consecrates the past ; 
 what enables us alone to draw a just moral from the tale of 
 life ; what sheds the purest light upon our reason ; what gives 
 the firmest strength to our religion ; and, whether our remain- 
 ing years pass in seclusion or in action, is best fitted to soften 
 the heart of man, and to elevate the soul to God, I would 
 answer, with Lassus, it is " EXPERIENCE ! " 
 
 THE END.
 
 THE DISOWNED
 
 ADVERTISEMENT TO THE PRESENT 
 EDITION. 
 
 IN this edition of a work composed in early youth, I have 
 not attempted to remove those faults of construction which 
 may be sufficiently apparent in the plot : but which could not 
 indeed be thoroughly rectified without re-writing the whole 
 work. I can only hope that with the defects of inexperience, 
 may be found some of the merits of frank and artless enthu- 
 siasm. I ha\e, however, lightened the narrative of certain 
 episodical and irrelevant passages, and relieved the general 
 style of some boyish extravagances of diction. At the time this 
 work was written I was deeply engaged in the study of meta- 
 physics and ethics and out of that study grew the character 
 of Algernon Mordaunt. He is represented as a type of the 
 Heroism of Christian Philosophy an union of love and knowl- 
 edge placed in the midst of sorrow, and laboring on through 
 the pilgrimage of life, strong in the fortitude that comes from 
 belief in heaven 
 
 E. B. L. 
 
 KNEBWORTH, May 5, 1832.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " I'll tell you a story if you please to attend." Limto, by G. KNIGHT. 
 
 IT was the evening of a soft, warm day in the May of 1 7 . 
 The sun had already set, and the twilight was gathering slowly 
 over the large, still masses of wood which lay on either side of 
 one of those green lanes so peculiar to England. Here and 
 there, the outline of the trees irregularly shrunk back from the 
 road, leaving broad patches of waste land covered with fern 
 and the yellow blossoms of the dwarf furze, and, at more dis- 
 tant intervals, thick clusters of rushes, from which came the 
 small hum of gnats those " evening revellers " alternately 
 rising and sinking in the customary manner of their unknown 
 sports till, as the shadows grew darker and darker, their thin 
 and airy shapes were no longer distinguishable, and no solitary 
 token of life or motion broke the voiceless monotony of the 
 surrounding woods. 
 
 The first sound which invaded the silence came from the 
 light, quick footsteps of a person, whose youth betrayed itself 
 in its elastic and unmeasured tread, and in the gay, free carol, 
 which broke out by fits and starts upon the gentle stillness of 
 the evening. 
 
 There was something rather indicative of poetical taste than 
 musical science in the selection of this vesper hymn, which 
 always commenced with 
 
 " 'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good green wood," 
 
 and never proceeded a syllable farther than the end of the 
 second line, 
 
 " When birds are about and singing "; 
 
 from the last word of which, after a brief pause, it invariably 
 started forth into joyous "iteration."
 
 6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 Presently a heavier, yet still more rapid, step than that of 
 the youth was heard behind ; and, as it overtook the latter, a 
 loud, clear, good-humored voice gave the salutation of the 
 evening. The tone in which this courtesy was returned was 
 frank, distinct, and peculiarly harmonious. 
 
 "Good evening, my friend. How far is it to W ? I 
 
 hope I am not out of the direct road?" 
 
 "To W , sir?" said the man, touching his hat, as he 
 
 perceived, in spite of the dusk, something in the air and voice 
 of his new acquaintance which called for a greater degree of 
 respect than he was at first disposed to accord to a pedestrian 
 
 traveller "To W , sir? why, you will not surely go there 
 
 to-night : it is more than eight miles distant, and the roads 
 none of the best?" 
 
 " Now, a curse on all rogues ! " quoth the youth with a serious 
 sort of vivacity. "Why, the miller, at the foot of the hill, 
 assured me I should be at my journey's end in less than an 
 hour." 
 
 "He may have said right, sir," returned the man, "yet you 
 will not reach W in twice that time." 
 
 "How do you mean?" said the younger stranger. 
 
 " Why, that you may for once force a miller to speak truth in 
 spite of himself, and make a public house, about three miles 
 hence, the end of your day's journey." 
 
 "Thank you for the hint," said the youth. " Does the house 
 you speak of lie on the road-side?" 
 
 "No, sir: the lane branches off about two miles hence, and 
 you must then turn to the right : but ////then, our way is the 
 same, and if you would not prefer your own company to mine, 
 we can trudge on together." 
 
 "With all my heart," rejoined the younger stranger; "and 
 not the less willingly from the brisk pace you walk. I thought 
 I had few equals in pedestrianism ; but it should not be 
 for a small wager that I would undertake to keep up vyith 
 you." 
 
 " Perhaps, sir," said the man laughing, "I have had, in the 
 course of my life, a better usage and a longer experience of my 
 heels than you have." 
 
 Somewhat startled by a speech of so equivocal a meaning, 
 the youth, for the first time, turned round to examine, as well 
 as the increasing darkness would permit, the size and appear- 
 ance of his companion. He was not perhaps too well satisfied 
 with his survey. His fellow pedestrian was about six feet high, 
 and of a correspondent girth of limb and frame, which would
 
 THE DISOWNED. 7 
 
 have made him fearful odds in any encounter where bodily 
 strength was the best means of conquest. Notwithstanding the 
 mildness of the weather, he was closely buttoned in a rough 
 great-coat, which was well calculated to give all due effect to 
 the athletic proportions of the wearer. 
 
 There was a pause of some moments. 
 
 " This is but a wild, savage sort of scene for England, sir, in 
 this day of new-fashioned ploughs and farming improvements," 
 said the tall stranger, looking round at the ragged wastes, and 
 grim woods, which lay steeped in the shade beside and before 
 them. 
 
 "True," answered the youth; "and in a few years agricul- 
 tural innovation will scarcely leave, even in these wastes, a 
 single furze-blossom for the bee, or a tuft of greensward for 
 the grasshopper ; but, however, unpleasant the change may be 
 for us foot-travellers, we must not repine at what they tell us 
 is so sure a witness of the prosperity of the country." 
 
 " They tell us! -who tell us?" exclaimed the stranger, with 
 great vivacity. " Is it the puny and spiritless artisan, or the 
 debased and crippled slave of the counter and the till, or the 
 sallow speculator on morals, who would mete us out our liberty 
 our happiness our very feelings, by the yard, and inch, and 
 fraction ? No, no, let them follow what the books and precepts 
 of their own wisdom teach them ; let them cultivate more 
 highly the lands they have already parcelled out by dykes and 
 fences, and leave, though at scanty intervals, some green patches 
 of unpolluted land for the poor man's beast, and the free man's 
 foot." 
 
 "You are an enthusiast on this subject," said the younger 
 traveller, not a little surprised at the tone and words of the last 
 speech ; "and if I were not just about to commence the world 
 with a firm persuasion that enthusiasm on any matter is a great 
 obstacle to success, I could be as warm, though not so eloquent, 
 as yourself." 
 
 " Ah, sir," said the stranger, sinking into a more natural and 
 careless tone, " I have a better right than I imagine you can 
 claim to repine or even to inveigh against the boundaries which 
 are day by day, and hour by hour, encroaching upon what I 
 have learned to look upon as my own territory. You were, just 
 before I joined you, singing an old song ; I honor you for your 
 taste : and no offence, sir, but a sort of fellowship in feeling 
 made me take the liberty to accost you. I am no very great 
 scholar in other things ; but I owe my present circumstances 
 of life solely to my fondness for those old songs and quaint
 
 8 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 madrigals. And I believe no person can better apply to him 
 self Will Shakspeare's invitation : 
 
 " ' Under the greenwood tree 
 Who loves to lie with me, 
 And tune his merry note 
 Unto the sweet bird's throat, 
 Come hither, come hither, come hither ; 
 Here shall he see 
 No enemy 
 But winter and rough weather. ' ' 
 
 Relieved from his former fear, but with increased curiosity 
 at this quotation, which was half said, half sung, in a tone which 
 seemed to evince a hearty relish for the sense of the words, the 
 youth replied : 
 
 "Truly, I did not expect to meet among the travellers of this 
 wild country with so well, stored a memory. And, indeed, I 
 should have imagined that the only persons to whom your 
 verses could exactly have applied were those honorable va- 
 grants from, the Nile, whom in vulgar language we term 
 gypsies." 
 
 " Precisely so, sir," answered the tall stranger indifferently ; 
 " precisely so. It is to that ancient body that I belong." 
 
 "The devil you do ? " quoth the youth, in unsophisticated 
 surprise ; " the progress of education, is indeed, astonishing ! " 
 
 " Why," answered the stranger, laughing, " to tell you the 
 truth, sir, I am a gypsy by inclination, not birth. The illus- 
 trious Bamfylde Moore Carew is not the only example of one 
 of gentle blood and honorable education whom the fleshpots of 
 Egypt have seduced." 
 
 "1 congratulate myself," quoth the youth, in a tone that 
 might have been in jest, " upon becoming acquainted with a 
 character at once so respectable and so novel ; and, to return 
 your quotation in the way of a compliment, I cry out with the 
 most fashionable author of Elizabeth's days 
 
 ' O for a bowl of fat Canary, 
 Rich Palermo sparkling Sherry,' 
 
 in order to drink to our better acquaintance." 
 
 " Thank you sir, thank you," cried the strange gypsy, seem- 
 ingly delighted with the spirit with which his young acquaint- 
 ance appeared to enter into his character and his quotation from 
 a class of authors at that time much less known and appreciated 
 than at present ; " and if you have seen already enough of the 
 world to take up with ale when neither Canary, Palermo, nor 
 Sherry are forthcoming, I will promise, at least, to pledge you
 
 THE DISOWNED. 9 
 
 in large draughts of that homely beverage. What say you to 
 passing a night with us ? our tents are yet more at hand than 
 the public-house of which I spoke to you." 
 
 The young man hesitated a moment, then replied 
 
 " I will answer you frankly, my friend, even though I may 
 find cause to repent my confidence. I have a few guineas 
 about me, which, though not a large sum, are my all. Now, 
 however ancient and honorable your fraternity may be, they 
 labor under a sad confusion, I fear, in their ideas of meum and 
 tuum" 
 
 " Faith, sir, I believe you are right ; and were you some years 
 older, I think you would not have favored me with the same 
 disclosure you have done now ; but you may be quite easy on 
 that score. If you were made of gold, the rascals would not 
 filch off the corner of your garment as long as you were under 
 my protection. Does this assurance satisfy you ? " 
 
 " Perfectly," said the youth : " and now how far are we from 
 your encampment ? I assure you I am all eagerness to be 
 among a set of which I have witnessed such a specimen." 
 
 " Nay, nay," returned the gypsy, " you must not judge of all 
 my brethren by me : I confess that they are but a rough tribe. 
 However, I love them dearly : and am only the more inclined 
 to think them honest to each other, because they are rogues to 
 all the rest of the world." 
 
 By this time, our travellers had advanced nearly two miles 
 since they had commenced companionship : and at a turn in 
 the lane, about three hundred yards further on, they caught a 
 glimpse of a distant fire burning brightly through the dim trees. 
 They quickened their pace, and striking a little out of their 
 path into a common, soon approached two tents, the Arab 
 homes of the vagrant and singular people with whom the gypsy 
 claimed brotherhood and alliance. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " Here we securely live and eat 
 
 The cream of meat ; 
 And keep eternal fires 
 By which we sit and do divine." 
 
 HERRICK Ode to Sir CRpseby Crew. 
 
 AROUND a fire which blazed and crackled beneath the large 
 seething pot, that seemed an emblem of the mystery, and a
 
 10 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 promise of the good cheer, which are the supposed character- 
 istics of the gypsy race, were grouped seven or eight persons, 
 upon whose swarthy and strong countenances the irregular and 
 fitful flame cast a picturesque and not unbecoming glow. All 
 of these, with the exception of an old crone who was tending 
 the pot, and a little boy who was feeding the fire with sundry 
 fragments of stolen wood, started totheirfeet upon the entrance 
 of the stranger. 
 
 " What ho, my bob cuffins," cried the gypsy guide, " I have 
 brought you a gentry cove, to whom you will show all proper 
 respect ; and hark ye, my maunders, if ye dare beg, borrow, or 
 steal a single croker ay but a bawbee of him, I'll but ye 
 know me." The gypsy stopped abruptly, and turned an eye, 
 in which menace vainly struggled with good-humor, upon each 
 of his brethren, as they submissively bowed to him and his 
 protfyt, and poured forth a profusion of promises, to which their 
 admonitor did not even condescend to listen. He threw off 
 his great-coat, doubled it down by the best place near the fire, 
 and made the youth forthwith possess himself of the seat it 
 afforded. He then lifted the cover of the mysterious caldron. 
 
 " Well, Mort," cried he to the old woman, as he bent wist- 
 fully down, " what have we here ? " 
 
 " Two ducks, three chickens, and a rabbit, with some pota- 
 toes," growled the old hag, who claimed the usual privilege of 
 her culinary office, to be as ill-tempered as she pleased. 
 
 "Good ! " said the gypsy ; "and now, Mim, my cull, go to 
 the other tent, and ask its inhabitants, in my name, to come 
 here and sup ; bid them bring their caldron to eke out ours 
 I'll find the lush." 
 
 With these words (which Mim, a short, swarthy member of 
 the gang, with a countenance too astute to be pleasing, in- 
 stantly started forth to obey) the gypsy stretched himself at full 
 length by the youth's side, and began reminding him, with 
 some jocularity, and at some length, of his promise to drink to 
 their better acquaintance. 
 
 Something there was in the scene, the fire, the caldron, the 
 intent figure and withered countenance of the old woman, the 
 grouping of the other forms, the rude but not unpicturesque 
 tent, the dark, still woods on either side, with the deep and 
 cloudless skies above, as the stars broke forth one by one upon 
 the silent air, which (to use the orthodox phrase of the novelist) 
 would not have been wholly unworthy the bold pencil of Sal- 
 vator himself. 
 
 The youth eyed, with that involuntary respect which per-
 
 THE DISOWNED. II 
 
 sonal advantages always command, the large, yet symmetrical 
 proportions of his wild companion ; nor was the face which 
 belonged to that frame much less deserving of attention. 
 Though not handsome, it was both shrewd and prepossessing 
 in its expression ; the forehead was prominent, the brows over- 
 hung the eyes, which were large, dark, and, unlike those of the 
 tribe in general, rather calm than brilliant ; the complexion, 
 though sunburnt, was not swarthy, and the face was carefully 
 and cleanly shaved, so as to give all due advantage of contrast 
 to the brown luxuriant locks which fell, rather in flakes than 
 curls, on either side of the healthful and manly cheeks. In 
 age, he was about thirty-five, and, though his air and mien 
 were assuredly not lofty, nor aristocratic, yet they were strik- 
 ingly above the bearing of his vagabond companions : those 
 companions were in all respects of the ordinary race of gipsies; 
 the cunning and flashing eye, the raven locks, the dazzling 
 teeth, the bronzed color, and the low, slight, active form, were 
 as strongly their distinguishing characteristics as the tokens of 
 all their tribe. 
 
 But to these, the appearance of the youth presented a striking 
 and beautiful contrast. 
 
 He had only just passed the stage of boyhood, perhaps he 
 might have seen eighteen summers, probably not so many. He 
 had, in imitation of his companion, and perhaps from mistaken 
 courtesy to his new society, doffed his hat ; and the attitude 
 which he had chosen fully developed the noble and intellectual 
 turn of his head and throat. His hair, as yet preserved from 
 the disfiguring fashions of the day, was of a deep auburn, 
 which was rapidly becoming of a more chestnut hue, and curled 
 in short close curls from the nape of the neck to the com- 
 mencement of a forehead singularly white and high. His 
 brows finely and lightly penciled, and his long lashes of the 
 darkest dye, gave a deeper and perhaps softer shade than they 
 otherwise would have worn, to eyes quick and observant in 
 their expression, and of a light hazel in their color. His cheek 
 was very fair, and the red light of the fire cast an artificial tint 
 of increased glow upon a complexion that had naturally rather 
 bloom than color ; while a dark riding-frock set off in their 
 full beauty the fine outline of his chest, and the slender sym- 
 metry of his frame. 
 
 But it was neither his features, nor his form, eminently hand- 
 some as they were, which gave the principal charm to the 
 young stranger's appearance it was the strikingly bold, buoy- 
 ant, frank, and almost joyous expression which presided over
 
 12 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 all. There seemed to dwell the first glow and life of youth, 
 undimmed by a single fear, and unbaffled in a single hope. 
 There were the elastic spring, the inexhaustible wealth of ener- 
 gies, which defied, in their exulting pride, the heaviness of 
 sorrow and the harassments of time. It was a face that, while 
 it filled you with some melancholy foreboding of the changes 
 and chances which must, in the inevitable course of fate, cloud 
 the openness of the unwrinkled brow, and soberize the fire of 
 the daring and restless eye, instilled also within you some 
 assurance of triumph, and some omen of success : a vague 
 but powerful sympathy with the adventurous and cheerful 
 spirit, which appeared literally to speak in its expression. It 
 was a face you might imagine in one born under a prosperous 
 star, and you felt, as you gazed, a confidence in that bright 
 countenance, which, like the shield of the British Prince,* 
 seemed possesssed with a spell to charm into impotence the 
 evil spirits who menaced its possessor. 
 
 "Well, sir," said his friend, the gypsy, who had in his turn 
 been surveying with admiration the sinewy and agile frame of 
 his young guest, " well, sir, how fares your appetite ? Old 
 Dame Bingo will be mortally offended if you do not do ample 
 justice to her good cheer." 
 
 " If so," answered our traveller, who, young as he was, had 
 learnt already the grand secret of making, in every situation, a 
 female friend, " if so, I shall be likely to offend her still more." 
 
 " And how, my pretty master ? " said the old crone, with an 
 iron smile. 
 
 " Why I shall be bold enough to reconcile matters with a 
 kiss, Mrs. Bingo," answered the youth. 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! " shouted the tall gypsy ; " it is many a long day 
 since my old Mort slapped a gallant's face for such an affront. 
 But here come our messmates. Good evening, my mumpers 
 make your bows to this gentleman, who has come to bowse 
 with us to-night. 'Gad, we'll show him that old ale's none the 
 worse for keeping company with the moon's darlings. Come, 
 sit down, sit down. Where's the cloth, ye ill-mannered loons, 
 and the knives and platters ? Have we no holiday customs for 
 strangers, think ye ? Mini, my cove, off to my caravan bring 
 out the knives, and all other rattletraps ; and harkye, my cuffin, 
 this small key opens the inner hole, where you will find two 
 barrels ; bring one of them. I'll warrant it of the best, for the 
 brewer himself drank some of the same sort but two hours 
 before I nimmd them. Come, stump, my cull, make yourself 
 
 * Prince Arthur. See The Fairy Queen.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 13 
 
 tvings. Ho, Dame Bingo, is not that pot of thine seething 
 yet ? Ah, my young gentleman, you commence betimes ; so 
 much the better ; if love's a summer's day, we all know how 
 early a summer morning begins," added the jovial Egyptian, 
 in a lower voice (feeling perhaps that he was only understood 
 by himself), as he gazed complacently on the youth, who, with 
 that happy facility of making himself everywhere at home, so 
 uncommon to his countrymen, was already paying compliments, 
 suited to their understanding, to two fair daughters of the tribe, 
 who had entered with the newcomers. Yet had he too much 
 craft or delicacy, call it which you will, to continue his 
 addresses to that limit where ridicule or jealousy, from the male 
 part of the assemblage, might commence ; on the contrary, he 
 soon turned to the men, and addressed them with a familiarity 
 so frank, and so suited to their taste, that he grew no less 
 rapidly in their favor than he had already done in that of the 
 women, and when the contents of the two caldrons were at 
 length set upon the coarse, but clean, cloth, which, in honor of 
 his arrival, covered the sod, it was in the midst of a loud and 
 universal peal of laughter, which some broad witticism of the 
 young stranger had produced, that the party sat down to their 
 repast. 
 
 Bright were the eyes and sleek the tresses of the damsel 
 who placed herself by the side of the stranger, and many were 
 the alluring glances and insinuated compliments which replied 
 to his open admiration and profuse flattery; but still there was 
 nothing exclusive in his attentions ; perhaps an ignorance of the 
 customs of his entertainers, and a consequent discreet fear of 
 offending them, restrained him ; or perhaps he found ample food 
 for occupation in the plentiful dainties which his host heaped 
 before him. 
 
 " Now tell me," said the gypsy chief (for chief he appeared 
 to be), " if we lead not a merrier life than you dreamt of? or 
 would you have us change our coarse fare and our simple 
 tents, our vigorous limbs and free hearts, for the meagre 
 board, the monotonous chamber, the diseased frame, and 
 the toiling, careful, and withered spirit of some miserable 
 mechanic ?" 
 
 " Change ! " cried the youth, with an earnestness which, if 
 affected, was an exquisite counterfeit " By Heaven, I would 
 change with you myself." 
 
 " Bravo, my fine cove ! " cried the host, and all the gang 
 echoed their sympathy with his applause. 
 
 The youth continued ; " Meat, and that plentiful ; ale, and
 
 14 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 that strong ; women, and those pretty ones ; what can man desire 
 more ! " 
 
 " Ay," cried the host, " and all for nothing, no not even a 
 tax ; who else in this kingdom can say that? Come, Mim, push 
 round the ale." 
 
 And the ale was pushed round, and if coarse the merriment, 
 loud at least was the laugh that rung ever and anon from the old 
 tent; and though, at moments, something in the guest's eye and 
 lip might have seemed, to a very shrewd observer, a little wander- 
 ing and absent, yet, upon the whole, he was almost as much at 
 ease as the rest, and if he was not quite as talkative, he was to 
 the full as noisy. 
 
 By degrees, as the hour grew later, and the barrel less heavy, 
 the conversation changed into one universal clatter. Some told 
 their feats in beggary ; others their achievements in theft ; not a 
 viand they had fed on but had its appropriate legend ; even the 
 old rabbit, which had been as tough as old rabbit can well be, 
 had not been honestly taken from his burrow ; no less a person 
 than Mim himself had purloined it from a widow's footman, 
 who was carrying it to an old maid from her nephew the 
 Squire. 
 
 " Silence," cried the host, who loved talking as well as the 
 rest, and who, for the last ten minutes, had been vainly endeavor- 
 ing to obtain attention. " Silence ! my maunders, it's late, and 
 we shall have the queer cuffins* upon us if we keep it up much 
 longer. What, ho, Mim, are you still gabbling at the foot of the 
 table, when your betters are talking? As sure as my name's 
 King Cole, I'll choke you with your own rabbit skin, if you 
 don't hush your prating cheat nay, never look so abashed if 
 you will make a noise, come forward, and sing us a gypsy song. 
 You see, my young sir (turning to his guest), that we are not 
 without our pretensions to the fine arts." 
 
 At this order, Mim started forth, and taking his station at the 
 right hand of the soi-disant King Cole, began the following song, 
 the chorus of which was chaunted in full diapason by the whole 
 group, with the additional force of emphasis that knives, feet, 
 and fists could bestow. 
 
 THE GYPSY'S SONG. 
 
 The king to his hall, and the steed to his stall, 
 
 And the cit to his bilking board ; 
 But we are not Ixnmd to an acre of ground, 
 
 For our home is the houseless sward. 
 
 * Magistrates.
 
 THE DISOWNED. IJ 
 
 We sow not, nor toil ; yet we glean from the soil 
 
 As much as its reapers do ; 
 And wherever we rove, we feed on the cove 
 
 Who gibes at the mumping crew. 
 
 CHORUS So the king to his hall, etc. 
 
 We care not a straw for the limbs of the law, 
 
 Nor a fig for the cujfin queer ; 
 While Hodge and his neighbor shall lavish and labor, 
 
 Our tent is as sure of its cheer. 
 
 CHORUS So the king to his hall, etc. 
 
 The worst have an awe of the barman's * claw, 
 
 And the best will avoid the trap ; \ 
 But our wealth is as free of the bailiff's see, 
 
 As our necks of the twisting crap. \ 
 
 CHORUS So the king to his hall, etc. 
 
 They say it is sweet to win the meat 
 
 For the which one has sorely wrought ; 
 But I never could find that we lack'd the mind 
 
 For the food that has cost us nought ! 
 
 CHORUS So the king to his hall, etc. 
 
 And when we have ceased from our fearless feast, 
 
 Why, our jigger will need no bars ; 
 Our sentry shall be on the owlet's tree, 
 
 And our lamps the glorious stars. 
 
 CHORUS. 
 
 So the king to his hall, and the steed to his stall, 
 
 And the cit to his bilking board; 
 But we are not bound to an acre of ground, 
 
 For our home is the houseless sward. 
 
 Rude as was this lawless stave, the spirit with which it was 
 sung atoned to the young stranger for its obscurity and quaint- 
 ness ; as for his host, that curious personage took a lusty and 
 prominent part in the chorus nor did the old woods refuse 
 their share of the burden, but sent back a merry echo to 
 the chief's deep voice, and the harsher notes of his jovial 
 brethren. 
 
 When the glee had ceased, King Cole rose, the whole band 
 followed his example, the cloth was cleared in a trice, the barrel 
 oh ! what a falling off was there ! was rolled into a corner of the 
 tent, and the crew to whom the awning belonged began to settle 
 themselves to rest; while those who owned the other encamp- 
 ment inarched forth, with King Cole at their head. Leaning 
 with no light weight upon his guest's arm, the lover of ancient 
 minstrelsy poured into the youth's ear a strain of eulogy, 
 
 * Constable. t Bailiff. % Gallows. Door.
 
 l6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 rather eloquent than coherent, upon the scene they had just 
 witnessed. 
 
 "What," cried his majesty, in an enthusiastic tone, "what can 
 be so truly regal as our state? Can any man control us? Are 
 we not above all laws? Are we not the most despotic of kings? 
 Nay, more than the kings of earth are we not the kings of Fairy- 
 land itself? Do we not realize the golden dreams of the old 
 rhymers luxurious dogs that they were ? Who would not cry 
 out : 
 
 " Blest silent groves ! O may ye be 
 For ever Mirth's best nursery ! 
 May pure Contents 
 For ever pitch their tents 
 Upon these downs, these meads, these rocks, these mountains." 
 
 Uttering this notable extract from the thrice-honored Sir 
 Henry Wotton, King Cole turned abruptly from the common, 
 entered the wood which skirted it, and only attended by his 
 guest, and his minister Mim, came suddenly, by an unexpected 
 and picturesque opening in the trees, upon one of those itinerant 
 vehicles termed caravans ; he ascended the few steps which led 
 to the entrance, opened the door, and was instantly in the arms 
 of a pretty and young woman. On seeing our hero (for such 
 we fear the youth is likely to become), she drew back with a 
 blush not often found upon regal cheeks. 
 
 " Pooh," said King Cole, half tauntingly, half fondly, "pooh, 
 Lucy, blushes are garden flowers, and ought never to be found 
 wild in the woods": then changing his tone, he said, " Come, 
 put some fresh straw in the corner, this stranger honors our 
 palace to-night. Mim unload thyself of our royal treasures 
 watch without, and vanish from within ! " 
 
 Depositing on his majesty's floor the appurtenances of the 
 regal supper-table, Mim made his respectful adieus, and dis- 
 appeared ; meanwhile the Queen scattered some fresh straw 
 over a mattress in the narrow chamber, and, laying over all a 
 sheet of singularly snowy hue, made her guest some apology for 
 the badness of his lodging; this King Cole interrupted, by a 
 most elaborately noisy yawn, and a declaration of extreme sleep- 
 iness. " Now, Lucy, let us leave the gentleman to what he 
 will like better than soft words, even from a queen. Good- 
 night, sir, we shall be stirring at daybreak"; and, with this 
 farewell, King Cole took the lady's arm, and retired with her 
 into an inner compartment of the caravan. 
 
 Left to himself, our hero looked round with surprise at the 
 exceeding neatness which reigned over the whole apartment.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 17 
 
 But what chiefly engrossed the attention of one to whose early 
 habits books had always been treasures, were several volumes, 
 ranged in comely shelves, fenced with wire-work, on either side 
 of the fireplace. "Courage," thought he, as he stretched him- 
 self on his humble couch, " my adventures have commenced 
 well; a gipsy tent, to be sure, is nothing very new, but a gipsy 
 who quotes poetry, and enjoys a modest wife, speaks better 
 than books do for the improvement of the world ! " 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Hath not old custom made this life more sweet 
 Than that of painted pomp ! " As You Like It. 
 
 THE sun broke cheerfully through the small lattice of the 
 caravan, as the youth opened his eyes, and saw the good- 
 humored countenance of his gipsy host bending over him com- 
 placently. 
 
 " You slept so soundly, sir, that I did not like to disturb you; 
 but my good wife only waits your rising to have all ready for 
 breakfast." 
 
 "It were a thousand pities," cried the guest, leaping from his 
 bed, " that so pretty a face should look cross on my account, 
 so I will not keep her waiting an instant." 
 
 The gipsy smiled, as he answered, " I require no professional 
 help from the devil, sir, to foretell your fortune." 
 
 " No ! and what is it ? " 
 
 " Honor, reputation, success, all that are ever won by a soft 
 tongue, if it be backed by a bold heart." 
 
 Bright and keen was the flash which shot over the counte- 
 nance of the one for whom this prediction was made, as he 
 listened to it with a fondness for which his reason rebuked him. 
 He turned aside with a sigh, which did not escape the gipsy, 
 and bathed his face in the water which the provident hand of 
 the good woman had set out for his lavations. 
 
 " Well," said the host, when the youth had finished his brief 
 toilet, " suppose we breathe the fresh air, while Lucy smooths 
 your bed, and prepares the breakfast." 
 
 " With all my heart," replied the youth, and they descended 
 the steps which led into the wood. It was a beautiful, fresh 
 morning, the air was like a draught from a Spirit's fountain, 
 and filled the heart with new youth, and the blood with a rap- 
 turous delight; the leaves the green, green leaves of spring
 
 i8 THE DISOWNED; 
 
 were quivering on the trees ; among which the happy birds 
 fluttered and breathed the gladness of their souls in song. 
 While the dewdrops that 
 
 " strewed 
 A baptism o'er the flowers " 
 
 gave back, in their million mirrors, the reflected smiles of the 
 cloudless and rejoicing sun. 
 
 " Nature," said the gypsy, "has bestov/ed on her children a 
 gorgeous present in such a morning." 
 
 " True," said the youth; " and you, of us two, perhaps, only 
 deserve it: as for me, when I think of the long road of dust, 
 heat, and toil, that lies before me, I could almost wish to stop 
 her and ask an admission into the gypsy's tents." 
 
 " You could not do a wiser thing ! " said the gypsy gravely. 
 
 " But fate leaves leaves me no choice," continued the youth, 
 as seriously as if he were in earnest; "and I must quit you 
 immediately after I have a second time tasted of your hospi- 
 table fare." 
 
 " If it must be so," answered the gypsy, " I will see you at least 
 a mile or two on your road." The youth thanked him for a 
 promise which his curiosity made acceptable, and they turned 
 once more to the caravan. 
 
 The meal, however obtained, met with as much honor as it 
 could possibly have received from the farmer from whom its 
 materials were borrowed. 
 
 It was not without complacency that the worthy pair beheld 
 the notice their guest lavished upon a fair, curly-headed boy of 
 about three years old, the sole child and idol of the gypsy po- 
 tentates. But they did not perceive, when the youth rose to 
 depart, that he slipped into the folds of the child's dress a ring 
 of some value, the only one he possessed. 
 
 " And now," said he, after having thanked his entertainers 
 for their hospitality, "I must say good by to your flock, and set 
 out upon my day's journey." 
 
 Lucy, despite her bashfulness, shook hands with her hand- 
 some guest, and the latter accompanied by the gypsy chief, 
 strolled down to the encampments. 
 
 Open and free was his parting farewell to the inmates of the 
 two tents, and liberal was the hand which showered upon all 
 especially on the damsel who had been his Thais of the even- 
 ing feast the silver coins which made no inconsiderable por- 
 tion of his present property. 
 
 It was amidst the oracular wishes and favorable predictions
 
 THE DISOWNED. 19 
 
 of the whole crew, that he recommenced his journey with the 
 gypsy chief. 
 
 When the tents were fairly out of sight, and not till then, 
 King Cole broke the silence which had as yet subsisted between 
 them. 
 
 "I suppose, my young gentleman, that you expect to meet 
 
 some of your friends or relations at W ? I know not what 
 
 they will say when they hear where you have spent the night." 
 
 " Indeed !" said the youth ; "whoever hears my adventures, 
 relation or not, will be delighted with my description ; but in 
 
 sober earnest, I expect to find no one at W more my friend 
 
 than a surly innkeeper, unless it be his dog." 
 
 " Why, they surely do not suffer a stripling of your youth 
 and evident quality to wander alone ! " cried King Cole, in un- 
 disguised surprise. 
 
 The young traveller made no prompt answer, but bent down 
 as if to pluck a wild flower which grew by the roadside : after 
 a pause, he said : 
 
 " Nay, Master Cole, you must not set me the example of play- 
 ing the inquisitor, or you cannot guess how troublesome I shall 
 be. To tell you truth, I am dying with curiosity to know some- 
 thing more about you than you may be disposed to tell me : you 
 have already confessed that, however boon companions your 
 gypsies may be, it is not among gypsies that you were born and 
 bred." 
 
 King Cole laughed : perhaps he was not ill pleased by the 
 curiosity of his guest, nor by the opportunity it afforded him of 
 being his own hero. 
 
 " My story, sir," said he, " would be soon told, if you thought 
 it worth the hearing, nor does it contain anything which should 
 prevent my telling it." 
 
 "If so," quoth the youth, "I shall conceive your satisfying 
 my request a still greater favor than those you have already be- 
 stowed upon me." 
 
 The gypsy relaxed his pace into an indolent saunter, as he 
 commenced : 
 
 " The first scene that I remember was similar to that which 
 you witnessed last night. The savage tent, and the green 
 moor the faggot blaze the eternal pot, with its hissing note 
 of preparation the old dame who tended it, and the ragged 
 urchins who learnt from its contents the first reward of theft, 
 and the earliest temptation to it all these are blended into 
 agreeable confusion as the primal impressions of my childhood. 
 The woman who nurtured me as my mother was rather capri-
 
 20 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 cious than kind, and my infancy passed away, like that of more 
 favored scions of fortune, in alternate chastisement and caresses. 
 In good truth, Kinching Meg had the shrillest voice and the 
 heaviest hand of the whole crew, and I cannot complain of in- 
 justice, since she treated me no worse than the rest. Notwith- 
 standing the irregularity of my education, I grew up strong and 
 healthy, and my reputed mother had taught me so much fear 
 for herself that she left me none for anything else ; accordingly, 
 I became bold, reckless, and adventurous, and at the age of 
 thirteen was as thorough a reprobate as the tribe could desire. 
 At that time a singular change befell me : we (that is my 
 mother and myself) were begging not many miles hence, at the 
 door of a rich man's house, in which the mistress lay on her 
 death-bed. That mistress was my real mother, from whom Meg 
 had stolen me in my first year of existence. Whether it was 
 through the fear of conscience, or the hope of reward, no sooner 
 had Meg learnt the dangerous state of my poor mother, the 
 constant grief which they said been the sole, though slow, cause 
 of her disease, and the large sums which had been repeatedly 
 offered for my recovery ; no sooner, I say, did Meg ascertain 
 all these particulars, than she fought her way up to the sick 
 chamber, fell on her knees before the bed, owned her crime, 
 and produced myself. Various little proofs of time, place, cir- 
 cumstance ; the clothing I had worn when stolen, and which 
 was still preserved, joined to the striking likeness I bore to both 
 my parents, especially to my father, silenced all doubt and in- 
 credulity ; I was welcomed home with a joy which it is in vain 
 to describe. My return seemed to recall my mother from the 
 grave ; she lingered on for many months longer than her physi- 
 cians thought it possible, and when she died, her last words com- 
 mended me to my father's protection. 
 
 " My surviving parent needed no such request. He lavished 
 upon me all that superfluity of fondness and food, of which 
 those good people who are resolved to spoil their children are 
 so prodigal. He could not bear the idea of sending me to 
 school ; accordingly he took a tutor for me, a simple-hearted, 
 gentle, kind man who possessed avast store of learning, rather 
 curious than useful. He was a tolerable, and at least an enthu- 
 siastic, antiquarian a more than tolerable poetaster ; and he 
 had a prodigious budget full of old ballads and songs, which he 
 loved better to teach and / to learn, than all the ' Latin, Greek, 
 geography, astronomy, and the use of the globes,' which my 
 poor father had so sedulously bargained for. 
 
 " Accordingly, I became exceedingly well-informed in all the
 
 THE DISOWNED. 21 
 
 'precious conceits ' and ' golden garlands' of our British an- 
 cients, and continued exceedingly ignorant of everything else, 
 save and except a few of the most fashionable novels of the 
 day, and the contents of six lying volumes of voyages and trav- 
 els, which flattered both my appetite for the wonderful and my 
 love of the adventurous. My studies, such as they were, were 
 not by any means suited to curb or direct the vagrant tastes my 
 childhood had acquired : on the contrary, the old poets, with 
 their luxurious description of the ' green wood,' and the forest 
 life ; the fashionable novelists, with their spirited accounts of 
 the wanderings of some fortunate rogue, and the ingenious trav- 
 ellers, with their wild fables, so dear to the imagination of every 
 boy, only fomented within me a strong though secret regret at 
 my change of life, and a restless disgust to the tame home and 
 bounded roamings to which I was condemned. When I was 
 about seventeen, my father sold his property (which he had be- 
 come possessed of in right of my mother), and transferred the 
 purchase-money to the security of the funds. Shortly after- 
 wards he died ; the bulk of his fortune became mine ; the re- 
 mainder was settled upon a sister, many years older than myself, 
 who, in consequence of her marriage and residence in a remote 
 part of Wales, I had never yet seen. 
 
 " Now, then, I was perfectly free and unfettered ; my guar- 
 dian lived in Scotland, and left me entirely to the guidance of 
 my tutor, who was both too simple and too indolent to resist 
 my inclinations. I went to London, became acquainted with 
 a set of most royal scamps, frequented the theaters, and the 
 taverns, the various resorts which constitute the gayeties of a 
 blood just above the middle class, and was one of the noisiest 
 and wildest 'blades' that ever heard 'the chimes by midnight,' 
 and the magistrate's lecture for matins. I was a sort of leader 
 among the jolly dogs I consorted with. My earlier education 
 gave a raciness and nature to my delineations of ' life,' which 
 delighted them. But somehow or other I grew wearied of this 
 sort of existence. About a year after I was of age, my fortune 
 was more than three parts spent ; I fell ill with drinking, and 
 grew dull with remorse ; need I add that my comrades left me 
 to myself ? A fit of the spleen, especially if accompanied with 
 duns, makes one wofully misanthropic ; so, when I recovered 
 from my illness, I set out on a tour through Great Britain and 
 France alone, and principally on foot. Oh, the rapture of 
 shaking off the half friends and cold formalities of society, and 
 finding oneself all unfettered, with no companion but nature, 
 no guide but youth, and no flatterer but hope !
 
 22 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " Well, my young friend, I travelled for two years, and saw, 
 even in that short time, enough of this busy world to weary and 
 disgust me with its ordinary customs. I was not made to be 
 polite, still less to be ambitious. I sighed after the coarse com- 
 rades and the free tents of my first associates, and a thousand 
 remembrances of the gipsy wanderings, steeped in all the green 
 and exhilarating colors of childhood, perpetually haunted my 
 mind. On my return from my wanderings, I found a letter 
 from my sister, who, having become a widow, had left Wales, 
 and had now fixed her residence in a well-visited watering- 
 place in the west of England. I had never yet seen her, and 
 her letter was a fine, lady-like sort of epistle, with a great deal 
 of romance and a very little sense, written in an extremely 
 pretty hand, and ending with a quotation from Pope. (I never 
 could endure Pope, nor indeed any of the poets of the days of 
 Anne and her successors.) It was a beautiful season of the 
 year ; I had been inured to pedestrian excursions, so I set off 
 on foot to see my nearest-surviving relative. On the way, I 
 fell in (though on a very different spot) with the very encamp- 
 ment you saw last night. By Heavens, that was a merry meet- 
 ing to me ; I joined, and journeyed with them for several days 
 never do I remember a happier time. Then, after many years 
 of bondage and stiffness, and accordance with the world, I 
 found myself at ease, like a released bird ; with what zest did I 
 join in the rude jokes and the knavish tricks, the stolen feasts 
 and the roofless nights of those careless vagabonds. 
 
 " I left my fellow-travellers at the entrance of the town where 
 my sister lived. Now came the contrast. Somewhat hot, rather 
 coarsely clad, and covered with the dust of a long summer's 
 day, I was ushered into a little drawing-room, eighteen feet by 
 twelve, as I was afterward somewhat pompously informed. A 
 flaunting carpet, green, red and yellow, covered the floor. A 
 full-length picture of a thin woman, looking most agreeably ill- 
 tempered, stared down at me from the chimney-piece; three 
 stuffed birds how emblematic of domestic life ! stood stiff 
 and imprisoned, even after death, in a glass cage. A fire-screen, 
 and a bright fireplace ; chairs covered with holland, to preserve 
 them from the atmosphere ; and long mirrors, wrapped as to 
 the framework, in yellow muslin, to keep off the flies, finish the 
 panorama of this watering-place mansion. The door opened 
 silks rustled voice shrieked ' My Brother ! ' and a figure a 
 thin figure the original of the picture over the chimney-piece 
 rushed in." 
 
 " I can well fancy her joy," said the youth.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 2$ 
 
 i " You can do no such thing, begging your pardon, sir," re- 
 sumed King Cole. " She had no joy at all : she was exceed- 
 ingly surprised and disappointed. In spite of my early adven- 
 tures, I had nothing picturesque or romantic about me at all. 
 I was very thirsty, and I called for beer; I was very tired, and 
 I lay down on the sofa ; I wore thick shoes, and small buckles ; 
 and my clothes were made, God knows where, and were cer- 
 tainly put on God knows how. My sister was miserably ashamed 
 of me ; she had not even the manners to disguise it. In a 
 higher rank of life than that which she held, she would have 
 suffered far less mortification ; for I fancy great people pay but 
 little real attention to externals. Even if a man of rank is vul- 
 gar, it makes no difference in the orbit in which he moves ; but 
 your 'genteel gentlewomen' are so terribly dependent upon 
 what Mrs. Tomkins will say so very uneasy about their rela- 
 tions, and the opinion they are held in and, above all, so 
 made up of appearances and clothes so undone if they do not 
 eat, drink, and talk ^-la-mode, that I can fancy no shame like 
 that of my poor sister at having found, and being found with, a 
 vulgar brother. 
 
 " I saw how unwelcome I was, and I did not punish myself 
 by a long visit. I left her house, and returned toward London. 
 On my road, I again met with my gypsy friends ; the warmth 
 of their welcome enchanted me you may guess the rest. I 
 stayed with them so long that I could not bear to leave them ; 
 I re-entered their crew : I am one among them. Not that I 
 have become altogether and solely of the tribe: I still leave 
 them whenever the whim seizes me, and repair to the great 
 cities and thoroughfares of man. There I am soon driven back 
 again to my favorite and fresh fields, as a reed upon a wild 
 stream is dashed back upon the green rushes from which it has 
 been torn. You perceive that I have many comforts and dis- 
 tinctions above the rest ; for, alas, sir, there is no society, how- 
 ever free and democratic, where wealth will not create an aris- 
 tocracy ; the remnant of my fortune provides me with my un- 
 ostentatious equipage, and the few luxuries it contains ; it repays 
 secretly to the poor what my fellow-vagrants occasionally filch 
 from them ; it allows me to curb among the crew all the grosser 
 and heavier offences against the law to which want might other- 
 wise compel them ; and it serves to keep up that sway and as- 
 cendancy which my superior education and fluent spirits en- 
 abled me at first to attain. Though not legally their king, I 
 assume that title over the few encampments with which I am 
 accustomed to travel, and you perceive that I have given my
 
 24 THE 
 
 simple name both to the jocular and kingly dignity of which 
 the old song will often remind you. My story is done." 
 
 " Not quite," said his companion : "your wife? How came 
 you by that blessing?" 
 
 "Ah! thereby hangs a pretty and a love-sick tale, which 
 would not sound ill in an ancient ballad ; but I will content 
 myself with briefly sketching it. Lucy is the daughter of a 
 gentleman farmer ; about four years ago I fell in love with her. 
 I wooed her clandestinely, and at last I owned I was a gypsy ; 
 I did not add my birth nor fortune no, I was full of the ro- 
 mance of the Nut-brown Maid's lover, and attempted a trial of 
 woman's affection, which even in these days was not disap- 
 pointed. Still her father would not consent to our marriage, 
 till very luckily things went bad with him ; corn, crops, cattle 
 the deuce was in them all ; an execution was in his house, and 
 a writ out against his person. I settled these matters for him, 
 and in return received a father-in-law's blessing, and we are 
 now the best friends in the world. Poor Lucy is perfectly 
 reconciled to her caravan, and her wandering husband, and has 
 never, I believe, once repented the day on which she became 
 the gypsy's wife ! " 
 
 " I thank you heartily for your history," said the youth, who 
 had listened very attentively to this detail ; "and though my 
 happiness and pursuits are centred in that world which you 
 despise, yet I confess that I feel a sensation very like envy at 
 your singular choice ; and I would not dare to ask of my heart 
 whether that choice is not happier, as it is certainly more philo- 
 sophical, than mine." 
 
 They had now reached a part of the road where the country 
 assumed a totally different character ; the woods and moors 
 were no longer visible, but a broad and somewhat bleak extent 
 of country lay before them. Here and there only a few soli- 
 tary trees broke the uniformity of the wide fields and scanty 
 hedge-rows, and at distant intervals the thin spires of the scat- 
 tered churches rose like the prayers, of which they were the 
 symbols, to mingle themselves with heaven. 
 
 The gypsy paused : " I will accompany you," said he, " no 
 farther : your way lies straight onwards, and you will reach 
 W before noon ; farewell, and may God watch over you !" 
 
 " Farewell !" said the youth warmly pressing the hand which 
 was extended to him. "If we ever meet again, it will probably 
 solve a curious riddle, viz., whether you are not disgusted with 
 the caravan, and / with the world ! " 
 
 "The latter is more likely than the former," said the gypsy,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 25 
 
 *' for one stands a much greater chance of being disgusted with 
 others than with oneself ; so changing a little the old lines, I 
 will wish you adieu after my own fashion, viz., in verse : 
 
 ' Go, set thy heart on winged wealth, 
 
 Or unto honor's towers aspire : 
 But give me freedom and my health, 
 And there's the sum of my desire ! ' " 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The letter, Madam have you none for me ? The Rendezvous. 
 Provide surgeons. The Lover's Progress. 
 
 OUR solitary traveller pursued his way with the light step, and 
 gay spirits, of youth and health. 
 
 "Turn gypsy, indeed ! " he said, talking to himself ; "there 
 is something better in store for me than that. Ay, I have all 
 the world before me where to choose not my place of rest. 
 No, many a long year will pass away ere any place of rest will 
 be my choice ! I wonder whether I shall find the letter at 
 
 W ; the letter, the last letter I shall ever have from home : 
 
 but it is no home to me now ; and / /, insulted, reviled, 
 trampled upon, without even a name ! Well, well, I will earn a 
 still faiier one than that of my forefathers. They shall be proud 
 to own me yet." And with these words the speaker broke off 
 abruptly, with a swelling chest and a flashing eye ; and as, an 
 unknown and friendless adventurer, he gazed on the expanded 
 and silent country around him, he felt, like Castruccio Cas- 
 trucani, that he could stretch his hands to the east and to the 
 west, and exclaim, " Oh, that my power kept pace with my 
 spirit, then should it grasp the corners of the earth." 
 
 The road wound atlast from the champaign country, through 
 which it had for some miles extended itself, into a narrow lane, 
 girded on either side by a dead fence. As the youth entered 
 this lane, he was somewhat startled by the abrupt appearance 
 of a horseman, whose steed leaped the hedge so close to our 
 hero as almost to endanger his safety. The rider, a gentleman 
 of about five-and-twenty, pulled up, and in a tone of great 
 courtesy, apologized for his inadvertency ; the apology was 
 readily admitted, and the horseman rode onwards in the direc- 
 tion of W . 
 
 Trifling as this incident was, the air and mien of the stranger 
 were sufficient to arrest, irresistibly, the thoughts of the young
 
 26 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 traveller ; and before they had flowed into a fresh channel he 
 found himself in the town, arid at the door of the inn to which 
 his expedition was bound. He entered the bar ; a buxom 
 landlady and a still more buxom daughter, were presiding over 
 the spirits of the place. 
 
 " You have some boxes and a letter for me, I believe," said 
 the young gentleman to the comely hostess. 
 
 " To you, sir ! the name, if you please ?" 
 
 " To to to C L ," said the youth ; "the initials C. L., 
 to be left till called for." 
 
 " Yes, sir, we have some luggage came last night by the 
 van, and a letter besides, sir, to C. L. also." 
 
 The daughter lifted her large dark eyes at the handsome 
 stranger, and felt a wonderful curiosity to know what the 
 letter to C. L. could possibly be about ; meanwhile mine 
 hostess, raising her hand to a shelf on which stood an Indian 
 slop-basin, the great ornament of the bar at the Golden 
 Fleece, brought from its cavity a well-folded and well-sealed 
 epistle. 
 
 " That is it," cried the youth ; " show me a private room 
 instantly." 
 
 " What can he want a private room for ? " thought the land- 
 lady's daughter. 
 
 " Show the gentleman to the Griffin, No. 4, John Merrylack," 
 said the landlady herself. 
 
 With an impatient step the owner of the letter followed a 
 slipshod and marvellously unwashed waiter into No. 4 a small, 
 square asylum for town travellers, country yeomen, and "single 
 gentlemen " ; presenting on the one side, an admirable engraving 
 of the Marquis of Granby, and on the other an equally delight- 
 ful view of the stable yard. 
 
 Mr. C. L. flung himself on a chair (there were only four 
 chairs in No. 4), watched the waiter out of the room, seized his 
 letter, broke open the seal, and read yea, reader, you shall 
 read it too as follows : 
 
 '' Inclosed is the sum to which you are entitled ; remember, 
 that it is all which you can ever claim at my hands ; remember, 
 also, thatjw/ have made the choice which, now, nothing can 
 persuade me to alter. Be the name you have so long iniquit- 
 ously borne henceforth and always forgotten ; upon that con- 
 dition you may yet hope, from my generosity, the future assist- 
 ance which you must want, but which you could not ask from 
 my affection. Equally, by my heart and my reason, you are 
 for ever DISOWNED."
 
 THE DISOWNED. $7 
 
 The letter fell from the reader's hands. He took up the en- 
 closure ; it was an order payable in London for ^1000 ; to 
 him it seemed like the rental of the Indies. 
 
 "Be it so ! " he said aloud, and slowly ; "be it so ! With 
 this will I carve my way ; many a name in history was built 
 upon a worse foundation ! " 
 
 With these words he carefully put up the money, re-read the 
 brief note which enclosed it, tore the latter into pieces, and 
 then, going towards the aforesaid view of the stable-yard, threw 
 open the window and leant out, apparently in earnest admira- 
 tion of two pigs, which marched, gruntingly, towards him, one 
 goat regaling himself upon a cabbage, and a broken-winded, 
 emaciated horse, which having just been, what the ostler called, 
 " rubbed down," was just going to be, what the ostler called," fed." 
 
 While engaged in this interesting survey, the clatter of hoofs 
 was suddenly heard upon the rough pavement a bell rang a 
 dog barked the pigs grunted the ostler ran out, and the 
 stranger, whom our hero had before met on the road, trotted 
 into the yard. 
 
 It was evident from the obsequiousness of the attendants, 
 that the horseman was a personage of no mean importance ; 
 and indeed there was something singularly distinguished and 
 high-bred in his air and carriage. 
 
 " Who can that be ? " said the youth, as the horseman, having 
 dismounted, turned towards the door of the inn : the question 
 was readily answered "There goes pride and poverty ! " said 
 the ostler " Here comes Squire Mordaunt ! " said the landlady. 
 
 At the further end of the stable-yard, through a narrow gate, 
 the youth caught a glimpse of the green sward and springing 
 flowers of a small garden. Wearied with the sameness of No. 
 4, rather than with his journey, he sauntered towards the said 
 gate, and, seating himself in a small arbor within the garden, 
 surrendered himself to reflection. 
 
 The result of this self-conference was a determination to 
 leave the Golden Fleece by the earliest conveyance which went 
 to that great object and emporium of all his plans and thoughts, 
 London. As, full of this resolution, and buried in the dream 
 which it conjured up, he was returning with downcast eyes and 
 unheeding steps through the stable-yard, to the delights of No. 
 4, he was suddenly accosted by a loud and alarmed voice : v 
 
 " For God's sake, sir, look out, or " 
 
 The sentence was broken off, tne intended warning came too 
 late, our hero staggered back a few steps, and fell, stunned and 
 motionless, against the stable door. Unconsciously he had
 
 28 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 passed just behind the heels of the stranger's horse, which, 
 being by no means in good humor with the clumsy manoeuvres 
 of his Shampooer, the ostler, had taken advantage of the oppor- 
 tunity presented to him of working off his irritability, and had 
 consequently inflicted a severe kick upon the right shoulder of 
 Mr. C. L. 
 
 The stranger, honored by the landlady with the name and 
 title of Squire Mordaunt was in the yard at the moment. He 
 hastened towards the sufferer, who, as yet, was scarcely sensible, 
 and led him into the house. The surgeon of the village was 
 sent for, and appeared. This disciple of Galen, commonly 
 known by the name of Jeremiah Bossolton, was a gentleman 
 considerably more inclined to breadth than length. He was 
 exactly five feet one inch in height, but thick and solid as a 
 milestone ; a wig of modern cut, carefully curled and powdered, 
 gave somewhat of a modish, and therefore unseemly, grace, to 
 a solemn eye ; a mouth drawn down at the corners ; a nose 
 that had something in it exceedingly consequential ; eyebrows 
 sage and shaggy ; ears large and fiery ; and a chin that would 
 have done honor to a mandarin. Now Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton 
 had a certain peculiarity of speech to which I fear I shall find 
 it difficult to do justice. Nature had impressed upon his mind 
 a prodigious love of the grandiloquent ; Mr. Bossolton, there- 
 fore disdained the exact language of the vulgar, and built unto 
 himself a lofty fabric of words in which his sense managed very 
 frequently to lose itself. Moreover, upon beginning a sentence 
 , of peculiar dignity, Mr. Bossolton was, it must be confessed, 
 sometimes at a loss to conclude it in a period worthy of the 
 commencement ; and this caprice of nature, which had endowed 
 him with more words than thoughts (necessity is, indeed, the 
 mother of invention), drove him into a very ingenious method 
 of remedying the deficiency ; this was simply the plan of re- 
 peating the sense by inverting the sentence. 
 
 " How long a period of time," said Mr. Bossolton, "has 
 elapsed since this deeply-to-be-regretted and seriously-to-be- 
 investigated accident occurred?" 
 
 " Not many minutes," said Mordaunt : " make no further 
 delay, I beseech you, but examine the arm ; it is not broken, 
 I trust ? " 
 
 " In this world, Mr. Mordaunt," said the practitioner, bowing 
 very low, for the person he addressed was of the most ancient 
 lineage in the county, " in this world, Mr. Mordaunt, even at 
 the earliest period of civilization, delay in matters of judgment 
 has ever been considered of such vital importance, and and
 
 THE DISOWNED. 29 
 
 such important vitality, that we find it inculcated in the pro- 
 verbs of the Greeks, and the sayings of the Chaldeans, as a 
 principle of the most expedient utility, and and the most 
 useful expediency ! " 
 
 " Mr. Bossolton," said Mordaunt, in a tone of remarkable and 
 even artificial softness and civility," have the kindness immedi- 
 ately to examine this gentleman's bruises." 
 
 Mr. Bossolton looked up to the calm but haughty face of the 
 speaker, and, without a moment's hesitation, proceeded to 
 handle the arm, which was already stripped for his survey. 
 
 " It frequently occurs," said Mr. Bossolton, " in the course 
 of my profession, that the forcible, sudden, and vehement ap- 
 plication of any hard substance, like the hoof of a quadruped, 
 to the soft, tender, and carniferous parts of the human frame, 
 such as the arm, occasions a pain, a pang, I should rather say, 
 of the intensest acuteness, and and of the acutest intensity." 
 
 " Pray, Mr. Bossolton, is the bone broken ? " asked Mor- 
 daunt. 
 
 By this time the patient who had been hitherto in that 
 languor which extreme pain always produces at first, especially 
 on young frames, was sufficiently recovered to mark and reply 
 to the kind solicitude of the last speaker : " I thank you sir," 
 said he with a smile, "for your anxiety, but I feel that the 
 bone is not broken, the muscles are a little hurt that is all." 
 
 "Young gentleman," said Mr. Bossolton, "you must permit 
 me to say that they who have all their lives been employed in 
 the pursuit, and the investigation, and the analysis of certain 
 studies, are, in general, better acquainted with those studies 
 than they who have neither given them any importance of con- 
 sideration ; nor nor any consideration of importance. Es- 
 tablishing this as my hypothesis, I shall now proceed to 
 
 "Apply immediate remedies, if you please, Mr. Bossolton," 
 interrupted Mr. Mordaunt, in that sweet and honied tone which 
 somehow or other always silenced even the garrulous practi- 
 tioner. 
 
 Driven into taciturnity, Mr. Bossolton again inspected the 
 arm, and proceeded to urge the application of liniments and 
 bandages, which he promised to prepare with the most solici- 
 tudinous dispatch, and the most dispatchful solicitude.
 
 30 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 41 Your name, Sir ! 
 
 Ha ! my name, you say my name ? 
 Tis well my name is nay, I must consider." PedrHlo. 
 
 THIS accident occasioned a delay of some days in the plans 
 of the young gentleman, for whom we trust, very soon, both 
 for our own convenience, and that of our reader, to find a fit- 
 ting appellation. 
 
 Mr. Mordaunt, after seeing every attention paid to him, 
 both surgical and hospitable, took his departure with a promise 
 to call the next day ; leaving behind him a strong impression 
 of curiosity and interest to serve our hero as some mental oc- 
 cupation until his return. The bonny landlady came up in a 
 new cap, with blue ribbons, in the course of the evening, to 
 pay a visit of inquiry to the handsome patient, who was re- 
 moved from the Griffin, No. 4, to the Dragon, No. 8 a room 
 whose merits were exactly in proportion to its number, viz, 
 twice as great as those of No. 4. 
 
 "Well, sir," said Mrs. Taptape, with a courtesy, " I trust you 
 find yourself better." 
 
 "At this moment I do," said the gallant youth, with a signifi- 
 cant air. 
 
 " Hem," quoth the landlady. 
 
 A pause ensued. In spite of the compliment, a certain sus- 
 picion suddenly darted across the mind of the hostess. Strong 
 as are the prepossessions of the sex, those of the profession are 
 much stronger. 
 
 " Honest folk," thought the landlady, " don't travel with 
 their initials only ; the last 'Whitehall Evening,' was full of 
 shocking accounts of swindlers and cheats ; and I gave nine 
 pounds odd shillings for the silver tea-pot John has brought him 
 up as if the delf one was not good enough for a foot-traveller ! " 
 
 Pursuing these ideas, Mrs. Taptape, looking bashfully down, 
 said : 
 
 "By-the-by, sir, Mr. Bossolton asked me what name he 
 should put down in his book for the medicines ; what would 
 you please me to say, sir?" 
 
 "Mr. who?" said the youth, elevating his eyebrows. 
 
 " Mr. Bossolton, sir, the apothecary." 
 
 " Oh ! Bossolton ! very odd name that not near so pretty 
 as dear me, what a beautiful cap that is of yours! " said the 
 young gentleman.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 3! 
 
 "Lord, sir, do you think so? the ribbon is pretty enough; 
 but but, as I was saying, what name shall I tell Mr. Bossol- 
 ton to put in his book?" This, thought Mrs. Taptape, is 
 coming to the point. 
 
 "Well," said the youth slowly, and as if in a profound re- 
 verie, " well Bossolton is certainly the most singular name I 
 ever heard ; he does right to put it in a book it is quite a 
 curiosity ! is he clever?" 
 
 " Very, sir," said the landlady, somewhat sharply ; " but 
 it is your name, not his that he wishes to put into his 
 book." 
 
 " Mine ! " said the youth who appeared to have been seek- 
 ing to gain time in order to answer a query which most men 
 find requires very little deliberation " Mine, you say ; my 
 name is Linden Clarence Linden you understand ! " 
 
 " What a pretty name ! " thought the landlady's daughter, 
 who was listening at the keyhole ; "but how could he admire 
 that odious cap of Ma's ! " 
 
 "And, now, landlady, I wish you would send up my boxes ; 
 and get me a newspaper, if you please." 
 
 "Yes, sir," said the landlady, and she rose to retire. 
 
 "I do not think," said the youth to himself, "that I could 
 have hit on a prettier name and so novel a one too ! Clarence 
 Linden why, if I were that pretty girl at the bar I could fall 
 in love with the very words. Shakespeare was quite wrong 
 when he said : 
 
 " 'A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.' 
 
 A rose by any name would not smell as sweet ; if a rose's 
 name was Jeremiah Bossolton, for instance, it would not, to 
 my nerves, at least, smell of anything but an apothecary's 
 shop ! " 
 
 When Mordaunt called the next morning, he found Clarence 
 much better, and carelessly turning over various books, part 
 of the contents of the luggage superscribed C. L. A book of 
 whatever description was among the few companions for whom 
 Mordaunt had neither fastidiousness nor reserve ; and the sym- 
 pathy of taste between him and the sufferer gave rise to a 
 conversation less cold and commonplace than it might other- 
 wise have been. And when Mordaunt, after a stay of some 
 length, rose to depart, he pressed Linden to return his visit be- 
 fore he left that part of the country ; his place he added, was 
 
 only about five miles distant from W . Linden, greatly 
 
 interested in his visitor, was not slow in accepting the invita-
 
 32 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 tion, and, perhaps, for the first time in his life, Mordaunt was 
 shaking hands with a stranger he had only known two days. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " While yet a child, and long before his time 
 He had perceived the presence and the power 
 
 Of greatness. 
 
 ***** 
 
 But eagerly he read, and read again. 
 
 * ' * * * * 
 
 Yet still uppermost 
 Nature was at his heart, as if he felt, 
 Though yet he knew not how, a wasting power 
 In all things that from her sweet influence 
 Might seek to wean him. Therefore with her hues, 
 Her forms, and with the spirit of her forms, 
 He clothed the nakedness of austere truth." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 ALGERNON MORDAUNT was the last son of an old and 
 honorable race, which had centuries back numbered princes in 
 its line. His parents had had many children, but all (save 
 Algernon, the youngest) died in their infancy. His mother 
 perished in giving him birth. Constitutional infirmity, and the 
 care Of mercenary nurses, contributed to render Algernon a 
 weakly and delicate child; hence came a taste for loneliness 
 and a passion for study ; and from these sprung, on the one 
 hand, the fastidiousness and reserve, which render us apparently 
 unamiable, and, on the other, the loftiness of spirit and the 
 kindness of heart, which are the best and earliest gifts of liter- 
 ature, and more than counterbalance our deficiencies in the 
 " minor morals " due to society by their tendency to increase 
 our attention to the greater ones belonging to mankind. Mr. 
 Mordaunt was a man of luxurious habits and gambling propen- 
 sities ; wedded to London, he left the house of his ancestors to 
 moulder into desertion and decay ; but to this home, Algernon 
 was constantly consigned during his vacations from school ; 
 and its solitude and cheerlessness gave to a disposition natu- 
 rally melancholy and thoughtful, those colors which subse- 
 quent events were calculated to deepen, not efface. 
 
 Truth obliges us to state, despite our partiality to Mordaunt, 
 that, when he left his school, after a residence of six years, it 
 was with the bitter distinction of having been the most unpop- 
 ular boy in it. Why, nobody could exactly explain, for his
 
 THE DISOWNED. 33 
 
 severest enemies could not accuse him of ill nature, cowardice, 
 or avarice, and these make the three capital offences of a school- 
 boy ; but Algernon Mordaunt had already acquired the knowl- 
 edge of himself, and could explain the cause, though with a 
 bitter and swelling heart. His ill health, his long residence at 
 home, his unfriended and almost orphan situation, his early 
 habits of solitude and reserve, all these, so calculated to make 
 the spirit shrink within itself, made him, on his entrance at 
 school, if not unsocial, appear so : this was the primary reason 
 of his unpopularity ; the second was that he perceived, for he 
 was sensitive (and consequently acute) to the extreme, the mis- 
 fortune of his manner, and in his wish to rectify it, it became 
 doubly unprepossessing; to reserve, it now added embarrass- 
 ment, to coldness gloom ; and the pain he felt in addressing or 
 being addressed by another, was naturally and necessarily re- 
 ciprocal, for the effects of sympathy are nowhere so wonderful 
 yet so invisible, as in the manners. 
 
 By degrees he shunned the intercourse which had for him 
 nothing but distress, and his volatile acquaintances were 
 perhaps the first to set him the example. Often in his 
 solitary walks he stopped afar off to gaze upon the sports, 
 which none ever solicited him to share ; and as the shout of 
 laughter and of happy hearts came, peal after peal, upon his 
 ear, he turned enviously, yet not malignantly, away, with tears 
 which not all his pride could curb, and muttered to himself, 
 " And these, these hate me ! " 
 
 There are two feelings common to all high or affectionate 
 natures, that of extreme susceptibility to opinion, and that of 
 extreme bitterness at its injustice. These feelings were Mor- 
 daunt's ; but the keen edge which one blow injures, the repeti- 
 tion blunts : and by little and little, Algernon became not only 
 accustomed, but, as he persuaded himself, indifferent, to his 
 want of popularity ; his step grew more lofty, and his address 
 more collected, and that which was once diffidence gradually 
 hardened into pride. 
 
 His residence at the university was neither without honor nor 
 profit. A college life was then, as now, either the most retired 
 or the most social of all others ; we need scarcely say which it 
 was to Mordaunt, but his was the age when solitude is desir- 
 able, and when the closet forms the mind better than the world. 
 Driven upon itself, his intellect became inquiring, and its re- 
 sources profound ; admitted to their inmost recesses, he revelled 
 among the treasures of ancient lore, and in his dreams of the 
 Nymph and Naiad, or his researches after truth in the deep
 
 34 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 wells of the Stagyrite or the golden fountains of Plato, he forgot 
 the loneliness of his lot, and exhausted the hoarded enthusiasm 
 of his soul. 
 
 But his mind, rather thoughtful than imaginative, found no 
 idol like " Divine Philosophy." It delighted to plunge itself into 
 the mazes of metaphysical investigation to trace the springs 
 of the intellect to connect the arcana of the universe to 
 descend into the darkest caverns, or to wind through the 
 minutest mysteries of nature, and rise, step by step, to that ardu- 
 ous elevation on which Thought stands dizzy and confused, 
 looking beneath upon a clouded earth, and above, upon an un- 
 fathomable heaven. 
 
 Rarely wandering from his chamber, known personally to few, 
 and intimately by none, Algernon yet left behind him at the 
 university the most remarkable reputation of his day. He had 
 obtained some of the highest of academical honors, and by that 
 proverbial process of vulgar minds which ever frames the mag- 
 nificent from the unknown, the seclusion in which he lived, 
 and the recondite nature of his favorite pursuits, attached to 
 his name a still greater celebrity and interest than all the ortho- 
 dox and regular dignities he had acquired. There are few men 
 who do not console themselves for not being generally loved, 
 if they can reasonably hope that they are generally esteemed. 
 Mordaunt had now grown reconciled to himself and to his kind. 
 He had opened to his interest a world in his own breast, and 
 it consoled him for his mortification in the world without. 
 But, better than this, his habits as well as studies had strength- 
 ened the principles and confirmed the nobility of his mind. 
 He was not, it is true, more kind, more benevolent, more upright 
 than before ; but those virtues now emanated from principle 
 not emotion : and principle to the mind is what a free consti- 
 tution is to a people : without that principle, or that free con- 
 stitution, the one may be for the moment as good the other 
 as happy, but we cannot tell how long the goodness and the 
 happiaess will continue. 
 
 On leaving the university, his father sent for him to London. 
 He stayed there a short time, and mingled partially in its festiv- 
 ities ; but the pleasures of English dissipation have for a cen- 
 tury been the same, heartless without gayety, and dull without 
 refinement. Nor could Mordaunt, the most fastidious yet 
 Avarm-hearted of human beings, reconcile either his tastes or 
 his affections to the cold insipidities of patrician society. His 
 father's habits and evident distresses deepened his disgust to 
 his situation ; for the habits were incurable, and the distresses
 
 THE DISOWNED. 35 
 
 increasing ; and nothing but a circumstance, which Mordaunt 
 did not then understand, prevented the final sale of an estate, 
 already little better than a pompous incumbrance. 
 
 It was therefore with the half-painful, half-pleasurable sen- 
 sation, with which we avoid contemplating a ruin we cannot pre- 
 vent, that Mordaunt set out upon that continental tour deemed 
 then so necessary a part of education. His father, on taking 
 leave of him, seemed deeply affected. " Go my son," said he, 
 " may God bless you, and not punish me too severely. I have 
 wronged you deeply, and I cannot bear to look upon your 
 face." 
 
 To these words Algernon attached a general, but they cloaked 
 a peculiar, meaning : in three years he returned to England 
 his father had been dead some months, and the signification of 
 his parting address was already deciphered but of this here- 
 after. 
 
 In his travels, Mordaunt encountered an Englishman, whose 
 name I will not yet mention ; a person of great reputed wealth 
 a merchant, yet a man of pleasure a voluptuary in life, yet 
 a saint in reputation or, to abstain from the antithetical anal- 
 ysis of a character, which will not be corporeally presented 
 to the reader, till our tale is considerably advanced one who 
 drew from nature a singular combination of shrewd, but false 
 conclusions, and a peculiar philosophy destined hereafter to 
 contrast the colors, and prove the practical utility, of that which 
 was espoused by Mordaunt. 
 
 There can be no education in which the lessons of the world 
 do not form a share. Experience, in expanding Algernon's 
 powers, had ripened his virtues. Nor had the years which had 
 converted knowledge into wisdoni failed in imparting polish to 
 refinement. His person had acquired a greater grace, and his 
 manners an easier dignity than before. His noble and gener- 
 ous mind had worked its impress upon his features and his 
 mien ; and those who could overcome the first coldness and 
 shrinking hauteur of his address found it required no minute 
 examination to discover the real expression of the eloquent 
 eye and the kindling lip. 
 
 He had not been long returned, before he found two enemies 
 to his tranquillity the one was love, the other appeared in the 
 more formidable guise of a claimant to his estate. Before Al- 
 gernon was aware of the nature of the latter, he went to con- 
 sult with his lawyer. 
 
 " If the claim be just, I shall not, of course, proceed to 
 law," said Mordaunt.
 
 36 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " But without the estate, sir, you have nothing ! " 
 
 " True," said Algernon, calmly. 
 
 But the claim was not just, and to law he went. 
 
 In this law-suit, however, he had one assistant, in an old rela* 
 tion, who had seen, indeed, but very little of him, but who com- 
 passionated his circumstances, and above all hated his oppo- 
 nent. This relation was rich and childless ; and there were 
 not wanting those who predicted that his money would ulti- 
 mately discharge the mortgages, and repair the house, of 
 the young representative of the Mordaunt honors. But the 
 old kinsman was obstinate self-willed and under the abso- 
 lute dominion of patrician pride ; and it was by no means im- 
 probable that the independence of Mordaunt's character would 
 soon create a disunion between them, by clashing against the 
 peculiarities of his relation's temper. 
 
 It was a clear and sunny morning when Linden, tolerably 
 recovered of his hurt, set out upon a sober and aged pony 
 which after some natural pangs of shame, he had hired of his 
 landlord, to Mordaunt Court. 
 
 Mordaunt's house was situated in the midst of a wild and ex- 
 tensive park, surrounded with woods, and interspersed with 
 trees of the stateliest growth, now scattered into irregular 
 groups, now marshalled into sweeping avenues ; while ever and 
 anon, Linden caught glimpses of a rapid and brawling rivulet, 
 which, in many a slight but sounding waterfall, gave a music 
 strange and spirit-like to the thick copses and forest glades 
 through which it went exulting on its way. The deer lay half 
 concealed by the fern among which they crouched, turning 
 their stately crests towards the stranger, but not stirring from 
 their rest ; while from the Summit of beeches which would 
 have shamed the pavilion of Tityrus, the rooks' those monks 
 of the feathered people were loud in their confused, but not 
 displeasing, confabulations. 
 
 As Linden approached the house, he was struck with the 
 melancholy air of desolation which spread over and around 
 it : fragments of stone, above which clomb the rank weed, 
 insolently proclaiming the triumph of nature's meanest off- 
 spring over the wrecks of art ; a moat dried up, a railing once 
 of massy gilding, intended to fence a lofty terrace on the right 
 from the incursions of the deer, but which, shattered and de- 
 cayed, now seemed to ask, with the satirist : 
 
 " To what end did our lavish ancestors, 
 Erect of old these stalely piles of ours?"
 
 THE DISOWNED. 37 
 
 ^a chapel on the left, perfectly in ruins, all appeared strik- 
 ingly to denote that time had outstript fortune, and that the 
 years, which alike hallow and destroy, had broken the conse- 
 quence, in deepening the antiquity, of the House of Mordaunt. 
 
 The building itself agreed but too well with the tokens of 
 decay around it ; most of the windows were shut up, and the 
 shutters of dark oak, richly gilt, contrasted forcibly with the 
 shatttered panes and mouldered framing of the glass. It was 
 a house of irregular architecture. Originally built in the fif- 
 teenth century, it had received its last improvement, with the 
 most lavish expense, during the reign of Anne ; and it united 
 the Gallic magnificence of the latter period with the strength 
 and grandeur of the former ; it was in a great part overgrown 
 with ivy, and where that insidious ornament had not reached, the 
 signs of decay, and even ruin, were fully visible. The sun it- 
 self, bright and cheering as it shone over nature, making the 
 green sod glow like emeralds, and the rivulet flash in its beam, 
 like one of those streams of real light imagined by Swedenborg 
 in his visions of heaven, and clothing tree and fell, brake and 
 hillock, with the lavish hues of infant summer, the sun it- 
 self only made more desolate, because more conspicuous, the 
 venerable fabric which the youthful traveller frequently paused 
 more accurately to survey, and its laughing and sportive beams 
 playing over chink and crevice seemed almost as insolent and 
 untimeous as the mirth of the young, mocking the silent grief 
 of some gray-headed and solitary mourner. 
 
 Clarence had now reached the porch, and the sound of the 
 shrill bell he touched rung with a strange note throughout the 
 general stillness of the place. A single servant appeared, and 
 ushered Clarence through a screen hall, hung round with relics 
 of armor, and ornamented on the side opposite the music 
 gallery with a solitary picture of gigantic size, exhibiting the 
 full length of the gaunt person and sable steed of that Sir 
 Piers de Mordaunt who had so signalized himself in the field 
 in which Henry of Richmond changed his coronet for a crown. 
 Through this hall Clarence was led to a small chamber clothed 
 with uncouth and tattered arras, in which, seemingly immersed 
 in papers, he found the owner of the domain. 
 
 "Your studies," said Linden, after the salutations of the 
 day, "seem to harmonize with the venerable antiquity of your 
 home"; and he pointed to the crabbed characters and faded 
 ink of the papers on the table. 
 
 "So they ought," answered Mordaunt, with a faint smile; 
 "for they are called from their quiet archives in order to sup
 
 38 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 port my struggle for that home. But I fear the struggle is in 
 vain, and that the quibbles of law will transfer into other hands a 
 possession I am foolish enough to value the more from my ina- 
 bility to maintain it." 
 
 Something of this Clarence had before learnt from the com- 
 municative gossip of his landlady ; and less desirous of satis- 
 fying his curiosity than to lead the conversation from a topic 
 which he felt must be so unwelcome to Mordaunt, he expressed 
 a wish to see the state apartments of the house. With some- 
 thing of shame at the neglect they had necessarily experienced, 
 and something of pride at the splendor which no neglect could 
 efface, Mordaunt yielded to the request, and led the way up a 
 staircase of black oak, the walls and ceiling of which were 
 covered with frescos of Italian art, to a suite of apartments in 
 which time and dust seemed the only tenants. Lingeringly did 
 Clarence gaze upon the rich velvet, the costly mirrors, the 
 motley paintings of a hundred ancestors, and the antique cabi- 
 nets, containing, among the most hoarded relics of the Mordaunt 
 race, curiosities which the hereditary enthusiasm of a line 
 of cavaliers had treasured as the most sacred of heirlooms, 
 and which even to the philosophical mind of Mordaunt pos- 
 sessed a value he did not seek too minutely to analyze. Here 
 was the goblet from which the first prince of Tudor had drunk 
 after the field of Bosworth. Here the ring with which the 
 chivalrous Francis the First had rewarded a signal feat of that 
 famous Robert de Mordaunt, who, as a poor but adventurous 
 cadet of the house, had brought to the "first gentleman of 
 France " the assistance of his sword. Here was the glove 
 which Sir Walter had received from the royal hand of Elizabeth, 
 and worn in the lists upon a crest which the lance of no antagonist 
 in that knightly court could abase. And here more sacred 
 than all, because connected with the memory of misfortune, 
 was a small box of silver which the last king of a fated line had 
 placed in the hands of the gray-headed descendant of that Sir 
 Walter after the battle of the Boyne, saying, " Keep this, Sir 
 Everard Mordaunt, for the sake of one who has purchased the 
 luxury of gratitude at the price of a throne ! " 
 
 As Clarence glanced from these relics to the figure of Mor- 
 daunt, who stood at a little distance leaning against the window 
 with arms folded on his breast, and with eyes abstractedly 
 wandering over the noble woods and extended park, which 
 spread below, he could not but feel that if birth had indeed 
 the power of setting its seal upon the form, it was never more 
 conspicuous than in the broad front and lofty air of the last
 
 THE DISOWNED. 39 
 
 descendant of the race by whose memorials he was surrounded. 
 Touched by the fallen fortunes of Mordaunt, and interested 
 by the uncertainty which the chances of law threw over his 
 future fate, Clarence could not resist exclaiming with. some 
 warmth and abruptness : 
 
 "And by what subterfuge or cavil does the present claimant 
 of these estates hope to dislodge their rightful possessor?" 
 
 "Why," answered Mordaunt, "it is a long story in detail, but 
 briefly told in epitome. My father was a man whose habits 
 greatly exceeded his fortune, and a few months after his death 
 Mr. Vavasour, a distant relation, produced a paper by which it 
 appeared that my father had, for a certain sum of ready money, 
 disposed of his estates to this Mr. Vavasour, upon condition 
 that they should not be claimed, nor the treaty divulged, till 
 after his death ; the reason for this proviso seems to have been 
 the shame my father felt for his exchange, and his fear of the 
 censures of that world to which he was always devoted." 
 
 " But how unjust to you ! " said Clarence. 
 
 " Not so much so as it seems," said Mordaunt deprecatingly ; 
 " for I was then but a sickly boy, and according to the phy- 
 sicians, and I sincerely believe according also to my poor 
 father's belief, almost certain of a premature death. In that 
 case Vavasour would have been the nearest heir ; and this ex- 
 pectancy, by the by, joined to the mortgages on the property, 
 made the sum given ridiculously disproportioned to the value 
 of the estate. I must confess that the news came upon me 
 like a thunderbolt. I should have yielded up possession im- 
 mediately, but was informed by my lawyers that my father had 
 no legal right to dispose of the property ; the discussion of 
 that right forms the ground of the present lawsuit. But," 
 continued Mordaunt proudly, yet mournfully, "I am prepared 
 for the worst ; if, indeed, I should call that the worst which 
 can affect neither intellect, nor health, nor character, nor con- 
 science." 
 
 Clarence was silent, and Mordaunt, after a brief pause, once 
 more resumed his guidance. Their tour ended in a large 
 library filled with books, and this, Mordaunt informed his 
 guest was his chosen sitting-room. 
 
 An old carved table was covered with works which for the 
 most part possessed for the young mind of Clarence, more ac- 
 customed to imagine than reflect, but a very feeble attraction ; 
 on looking over them he, however, found half hid by a huge 
 folio of Hobbes, and another of Locke, a volume of Milton's 
 poems ; this paved the way to a conversation, in which both
 
 4O THE DISOWNED. 
 
 had an equal interest, for both were enthusiastic in the char- 
 acter and genius of that wonderful man for whom " the divine 
 and solemn coutnenance of Freedom " was dearer than the light 
 of day, and whose solitary spell, accomplishing what the whole 
 family of earth once vainly began upon the plain of Shinar, 
 has built of materials more imperishable than " slime and brick," 
 "a city and a tower whose summit has reached to heaven." 
 
 It was with mutual satisfaction that Mordaunt and his guest 
 continued their commune, till the hour of dinner was announced 
 to them by a bell, which formerly intended as an alarum, now 
 served the peaceful purpose of a more agreeable summons. 
 
 The same servant who had admitted Clarence ushered them 
 through the great hall into the dining-room, and was their 
 solitary attendant during their repast. 
 
 The temper of Mordaunt was essentially grave and earnest, 
 and his conversation almost invariably took the tone of his 
 mind ; this made their conference turn upon less minute and 
 commonplace topics than one between such new acquaintances, 
 especially of different ages, usually does. 
 
 "You will positively go to London to-morrow, then ?" said 
 Mordaunt, as the servant, removing the appurtenances of din- 
 ner, left them alone. 
 
 " Positively," answered Clarence. "I go there to carve my 
 own fortunes, and, to say truth, I am impatient to begin." 
 
 Mordaunt looked earnestly at the frank face of the speaker, 
 and wondered that one so young, so well educated, and, from 
 his air and manner, evidently of gentle blood, should appear 
 so utterly thrown upon his own resources. 
 
 "I wish you success," said he, after a pause; "and it is a 
 noble part of the organization of this world, that by increasing 
 those riches which are beyond fortune, we do in general take 
 the surest method of obtaining those which are in its reach." 
 
 Clarence looked inquiringly at Mordaunt, who perceiving it, 
 continued, " I see that I should explain myself further. I will 
 do so by using the thoughts of a mind not the least beautiful 
 and accomplished which this country has produced. ' Of all 
 which belongs to us,' said Bolingbroke, ' the least valuable parts 
 can alone fall under the will of others. Whatever is best is 
 safest ; lies out of the reach of human power; can neither be 
 given nor taken away. Such is this great and beautiful work 
 of nature, the world. Such is the mind of man, which con- 
 templates and admires the world whereof it makes the noblest 
 part. These are inseparably ours, and as long as we remain in 
 one we shall enjoy the other.'"
 
 THE DISOWNED. 41 
 
 "Beautiful, indeed!" exclaimed Clarence, with the enthu- 
 siasm of a young and pure heart, to which every loftier senti- 
 ment is always beautiful. 
 
 "And true as beautiful !" said Mordaunt. "Nor is this all, 
 for the mind can even dispense with that world, ' of which it 
 forms a part,' if we can create within it a world still more 
 inaccessible to chance. But (and I now return to and explain 
 my former observation) the means by which we can effect this 
 peculiar world can be rendered equally subservient to our 
 advancement and prosperity in that which we share in common 
 with our race ; for the riches, which by the aid of wisdom we 
 heap up in the storehouses of the mind, are, though not the 
 only, the most customary coin by which external prosperity is 
 bought. So that the philosophy, which can alone give independ- 
 ence to ourselves, becomes, under the name of honesty, the 
 best policy in commerce with our kind." 
 
 In conversation of this nature, which the sincerity and lofty 
 enthusiasm of Mordaunt rendered interesting to Clarence, 
 despite the distaste to the serious so ordinary to youth, the 
 hours passed on, till the increasing evening warned Linden to 
 depart. 
 
 "Adieu! "said he to Mordaunt. "I know not when we 
 shall meet again, but if we ever do, I will make it my boast, 
 whether in prosperity or misfortune, not to have forgotten the 
 pleasure I have this day enjoyed ! " 
 
 Returning his guest's farewell with a warmth unusual to his 
 manner, Mordaunt followed him to the door, and saw him 
 depart. 
 
 Fate ordained that they should pursue, in very different 
 paths, their several destinies ; nor did it afford them an oppor- 
 tunity of meeting again, till years and events had severely tried 
 the virtue of one, and materially altered the prospects of the 
 other. 
 
 The next morning Clarence Linden was on his road to 
 London. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Upon my word," cries Jones, " thou art a very odd fellow, and I like 
 thy humor extremely." FIELDING. 
 
 THE rumbling and jolting vehicle, which conveyed Clarence 
 to the metropolis, stopped at the door of a tavern in Holborn. 
 Linden was ushered into a close coffee-room, and presented
 
 42 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 with a bill of fare. While he was deliberating between the 
 respective merits of mutton chops and beef-steaks, a man with 
 a brown coat, brown breeches, and a brown wig walked into 
 the room ; he cast a curious glance at Clarence, and then turned 
 to the waiter. 
 
 "A pair of slippers ! " 
 
 "Yes, sir," and the waiter disappeared. 
 
 " I suppose," said the brown gentleman to Clarence, " I sup- 
 pose, sir, you are the gentleman just come to town ?" 
 
 " You are right, sir," said Clarence. 
 
 "Very well, very well, indeed," resumed the stranger, mus- 
 ingly. "I took the liberty of looking at your boxes in the 
 passage ; I knew a lady, sir, a relation of yours, I think." 
 
 "Sir ! " exclaimed Linden, coloring violently. 
 
 "At least I suppose, for her name was just the same as yours, 
 only, at least, one letter difference between them : yours is 
 Linden, I see, sir ; hers was Minden. Am I right in my con- 
 jecture, that you are related to her?" 
 
 " Sir," answered Clarence gravely, " notwithstanding the 
 similarity of our names, we are not related." 
 
 "Very extraordinary," replied the stranger. 
 
 " Very," repeated Linden. 
 
 "I had the honor, sir," said the brown gentleman, "to make 
 Mrs. Minden many presents of value, and I should have been 
 very happy to have obliged you in the same manner, had you 
 been any way connected with that worthy gentlewoman." 
 
 "You are very kind," said Linden, "you are very kind ; and 
 since such were your intentions, I believe I must have been 
 connected with Mrs. Minden. At all events, as you justly 
 observe, there is only the difference of a letter between our 
 names ; a discrepancy too slight, I am sure, to alter your 
 benevolent intentions." 
 
 Here the waiter returned with the slippers. 
 
 The stranger slowly unbuttoned his gaiters. " Sir," said he 
 to Linden, "we will renew our conversation presently." 
 
 No sooner had the generous friend of Mrs. Minden de- 
 posited his feet into their easy tenements, than he quitted 
 the room. 
 
 " Pray," said Linden to the waiter, when he had ordered his 
 simple repast, "who is that gentleman in brown ?" 
 
 "Mr. Brown," replied the waiter. 
 
 "And who, or what is Mr. Brown?" asked our hero. 
 
 Before the waiter could reply, Mr. Brown returned, with a 
 large bandbox, carefully enveloped in a blue handkerchief.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 43 
 
 ''You come from , sir?" said Mr. Brown, quietly seating 
 
 himself at the same table as Linden. 
 
 " No, sir, I do not." 
 
 " From , then ? " 
 
 " No, sir ! from W ." 
 
 " W ? ay well, I knew a lady with a name very like 
 
 W (the late Lady Waddilove), extremely well. I made her 
 
 some valuable presents her ladyship was very sensible of it." 
 
 " I don't doubt it, sir," replied Clarence ; "such instances of 
 general beneficence rarely occur ! " 
 
 "I have some magnificent relics of her ladyship in this box," 
 returned Mr. Brown. 
 
 " Really ! then she was no less generous than yourself, I 
 presume ? " 
 
 "Yes, her ladyship was remarkably generous. About a week 
 before she died (the late Lady Waddilove was quite sensible of 
 her danger), she called me to her 1 ' Brown,' said she, 'you are 
 a good creature ; I have had my most valuable things from you. 
 I am not ungrateful ; I will leave you my maid ! She is as 
 clever as you are, and as good.' I took the hint, sir, and mar- 
 ried. It was an excellent bargain. My wife is a charming 
 woman ; she entirely fitted up Mrs. Minden's wardrobe, and I 
 furnished the house. Mrs. Minden was greatly indebted to us." 
 
 " Heaven help me ! " thought Clarence, " the man is cer- 
 tainly mad." 
 
 The waiter entered with the dinner ; and Mr. Brown, who 
 seemed to have a delicate aversion to any conversation in the 
 presence of the Ganymede of the Holborn tavern, immediately 
 ceased his communications ; meanwhile, Clarence took the op- 
 portunity to survey him more minutely than he had hitherto 
 done. 
 
 His new acquaintance was in age about forty-eight ; in stature, 
 rather under the middle height ; and thin, dried, withered, yet 
 muscular withal, like a man who, in stinting his stomach for the 
 sake of economy, does not the less enjoy the power of undergoing 
 any fatigue or exertion that an object of adequate importance 
 may demand. We have said already that he was attired, like 
 twilight, " in a suit of sober brown "; and there was a formality, 
 a precision, and a cat-like sort of cleanliness in his garb, which 
 savored strongly of the respectable coxcombry of the counting- 
 house. His face was lean, it is true, but not emaciated ; and 
 his complexion, sallow and adust, harmonized well with the 
 colors of his clothing. An eye of the darkest hazel, sharp, 
 shrewd, and flashing at times, especially at the mention of the
 
 44 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 euphonious name of Lady Waddilove a name frequently upoh 
 the lips of the inheritor of her Abigail with a fire that might 
 be called brilliant, was of that modest species which can seldom 
 encounter the straightforward glance of another ; on the con- 
 trary, it seemed restlessly uneasy in any settled place, and wan- 
 dered from ceiling to floor, and corner to corner, with an in- 
 quisitive though apparently careless glance, as if seeking for 
 something to admire or haply to appropriate ; it also seemed to 
 be the special care of Mr. Brown to veil, as far as he was able, 
 the vivacity of his looks beneath an expression of open and un- 
 heeding good nature, an expression strangely enough contrast- 
 ing with the closeness and sagacity which nature had indelibly 
 stamped upon features pointed, aquiline, and impressed with a 
 strong mixture of the Judaical physiognomy. The manner and 
 bearing of this gentleman partook of the same undecided char- 
 acter as his countenance ; they seemed to be struggling between 
 civility and importance ; a real eagerness to make the acquaint- 
 ance of the person he addressed, and an assumed recklessness 
 of the advantages which that acquaintance could bestow ; it 
 was like the behavior of a man who is desirous of having the 
 best possible motives imputed to him, but is fearful lest that 
 desire should not be utterly fulfilled. At the first glance you 
 would have pledged yourself for his respectability ; at the sec- 
 ond, you would have half suspected him to be a rogue ; and, 
 after you had been half an hour in his 'company, you would 
 confess yourself in the obscurest doubt which w as the better 
 guess, the first or the last. 
 
 "Waiter!" said Mr. Brown, looking enviously at the 
 viands upon which Linden, having satisfied his curiosity, was 
 now, with all the appetite of youth, regaling himself. 
 " Waiter ! " 
 
 " Yes, sir ! " 
 
 " Bring me a sandwich and and, waiter, see that I have 
 plenty of plenty of " 
 
 " What, sir ? "' 
 
 " Plenty of mustard, waiter." 
 
 " Mustard " (and here Mr. Brown addressed himself to Clar- 
 ence) " is a very wonderful assistance to the digestion. By the 
 by, sir, if you want any curiously fine mustard, I can procure 
 you some pots quite capital a great favor, though they were 
 smuggled from France, especially for the use of the late Lady 
 Waddilove." 
 
 "Thank you," said Linden dryly ; "i shall be very happy to 
 accept anything you may wish to offer me "
 
 THE DISOWNED. 45 
 
 Mr. Brown took a pocket-book from his pouch. " Six pots 
 of mustard, sir shall I say six ? " 
 
 "As many as you please," replied Clarence ; and Mr. Brown 
 wrote down "Six pots of French mustard." 
 
 "You are a very young gentleman, sir," said Mr. Brown, 
 " probably intended for some profession I don't mean to be 
 impertinent, but if I can be of any assistance ' 
 
 "You can, sir," replied Linden, "and immediately have the 
 kindness to ring the bell." 
 
 Mr. Brown, with a grave smile, did as he was desired ; the 
 waiter re-entered, and receiving a whispered order from Clar- 
 ence, again disappeared. 
 
 "What profession did you say, sir?" renewed Mr. Brown 
 artfully. 
 
 " None ! " replied Linden. 
 
 " Oh, very well very well indeed. Then as an idle, inde- 
 pendent gentleman, you will of course be a bit of a beau want 
 some shirts, possibly fine cravats, too gentlemen wear a par- 
 ticular pattern now gloves, gold, or shall I say gill chain, watch 
 and seals, a ring or two, and a snuff-box ? " 
 
 " Sir, you are vastly obliging," said Clarence, in undisguised 
 surprise. 
 
 " Not at all, I would do any thing for a relation of Mrs. Min- 
 den." The waiter re-entered ; " Sir," said he to Linden, "your 
 room is quite ready." 
 
 " I am glad to hear it," said Clarence, rising. "Mr. Brown, 
 I have the honor of wishing you a good evening." 
 
 " Stay, sir stay ; you have not looked into these things be* 
 longing to the late Lady Waddilove." 
 
 "Another time," said Clarence, hastily. 
 
 " To-morrow, at ten o'clock," muttered Mr. Brown. 
 
 " I am exceedingly glad I have got rid of that fellow," said 
 Linden to himself, as he stretched his limbs in his easy-chair, 
 and drank off the last glass of his pint of port. " If I have not 
 already seen, I have already guessed enough of the world, to 
 know that you are to look to your pockets when a man offers 
 you a present ; they who 'give,' also 'take away.' So here I 
 am in London, with an order for ^1000 in my purse, the wis- 
 dom of Dr. Latinas in my head, and the health of eighteen in 
 my veins ; will it not be my own fault if I do not both enjoy 
 and make myself " 
 
 And then, yielding to meditations of future success, partak- 
 ing strongly of the inexperienced and sanguine temperament 
 of the soliloquist, Clarence passed the hours, till his pillow sum-
 
 46 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 moned him to dreams no less ardent, and perhaps no less un- 
 real. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Oh, how I long to be employed. Every Man in his Humor. 
 
 CLARENCE was sitting the next morning over the very unsatis- 
 factory breakfast which tea made out of broomsticks, and cream 
 out of chalk (adulteration thrived even in 17 ), afforded, 
 when the waiter threw open the door, and announced Mr. 
 Brown. 
 
 "Just in time, sir, you perceive," said Mr. Brown ; "I am 
 punctuality itself : exactly a quarter of a minute to ten. I have 
 brought you the pots of French mustard, and I have some very 
 valuable articles which you must want, besides." 
 
 "Thank you, sir," said Linden, not well knowing what to say; 
 and Mr. Brown, untying a silk handkerchief, produced three 
 shirts, two pots of pomatum, a tobacco canister, with a German 
 pipe, four pair of silk stockings, two gold seals, three rings, and 
 a stuffed parrot ! 
 
 " Beautiful articles these, sir," said Mr. Brown, with a snuffle 
 "of inward sweetness long drawn out," and expressive of great 
 admiration of his offered treasures ; " beautiful articles, sir, 
 ar'n't they?" 
 
 "Very, the parrot in particular," said Clarence. 
 
 "Yes, sir," returned Mr. Brown, "the parrot is indeed quite 
 a jewel ; it belonged to the late Lady Waddilove ; I offer it to 
 you with considerable regret, for " 
 
 "Oh!" interrupted Clarence "pray do not rob yourself of 
 such a jewel, it really is of no use to me." 
 
 "I know that, sir I know that," replied Mr. Brown ; "but 
 it will be of use to your friends ; it will be inestimable to any 
 old aunt, sir, any maiden lady living at Hackney, any curious 
 elderly gentleman fond of a nick-nack. I knew you would 
 know some one to send it to as a present, even though you 
 should not want it yourself." 
 
 " Bless me ! " thought Linden, " was there ever such gener- 
 osity! Not content with providing for my wants, he extends 
 his liberality even to any possible relations I may possess ! " 
 
 Mr. Brown now re-tied "the beautiful articles" in his hand- 
 kerchief. " Shall I leave them, sir ? " said he. 
 
 " Why, really," said Clarence, " I thought yesterday that you 
 were in jest ; but you must be aware that I cannot accept pres-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 47 
 
 ents from any gentleman so much so much a stranger to me as 
 you are." 
 
 "No, sir, I am aware of that," replied Mr. Brown ; ''and in 
 order to remove the unpleasantness of such a feeling, sir, on 
 your part merely in order to do that, I assure you with no 
 other view, sir, in the world I have just noted down the arti- 
 cles on this piece of paper ; but, as you will perceive, at a price 
 so low, as still to make them actually presents in everything 
 but the name. Oh, sir, I perfectly understand- your delicacy, 
 and would not, for the world, violate it." 
 
 So saying, Mr. Brown put a paper into Linden's hands the 
 substance of which a very little more experience of the world 
 would have enabled Clarence to foresee: it ran thus : 
 
 CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ., DR. 
 
 To MR. MORRIS BROWN. 
 To Six Pots of French Mustard, . . . .140 
 
 To Three Superfine Holland Shirts, with Cambric Bosoms, 
 
 complete, . . . . . . 410 
 
 To Two Pots of Superior French Pomatum, . . . o 10 o 
 
 To a Tobacco Canister of enamelled Tin, with a finely executed 
 
 head of the Pretender : slight flaw in the same. . 0126 
 
 To a German Pipe, second hand, as good as new, belonging to 
 
 the late Lady Waddilove. . . . .1180 
 
 To Four Pair of Black Silk Hose, ditto, belonging to her Lady- 
 ship's husband. . . . . . 280 
 
 To two superfine Embossed Gold Watch Seals, with a Classical 
 Motto and Device to each, viz.. Mouse Trap and " Prenez 
 Garde," to one, and "Who the devil can this be from ? " * 
 to the other . . . . . i i o 
 
 To a remarkably fine Antique Ring, having the head of a 
 
 'Monkey. . . . . . . o 16 6 
 
 A ditto, with blue stones. . . . . .0126 
 
 A ditto, with green ditto . . . . . 0126 
 
 A stuffed green parrot, a remarkable favorite of the late 
 
 Lady W. . . . . . .220 
 
 Sum Total ...... 
 
 Deduction for Ready Money ..... 
 
 15 4 6 
 Mr. Brown's profits for Brokerage. , , . I 10 o 
 
 Sum Total ....... 16 14 6 
 
 Received of Clarence Linden, Esq., this day of 17 . 
 
 It would have been no unamusing study to watch the expres- 
 sion of Clarence's face as it lengthened over each article until 
 
 * One would not have thought these ingenious devices had been of so ancient a date al 
 the year 17.
 
 48 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 he had reached the final conclusion. He then carefully folded 
 up the paper, restored it to Mr. Brown, with a low bow, and 
 said, "Excuse me, sir, I will not take advantage of your gener- 
 osity ; keep your parrot and other treasures for some more 
 worthy person. I cannot a'ccept of what you are pleased to term 
 your very valuable presents!" 
 
 "Oh, very well, very well," said Mr. Brown, pocketing the 
 paper, and seeming perfectly unconcerned at the termination 
 of his proposals ; " perhaps I can serve you in some other way ? " 
 
 " In none, I thank you," replied Linden. 
 
 " Just consider, sir ! you will want lodgings : I can find them 
 for you, cheaper than you can yourself ; or perhaps you would 
 prefer going into a nice, quiet, genteel family, where you can 
 have both board and lodging, and be treated in every way as 
 the pet child of the master ?" 
 
 A thought crossed Linden's mind. He was going to stay in 
 town some time ; he was ignorant of its ways ; he had neither 
 friends nor relations, at least none whom he could visit and 
 consult ; moreover, hotels, he knew, were expensive ; lodgings, 
 though cheaper, might, if tolerably comfortable, greatly exceed 
 the sum prudence would allow him to expend ; would not this 
 plan proposed by Mr. Brown, of going into a " nice, quiet, gen- 
 teel family," be the most advisable one he could adopt ? The 
 generous benefactor of the late and ever- to-be-remembered Lady 
 Waddilove perceived his advantage, and, making the most of 
 Clarence's hesitation, continued 
 
 " I know of a charming little abode, sir, situated in the sub- 
 urbs of London, quite rus in urbe, as the scholars say ; you 
 can have a delightful little back parlor, looking out upon the 
 garden, and all to yourself I dare say." 
 
 " And pray, Mr. Brown," interrupted Linden, " what price do 
 you think would be demanded for such enviable accommoda- 
 tion ? If you offer me them as ' a present, I shall have nothing 
 to say to them." 
 
 "Oh, sir," answered Mr. Brown, "the price will be a trifle 
 a mere trifle; but I will inquire, and let you know the exact 
 sum in the course of the day all they want is a respectable, 
 gentlemanlike lodger ; and I am sure so near a relation of Mrs. 
 Minden will, upon my recommendation, be received with avid- 
 ity. Then you wont have any of these valuable articles, sir? 
 You'll repent it, sir take my word for it hem ! " 
 
 "Since," replied Clarence drily, "your word appears of so 
 much more value than your articles, pardon me if I prefer 
 taking the former instead of the latter."
 
 THE DISOWNED. 49 
 
 Mr. Brown forced a smile. "Well, sir, very well, very well, 
 indeed. You will not go out before two o'clock ? and at that 
 time I shall call upon you respecting the commission you have 
 favored me with." 
 
 " I will await you," said Clarence ; and he bowed Mr. Brown 
 out of the room. 
 
 " Now, really," said Linden to himself, as he paced the nar- 
 row limits of his apartment, " I do not see what better plan I 
 can pursue but let me well consider what is my ultimate ob- 
 ject. A high step in the world's ladder ! how is this to be 
 obtained? First, by the regular method of professions ; but 
 what profession should I adopt? The church is incompatible 
 with my object the army and navy with my means. Next 
 come the irregular methods of adventure and enterprise such 
 as marriage with a fortune" here he paused ana looked at 
 the glass "the speculation of a political pamphlet, or an 
 ode to the minister attendance on some dying miser of my 
 own name, without a relation in the world or, in short, any 
 other mode of making money that may decently offer itself. 
 Now, situated as I am, without a friend in this great city, I 
 might as well purchase my experience at as cheap a rate and 
 in as brief a time as possible, nor do I see any plan of doing 
 so more promising that that proposed by Mr. Brown." 
 
 These and such like reflections, joined to the inspiriting 
 pages of the "Newgate Calendar," and "The Covent Garden 
 Magazine," two works which Clarence dragged from their con- 
 cealment under a black tea-tray, afforded him ample occupa- 
 tion till the hour of two, punctual to which time Mr. Morris 
 Brown returned. 
 
 "Well, sir," said Clarence, "what is your report?" 
 
 The friend of the late Lady W. wiped his brow and gave 
 three long sighs before he replied : "A long walk, sir a very 
 long walk I have had ; but I have succeeded. No thanks, 
 sir no thanks the lady, a most charming, delightful, amiable 
 woman, will receive you with pleasure you will have the use 
 of a back parlor (as I said) all the morning, and a beautiful 
 little bedroom entirely to yourself think of that, sir. You 
 will have an egg for breakfast, and you will dine with the 
 family at three o'clock ; quite fashionable hours you see, 
 sir." 
 
 "And the terms?" said Linden impatiently. 
 
 "Why, sir," replied Mr. Brown, "the lady was too genteel 
 to talk to me about them you had better walk with me to her 
 house and see if you cannot yourself agree with her."
 
 50 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 "I will," said Clarence. "Will you wait here till I have 
 dressed ?" 
 
 Mr. Brown bowed his assent. 
 
 " I might as well," thought Clarence, as he ascended to his 
 bedroom, "inquire into the character of this gentleman, to 
 whose good offices I am so rashly entrusting myself." He 
 rang his bell the chambermaid appeared, and was dismissed 
 for the waiter. The character was soon asked, and soon given. 
 For our reader's sake, we will somewhat enlarge upon it. 
 
 Mr. Morris Brown originally came into the world with the 
 simple appellation of Moses, a name which his father honest 
 man had, as the Minories can still testify, honorably borne 
 before him. Scarcely, however, had the little Moses attained 
 the age of five, when his father, for causes best known to him- 
 self, became a Christian. Somehow or other there is a most 
 potent connection between the purse and the conscience, 
 and accordingly the blessings of heaven descended in 
 golden showers upon the proselyte. " I shall die worth a 
 plum," said Moses the elder (who had taken unto himself the 
 Christian cognomen of Brown ); "I shall die worth a plum," 
 repeated he, as he went one fine morning to speculate at the 
 Exchange. A change of news, sharp and unexpected as a 
 change of wind, lowered the stocks and blighted the plum. Mr. 
 Brown was in the Gazette that week, and his wife in weeds for 
 him the next. He left behind him, besides the said wife, several 
 debts and his son Moses. Beggared by the former, our widow 
 took a small shop in Wardour Street to support the latter. 
 Patient, but enterprising cautious of risking pounds, indefati- 
 gable in raising pence the little Moses inherited the propen- 
 sities of his Hebrew ancestors ; and, though not so capable as 
 his immediate progenitor of making a fortune, he was at least 
 far less likely to lose one. In spite, however, of all the in- 
 dustry, both of mother and son, the gains of the shop were but 
 scanty ; to increase them capital was required, and all Mr. 
 Moses Brown's capital lay in his brain. " It is a bad founda- 
 tion," said the mother, with a sigh. "Not at all !" said the 
 son, and, leaving the shop, he turned broker. Now a broker is 
 a man who makes an income out of other people's funds a 
 gleaner of stray extravagances ; and by doing the public the 
 honor of living upon them, may fairly be termed a little sort of 
 state minister in his way. What with haunting sales, hawking 
 china, selling the curiosities of one old lady, and purchasing 
 the same for another, Mr. Brown managed to enjoy a very 
 comfortable existence. Great pains and small gains will at last
 
 THE DISOWNED. 5! 
 
 invert their antitheses, and make little trouble and great profit ; 
 so that by the time Mr. Brown had attained his fortieth year, 
 the petty shop had become a large warehouse ; and, if the 
 worthy Moses, now christianized into Morris, was not so 
 sanguine as his father in the gathering of plums, he had 
 been at least as fortunate in the collecting of windfalls. To 
 say truth, the Abigail of the defunct Lady Waddilove had been 
 no unprofitable helpmate to our broker. As ingenious as be- 
 nevolent, she was the owner of certain rooms of great resort in 
 the neighborhood of St. James's rooms where caps and ap- 
 pointments were made better than any place else, and where 
 credit was given, and character lost, upon terms equally ad- 
 vantageous to the accommodating Mrs. Brown. 
 
 Meanwhile her husband, continuing through liking what he 
 had begun through necessity, slackened not his industry in 
 augmenting his fortune ; on the contrary, small profits were 
 but a keener incentive to large ones as the glutton only sharp- 
 ened by luncheon his appetite for dinner. Still was Mr. Brown 
 the very Alcibiades of brokers the universal genius suiting 
 every man to his humor. Business, of whatever description, 
 from the purchase of a borough to that of a brooch, was alike 
 the object of Mr. Brown's must zealous pursuit ; taverns, where 
 country cousins put up rustic habitations, where ancient 
 maidens resided auction, or barter city, or hamlet all were 
 the same to that enterprising spirit, which made out of every 
 acquaintance a commission ! Sagacious and acute, Mr. Brown 
 perceived the value of eccentricity in covering design, and 
 found, by experience, that whatever can be laughed at as odd 
 will be gravely considered as harmless. Several of the 
 broker's peculiarities were, therefore, more artificial than 
 natural ; and many were the sly bargains which he smuggled 
 into effect under the comfortable cloak of singularity. No 
 wonder, then, that the crafty Morris grew gradually in repute 
 as a person of infinite utility and excellent qualifications ; or 
 that the penetrating friends of his deceased sire bowed to the 
 thriving itinerant, with a respect which they denied to many 
 in loftier professions and more general esteem.
 
 52 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " Trust me you have an exceeding fine lodging here very neat and pri- 
 vate." BEN JONSON. 
 
 IT was a tolerably long walk to the abode of which the worthy 
 broker spoke in such high terms of commendation. At length, 
 at the suburbs towards Paddington, Mr. Brown stopped at a very 
 small house : it stood rather retired from its surrounding neigh- 
 bors, which were of a loftier and more pretending aspect than 
 itself, and, in its awkward shape and pitiful bashfulness, looked 
 exceedingly like a school-boy finding himself for the first time 
 in a grown-up party, and shrinking with all possible expedition 
 into the obscurest corner he can discover. Passing through a 
 sort of a garden, in which a spot of grass lay in the embraces of 
 a stripe of gravel, Mr. Brown knocked upon a very bright 
 knocker at a very new door. The latter was opened, and a foot- 
 boy appeared. 
 
 "Is Mrs. Copperas within?" asked the broker. 
 
 "Yees, sir," said the boy. 
 
 " Show this gentleman and myself upstairs," resumed Brown. 
 
 " Yees," reiterated the lackey. 
 
 Up a singularly narrow staircase, into a singularly diminu- 
 tive drawing-room, Clarence and his guide were ushered. There, 
 seated on a little chair by a little work-table with one foot on a 
 little stool and one hand on a little book, was a little very little 
 lady. 
 
 " This is the young gentleman," said Mr. Brown ; and Clarence 
 bowed low, in token of the introduction. 
 
 The lady returned the salutation with an affected bend, and 
 said, in a mincing and grotesquely subdued tone " You are 
 desirous, sir, of entering into the bosom of my family. We possess 
 accommodations of a most elegant description ; accustomed 
 to the genteelest circles enjoying the pure breezes of the High- 
 gate hills and presenting to any guest we may receive the at- 
 tractions of a home rather than a lodging, you will find our retreat 
 no less eligible than unique. You are, I presume, sir, in some 
 profession some city avocation or or trade ? " 
 
 " I have the misfortune," said he, smiling, " to belong to no 
 profession." 
 
 The lady looked hard at the speaker, and then at the broker. 
 With certain people, to belong to no profession is to be of no 
 respectability.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 53 
 
 " The most unexceptionable references will be given and 
 required" resumed Mrs. Copperas. 
 
 " Certainly," said Mr. Brown, " certainly, the gentleman is 
 a relation of Mrs. Minden, a very old customer of mine." 
 
 " In that case," said Mrs. Copperas, "the affair is settled": 
 and rising, she rung the bell, and ordered the footboy, whom she 
 addressed by the grandiloquent name oide IVarens, to show the 
 gentleman the apartments. While Clarence was occupied in 
 surveying the luxuries of a box at the top of the house, called a 
 bed-chamber, which seemed just large and just hot enough for a 
 chrysalis, and a corresponding box below, termed the back parlor, 
 which would certainly not have been large enough for the said 
 chrysalis, when turned into a butterfly, Mr. Morris Brown, after 
 duly expatiating on the merits of Clarence, proceeded to speak of 
 the terms ; these were soon settled, for Clarence was yielding, and 
 the lady not above three times as extortionate as she ought to 
 have been. 
 
 Before Linden left the house, the bargain was concluded. 
 That night his trunks were removed to his new abode, and having 
 with incredible difficulty been squeezed into the bed-room, 
 Clarence surveyed them with the same astonishment with which 
 the virtuoso beheld the flies in amber : 
 
 " Not that the things were either rich or rare, 
 He wonder'd how the devil they got there 1 " 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 " Such scenes had tempered with a pensive grace, 
 The maiden lustre of that faultless face; 
 Had hung a sad and dream-like spell upon 
 The gliding music of her silver tone, 
 And shaded the soft soul which loved to lie 
 In the deep pathos of that volumed eye." O' Nrill, or the Rebel. 
 
 " The love thus kindled between them was of no common or calculating 
 nature ; it was vigorous and delicious, and at times so suddenly intense as to 
 appear to their young hearts for a moment or so, with almost an awful 
 character." Inesilla. 
 
 THE reader will figure to himself a small chamber, in a remote 
 wing of a large and noble mansion the walls were covered 
 with sketches, whose .extreme delicacy of outline and coloring 
 betrayed the sex of the artist ; a few shelves filled with books 
 supported vases of flowers, A harp stood neglected at ths
 
 54 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 farther end of the room, and just above hung the slender prison 
 of one of those golden wanderers from the Canary Isles, which 
 bear to our colder land some of the gentlest music of their skies 
 and zephyrs. The window, reaching to the ground, was open, 
 and looked through the clusters of jessamine and honeysuckle 
 which surrounded the low verandah beyond, upon thick and 
 frequent copses of blossoming shrubs, redolent of spring, and 
 sparkling in the sunny tears of a May shower, which had only just 
 wept itself away. Embosomed in these little groves lay plots 
 of flowers, girdled with turf as green as ever wooed the nightly 
 dances of the fairies ; and afar off, through one artful opening, 
 the eye caught the glittering wanderings of water, on whose light 
 and smiles the universal happiness of the young year seemed 
 reflected. 
 
 But in that chamber, heedless of all around, and cold to the 
 joy with which everything else, equally youthful, beautiful, and 
 innocent, seemed breathing and inspired, sat a very young and 
 lovely female. Her cheek leant upon her hand, and large tears 
 flowed fast and burningly over the small and delicate fingers. 
 The comb that had confined her tresses lay at her feet, and the 
 high dress which concealed her swelling breast had been 
 loosened, to give vent to the suffocating and indignant throb- 
 bings which had rebelled against its cincture all appeared, to 
 announce that bitterness of grief when the mind, as it were, 
 wreaks its scorn upon the body in its contempt for external 
 seemings, and to proclaim that the present more subdued and 
 softened sorrow had only succeeded to aburst far lessquiet and 
 uncontrolled. Woe to those who eat the bread of dependence 
 their tears are wrung from the inmost sources of the heart. 
 
 Isabel St. Leger was the only child of a captain in the army, 
 who died in her infancy ; her mother had survived him but a 
 few months ; and to the reluctant care and cold affections of a 
 distant and wealthy relation of the same name, the warm-hearted 
 and penniless orphan was consigned. Major-General Cornelius 
 St. Leger, whose riches had been purchased in India at the 
 price of his constitution, was of a temper as hot as his curries, 
 and he wreaked it the more unsparingly on his ward, because 
 the superior ill-temper of his maiden sister had prevented his 
 giving vent to it upon her. That sister, Miss Diana St. Leger, 
 was a meagre gentlewoman of about six feet high, with a loud 
 voice and commanding aspect. Long in awe of her brother, 
 she rejoiced at heart to find some one whom she had such right 
 and reason to make in awe of herself; and from the age of four 
 to that of seventeen, Isabel suffered every insult and every
 
 THE DISOWNED. 55 
 
 degradation which could be inflicted upon her by the tyranny 
 of her two protectors. Her spirit, however, was far from being 
 broken by the rude shocks it received ; on the contrary, her 
 mind, gentleness itself to the kind, rose indignantly against the 
 unjust. It was true that the sense of wrong did not break forth 
 audibly : for, though susceptible, Isabel was meek, and her 
 pride was concealed by the outward softness and feminacy of 
 her temper ; but she stole away from those who had wounded 
 her heart, or trampled upon its feelings, and nourished with 
 secret, but passionate, tears the memory of the harshness or 
 injustice she had endured. Yet she was not vindictive her 
 resentment was a noble not a debasing feeling ; once, when she 
 was yet a child, Miss Diana was attacked with a fever of the 
 most malignant and infectious kind ; her brother loved himself 
 far too well to risk his safety by attending her ; the servants 
 were too happy to wreak their hatred under the pretence of 
 obeying their fears ; they, consequently followed the example 
 of their master ; and Miss Diana St. Leger might have gone 
 down to her ancestors "unwept, unhonored, and unsung," if 
 Isabel had not volunteered and enforced her attendance. 
 Hour after hour her fairy form flitted around the sick chamber, 
 or sat mute and breathless by the feverish bed ; she had neither 
 fear for contagion nor bitterness for past oppression ; every- 
 thing vanished beneath the one hope of serving, the one gratifi- 
 cation of feeling herself, in the wide waste of creation, not 
 utterly without use, as she had been hitherto without friends. 
 
 Miss St. Leger recovered. " For your recovery, in the first 
 place," said the doctor, " you will thank Heaven ; in the second 
 you will thank your young relation," and for several days the 
 convalescent did overwhelm the happy Isabel with her praises 
 and caresses. But this change did not last long : the chaste 
 Diana had been too spoiled by the prosperity of many years, 
 for the sickness of a single month to effect much good in her 
 .disposition. Her old habits were soon resumed ; and though 
 it is probable that her heart was in reality softened towards the 
 poor Isabel, that softening by no means extended to hertemper. 
 In truth, the brother and sister were not without affection for 
 one so beautiful and good, but they had been torturing slaves 
 all their lives, and their affection was, and could be, but that 
 of a task-master or a planter. 
 
 , But Isabel was the only relation who ever appeared within 
 their walls, and among the guests, with whom the luxurious 
 mansion was crowded, she passed no less for the heiress than 
 the dependant ; to her, therefore, was offered the homage of
 
 56 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 many lips and hearts, and if her pride was perpetually galled, 
 and her feelings insulted in private, her vanity (had that equalled 
 her pride, and her feelings, in its susceptibility) would in no 
 slight measure have recompensed her in public. Unhappily, 
 however, her vanity was the least prominent quality she pos- 
 sessed ; and the compliments of mercenary adulation were not 
 more rejected by her heart than despised by her understanding. 
 
 Yet did she bear within her a deep fund of buried tenderness, 
 and a mine of girlish and enthusiastic romance ; dangerous 
 gifts to one so situated, which, while they gave to her secret 
 moments of solitude a powerful, but vague attraction, probably 
 only prepared for her future years the snare which might betray 
 them into error, or the delusion which would color them with 
 regret. 
 
 Among those whom the ostentatious hospitality of General 
 St. Leger attracted to his house, was one of very different 
 character and pretensions to the resj. Formed to be unpopu- 
 lar with the generality of men, the very qualities that made him 
 so were those which principally fascinate the higher description 
 of women of ancient birth, which rendered still more displeas- 
 ing the pride and coldness of his mien ; of talents peculiarly 
 framed to attract interest as well as esteem ; of a deep and 
 somewhat morbid melancholy, which, while it turned from 
 ordinary ties, inclined yearningly towards passionate affections; 
 of a temper, where romance was only concealed from the many, 
 to become more seductive to the few ; unsocial, but benevo- 
 lent ; disliked, but respected ; of the austerest demeanor, but 
 ,of passions the most fervid, though the most carefully con- 
 cealed, this man united within himself all that repels the 
 common mass of his species, and all that irresistibly wins and 
 fascinates the rare and romantic few. To these qualities were 
 added a carriage and bearing of that high and commanding 
 order, which men mistake for arrogance and pretension, and 
 women overrate in proportion to its contrast to their own. 
 Something of mystery there was in the commencement of the 
 deep and eventful love which took place between this person 
 and Isabel, which I have never been able to learn : whatever it 
 was, it seemed to expedite and heighten the ordinary progress 
 of love; and when in the dim twilight, beneath the first melan- 
 choly smile of the earliest star, their hearts opened audibly to 
 each other, that confession had been made silently long since, 
 and registered in the inmost recesses of the soul. 
 
 But their passion, which began in prosperity, was soon 
 darkened. Whether he took offence at the haughtiness of
 
 THE DISOWNED. 57 
 
 Isabel's lover, or whether he desired to retain about him an 
 object which he could torment and tyrannize over, no sooner 
 did the General discover the attachment of his young relation, 
 than he peremptorily forbade its indulgence, and assumed so 
 insolent and overbearing an air towards the lover, that the 
 latter felt he could no longer repeat his visits to, or even con- 
 tinue his acquaintance with, the nabob. 
 
 To add to these adverse circumstances, a relation of the 
 lover, from whom his expectations had been large, was so 
 enraged, not only at the insult his cousin had received, but at 
 the very idea of his forming an alliance with one in so depend- 
 ent a situation, and connected with such new blood, as Isabel 
 St. Leger, that, with that arrogance which relations, however 
 distant, think themselves authorized to assume, he enjoined his 
 cousin, upon pain of forfeiture of favor and fortune, to renounce 
 all idea of so disparaging an alliance. The one thus addressed 
 was not of a temper patiently to submit to such threats ; he 
 answered them with disdain, and the breach, so dangerous to 
 his pecuniary interest, was already begun. 
 
 So far had the history of our lover proceeded at the time in 
 which we have introduced Isabel to the reader, and described 
 to him the chamber to which, in all her troubles and humili- 
 ations, she was accustomed to fly, as to a sad, but still unvio- 
 lated, sanctuary of retreat. 
 
 The quiet of this asylum was first broken by a slight rustling 
 among the leaves ; but Isabel's back was turned towards the 
 window, and in the engrossment of her feelings she heard it not. 
 The thick copse that darkened the left side of the verandah 
 was pierced, and a man passed within the covered space, and 
 stood still and silent before the window, intently gazing upon 
 the figure which (though the face was turned from him) be- 
 trayed in its proportions that beauty which, in his eyes, had 
 neither an equal nor a fault. 
 
 The figure of the stranger, though not very tall, was above 
 the ordinary height, and gracefully, rather than robustly, formed, 
 He was dressed in the darkest colors and the simplest fashion, 
 which rendered yet more striking the nobleness of his mien, as 
 well as the clear and almost delicate paleness of his complexion ; 
 his features were finely and accurately formed ; and had not ill 
 health, long travel, or severe thought deepened too much the 
 lines of the countenance, and sharpened its contour, the classic 
 perfection of those features would have rendered him undenia- 
 bly and even eminently handsome : as it was, the paleness and 
 the somewhat worn character of his face, joined to an expres.*
 
 58 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 sion, at first glance, rather haughty and repellent, made him 
 lose in physical what he certainly gained in intellectual beauty. 
 His eyes were large, deep, and melancholy, and had the hat 
 which now hung over his brow been removed, it would have 
 displayed a forehead of remarkable boldness and power. 
 
 Altogether the face was cast in a rare and intellectual mould, 
 and, if wanting in those more luxuriant attractions common to 
 the age of the stranger, who could scarcely have attained his 
 twenty-sixth year, it betokened, at least, that predominance of 
 mind over body, which, in some eyes, is the most requisite char- 
 acteristic of masculine beauty. 
 
 With a soft and noiseless step, the stranger moved from his 
 station, without the window, and, entering the room, stole to- 
 wards the spot on which Isabel was sitting. He leant over her 
 chair, and his eye rested upon his own picture, and a letter in 
 his own writing, over which the tears of the young orphan 
 flowed fast. 
 
 A moment more of agitated happiness for one of uncon- 
 scious and continued sadness for the other 
 
 ' ' 'Tis past her lover's at her feet. " 
 
 And what indeed "was to them the world beside, with all its 
 changes of time and tide ? " Joy hope all blissful and bright 
 sensations, lay mingled like meeting waters, in one sunny stream 
 of heartfelt and unfathomable enjoyment but this passed away, 
 and the remembrance of bitterness and evil succeeded. 
 
 "Oh, Algernon ! " said Isabel, in a low voice, "is this your 
 promise?" 
 
 "Believe me," said Mordaunt, for it was indeed he, "I strug- 
 gled long with my feelings, but in vain ; and for both our sakes, 
 I rejoice at the conquest they obtained. I listened only to a 
 deceitful delusion when I imagined I was obeying the dictates 
 of reason. Ah, dearest, why should we part for the sake of 
 dubious and distant evils, when the misery of absence is the 
 most certain, the most unceasing evil we can endure ?" 
 
 " For your sake, and therefore for mine ! " interrupted Isabel, 
 struggling with her tears. " I am a beggar and an outcast. 
 You must not link your fate with mine. I could bear, Heaven 
 knows how willingly, poverty and all its evils for you and with 
 you ; but I cannot bring them upon you." 
 
 "Nor will you," said Mordaunt passionately, as he covered 
 the hand he held with his burning kisses. " Have I not enough 
 for both of us? It is my love, not poverty ; that I beseech you 
 to share."
 
 THE DISOWNED. 59 
 
 " No ! Algernon, you cannot deceive me : your own estate 
 will be torn from you by the law : if you marry me, your cousin 
 will not assist you : I, you know too well, can command noth- 
 ing; and I shall see you, for whom in my fond and bright 
 dreams I have presaged everything great and exalted, buried 
 in an obscurity from which your talents can never rise, and suf- 
 fering the pangs of poverty, and dependence, and humiliation 
 like my own and and I should be the wretch who caused 
 you all. Never, Algernon, never ! 1 love you too too 
 well!" 
 
 But the effort which wrung forth the determination of the 
 tone in which these words were uttered was too violent to en- 
 dure ; and, as the full desolation of her despair crowded fast 
 and dark upon the orphan's mind, she sank back upon her chair 
 in very sickness of soul, nor heeded, in her unconscious misery, 
 that her hand was yet clasped by her lover, and that her head 
 drooped upon his bosom. 
 
 " Isabel," he said, in a low, sweet tone, which to her ear 
 seemed the concentration of all earthly music " Isabel look 
 up my own my beloved look up and hear me. Perhaps 
 you say truly when you tell me that the possessions of my house 
 shall melt away from me, and that my relation will not offer to 
 me the precarious bounty which, even if he did offer, I would 
 reject ; but, dearest, are there not a thousand paths open 
 to me the law the state the army? you are silent, Isabel 
 speak ! " 
 
 Isabel did not reply, but the soft eyes which rested upon his 
 told, in their despondency, how little her reason was satisfied 
 by the arguments he urged. 
 
 "Besides," he continued, "we know not yet whether the law 
 may not decide in my favor at all events, years may pass be- 
 fore the judgment is given those years make the prime and 
 verdure of our lives let us not waste them in mourning over 
 blighted hopes and severed hearts let us snatch what happiness 
 is yet in our power, nor anticipate, while the heavens are still 
 bright above us, the burden of the thunder or the cloud." 
 
 Isabel was one of the least selfish and most devoted of human 
 beings, yet she must be forgiven if at that moment her resolu- 
 tion faltered, and the overpowering thought of being in reali- 
 ty his forever flashed upon her mind. It passed from her the 
 moment it was formed, and rising from a situation in which the 
 touch of that dear hand, and the breath of those wooing lips 
 endangered the virtue, and weakened the strength, of her re- 
 solves, she withdrew herself from his grasp, and while she averted
 
 60 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 her eyes, which dared not encounter his, she said in a low but 
 firm voice : 
 
 "It is in vain, Algernon; it is in vain. I can be to you noth- 
 ing but a blight or burthen, nothing but a source of privation 
 and anguish. Think you that I will be this ? no, I will not 
 darken your fair hopes, and impede your reasonable ambition. 
 Go (and here her voice faltered for a moment, but soon re- 
 covered its tone), go Algernon, dear Algernon ; and, if my fool- 
 ish heart will not ask you to think of me no more, I can at least 
 implore you to think of me only as one who would die rather 
 than cost you a moment of that poverty and debasement, the 
 bitterness of which she has felt herself, and who, for that very 
 reason, tears herself away from you forever." 
 
 " Stay, Isabel, stay ! " cried Mordaunt, as he caught hold of 
 her robe, "give me but one word more, and you shall leave me. 
 Say that if I can create for myself a new source of indepen- 
 dence ; if I can carve out a road where the ambition you erro- 
 neously impute to me can be gratified, as well as the more 
 moderate wishes our station has made natural to us to form 
 say that if I do this I may permit myself to hope say, that 
 when I have done it, I may claim you as my own ! " 
 
 Isabel paused, and turned once more her face towards his 
 own. Her lips moved, and though the words died within her 
 heart, yet Mordaunt read well their import in the blushing cheek 
 and the heaving bosom, and the lips which one ray of hope and 
 comfort was sufficient to kindle into smiles. He gazed, and all 
 obstacles, all difficulties, disappeared ; the gulf of time seemed 
 past, and he felt as if already he had earned and won his reward. 
 
 He approached her yet nearer ; one kiss on those lips, one 
 pressure of that thrilling hand, one long, last embrace of that 
 shrinking and trembling form and then, as the door closed 
 upon his view, he felt that the sunshine of nature had passed 
 away, and that in the midst of the laughing and peopled earth 
 he stood in darkness and alone. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 "He who would know mankind must be at home with all men." STEPHEN 
 
 MONTAGUE. 
 
 WE left Clarence safely deposited in his little lodgings. 
 'Whether from the heat of his apartments or the restlessness a 
 migration of beds produces in certain constitutions, his slum- 
 bers on the first night of his arrival were disturbed and brief.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 6 1 
 
 He rose early and descended to the parlor ; Mr. de Warens, 
 the nobly appellatived foot-boy, was laying the breakfast cloth. 
 From three painted shelves which constituted the library of 
 "Copperas Bower," as its owners gracefully called their habita- 
 tion, Clarence took down a book very prettily bound ; it was 
 "Poems by a Nobleman." No sooner had he read two pages 
 than he did exactly what the reader would have done, and re- 
 stored the volume respectfully to its place. He then drew his 
 chair towards the window, and wistfully eyed sundry ancient 
 nursery maids, who were leading their infant charges to the 
 " fresh fields, and pastures new," of what is now the Regent's 
 Park. 
 
 In about an hour, Mrs. Copperas descended, and mutual 
 compliments were exchanged ; to her succeeded Mr. Copperas, 
 who was well scolded for his laziness : and to them, Master 
 Adolphus Copperas, who was also chidingly termed a naughty 
 darling, for the same offence. Now then Mrs. Copperas pre- 
 pared the tea, which she did in the approved method, adopted 
 by all ladies to whom economy is dearer than renown viz., the 
 least possible quantity of the soi-disant Chinese plant was first 
 sprinkled by the least possible quantity of hot water ! after this 
 mixture had become as black and as bitter as it could possibly be, 
 without any adjunct from the apothecary's skill, it was suddenly 
 drenched with a copious diffusion, and as suddenly poured forth, 
 weak, washy, and abominable, into four cups, severally apper- 
 taining unto the four partakers of the matutinal nectar. 
 
 Then the conversation began to flow. Mrs. Copperas was a 
 fine lady, and a sentimentalist very observant of the little 
 niceties of phrase and manner. Mr. Copperas was a stock- 
 jobber, and a wit, loved a good hit in each capacity, was very 
 round, very short, and very much like a John Uorv, and saw in 
 the features and mind of the little Copperas, the exact repre- 
 sentative of himself. 
 
 "Adolphus, my love," said Mrs. Copperas, "mind what I 
 told you and sit upright. Mr. Linden, will you allow me to cut 
 you a leetle piece of this roll ? " 
 
 "Thank you," said Clarence, "I will trouble you rather for 
 the whole of it." 
 
 Conceive Mrs. Copperas's dismay ! from that moment she saw 
 herself eaten out of house and home ; besides, as she afterwards 
 observed to her friend Miss Barbara York, the "vulgarity of 
 such an amazing appetite ! " 
 
 "Any commands in the city, Mr. Linden ?" asked the hus- 
 band : " a coach will pass by our door in a few minutes must
 
 &2 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 be on 'Change in half an hour. Come, my love, another cup of 
 tea make haste I have scarcely a moment to take my fare for 
 the inside, before coachee takes his for the outside. Ha ! ha ! 
 ha ! Mr. Linden." 
 
 " Lord, Mr. Copperas," said his helpmate, " how can you be 
 so silly ? setting such an example to your son, too never mind 
 him, Adolphus, my love fie, child, a'n't you ashamed of your- 
 self ? never put the spoon in your cup till you have done tea : 
 I must really send you to school, to learn manners. We have 
 a very pretty little collection of books here Mr. Linden, if you 
 would like to read an hour or two after breakfast child, take 
 your hands out of your pockets all the best English classics, 
 I believe Telemachus, and Young's Night Thoughts, and 
 Joseph Andrews, and the Spectator, and Pope's Iliad, and 
 Creech's Lucretius; but you will look over them yourself! 
 This is Liberty Hall, as well as Copperas Bower, Mr. Linden ! " 
 
 " Well, my love," said the stock-jobber, " I believe I must be 
 off. Here Tom Tom (Mr. de Warens had just entered the 
 room with some more hot water, to weaken still farther " the 
 poor remains of what was once" the tea!) Tom, just run 
 out and stop the coach, it will be by in five minutes." 
 
 " Have not I prayed, and besought you, many and many a 
 time, Mr. Copperas," said the lady, rebukingly, "not to call 
 De Warens by his Christian name? Don't you know, that all 
 people in genteel life, who only keep one servant, invariably 
 call him by his surname, as if he were the butler, you know ?" 
 
 "Now, that is too good, my love," said Copperas. "I will 
 call poor Tom by any surname you please, but I really can't 
 pass him off for a butler ! Ha -ha ha you must excuse me 
 there, my love ! " 
 
 " And pray, why not, Mr. Copperas ! I have known many a 
 butler bungle more at a cork than he does ; and pray tell me, 
 who did you ever see wait better at dinner?" 
 
 "He wait at dinner, my love ! it is not he who waits." 
 
 "Who then, Mr. Copperas?" 
 
 " Why we, my love it's we who wait for dinner but that's 
 the cook's fault, not his." 
 
 "Pshaw, Mr. Copperas Adolphus, my love, sit upright, 
 darling." 
 
 Here De Warens cried from the bottom of the stairs : 
 
 " Measter, the coach be coming up." 
 
 "There won't be room for it to turn then," said the facetious 
 Mr. Copperas, looking round the apartment, as if he look the 
 words literally.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 63 
 
 " What coach is it, boy ? " 
 
 Now that was not the age in which coaches scoured the city 
 every half-hour, and Mr. Copperas knew the name of the 
 coach, as well as he knew his own. 
 
 "It be the Swallow coach, sir." 
 
 "Oh, very well : then since I have swallowed in the roll, I 
 will now roll in the Swallow ha ha ha ! Good-bye, Mr. 
 Linden." 
 
 No sooner had the witty stock-jobber left the room, than 
 Mrs. Copperas seemed to expand into a new existence. " My 
 husband, sir," said she, apologetically, " is so odd, but he's an 
 excellent sterling character ; and that, you know, Mr. Linden, 
 tells more in the bosom of a family than all the shining quali- 
 ties which captivate the imagination. I am sure, Mr. Linden, 
 that the moralist is right in admonishing us to prefer the gold 
 to the tinsel. I have now been married some years, and every 
 year seems happier than the last ; but then, Mr. Linden, it is 
 such a pleasure to contemplate the growing graces of the sweet 
 pledge of our mutual love Adolphus, my dear, keep your feet 
 still, and take your hands out of your pockets ! " 
 
 A short pause ensued. 
 
 "We see a great deal of company," said Mrs. Copperas 
 pompously, "and of the very best description. Sometimes we 
 are favored by the society of the great Mr. Talbot, a gentleman 
 of immense fortune, and quite the courtier : he is, it is true, a 
 little eccentric in his dress ; but then he was a celebrated beau 
 in his young days. He is our next neighbor ; you can see his 
 house out of the window, just across the garden there ! We 
 have also, sometimes, our humble board graced by a very ele- 
 gant friend of mine, Miss Barbara York, a lady of very high 
 connections, her first cousin was a lord mayor Adolphus, my 
 dear, what are you about ? Well, Mr. Linden, you will find 
 your retreat quite undisturbed ; I must go about the household 
 affairs ; not that I do anything more than superintend, you 
 know, sir ; but I think no lady should be above consulting her 
 husband's interests that's what I call true old English con- 
 jugal affection. Come Adolphus, my dear." 
 
 And Clarence was now alone. "I fear," thought he, "that 
 I shall get on very indifferently with these people. But it will 
 not do for me to be misanthropical, and (as Dr. Latinas was 
 wont to say) the great merit of philosophy, when we cannot 
 command circumstances, is to reconcile us to them."
 
 64 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " A retired beau is one of the most instructive spectacles in tile world." 
 
 STEPHEN MONTAGUE. 
 
 IT was quite true that Mrs. Copperas saw a great deal of 
 company, for at a certain charge, upon certain days, any indi- 
 vidual might have the honor of sharing her family repast ; and 
 many, of various callings, though chiefly in commercial life, 
 met at her miscellaneous board. Clarence must, indeed, have 
 been difficult to please, or obtuse of observation, if, in the 
 variety of her guests, he had not found something either to 
 interest or amuse him. Heavens ! what a motley group were 
 accustomed, twice in the week, to assemble there ! the little 
 dining parlor seemed a human oven ; and it must be owned 
 that Clarence was no slight magnet of attraction to the female 
 part of the guests. Mrs. Copperas's bosom friend in especial, 
 the accomplished Miss Barbara York, darted the most tender 
 glances on the handsome young stranger ; but whether or not 
 a nose remarkably prominent and long prevented the glances 
 from taking full effect, it is certain that Clarence seldom repaid 
 them with that affectionate ardor which Miss Barbara York had 
 ventured to anticipate. The only persons indeed for whom he 
 felt any sympathetic attraction, were of the same sex as himself. 
 The one was Mr. Talbot, the old gentleman whom Mrs. Cop- 
 peras had described as the perfect courtier ; the other, a young 
 artist of the name of Warner. Talbot, to Clarence's great 
 astonishment (for Mrs. Copperas's eulogy had prepared him for 
 something eminently displeasing), was a man of birth, fortune, 
 and manners peculiarly graceful and attractive. It is true, 
 however, that, despite of his vicinity, and Mrs. Copperas's 
 urgent solicitations, he very seldom honored her with his com- 
 pany, and he always cautiously sent over his servant in the 
 morning to inquire the names and number of her expected 
 guests : nor was he ever known to share the plenteous board 
 of the stock-jobber's lady whenever any other partaker of its 
 dainties, save Clarence and the young artist, were present. 
 The latter, the old gentleman really liked : and as, for one truly 
 well born, and well bred, there is no vulgarity except in the 
 mind, the slender means, obscure birth, and struggling pro- 
 fession of Warner were circumstances which, as they increased 
 the merit of a gentle manner and a fine mind, spoke rather in 
 his favor than the reverse. Mr. Talbot was greatly struck by 
 Clarence Linden's conversation and appearance ; and, indeed,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 65 
 
 there was in Talbot's tastes so strong a bias to aristocratic 
 externals, that Clarence's air alone would have been sufficient 
 to win the good graces of a man who had, perhaps, more than 
 most courtiers of his time, cultivated the arts of manner and 
 the secrets of address. 
 
 " You will call upon me soon ? " said he to Clarence, when, 
 after dining one day with the Copperases and their inmate, he 
 rose to return home. And Clarence, delighted with the urban- 
 ity and liveliness of his new acquaintance, readily promised that 
 he would. 
 
 Accordingly, the next day, Clarence called upon Mr. Talbot. 
 The house, as Mrs. Copperas had before said, adjoined her own, 
 and was only separated from it by a garden. It was a dull man- 
 sion of brick, which had disdained the frippery of paint and white- 
 washing and had indeed been built many years previously to the 
 erection of the modern habitations which surrounded it. It was, 
 therefore, as a consequence of this priority of birth, more sombre 
 than the rest, and had a peculiarly forlorn and solitary look. 
 As Clarence approached the door, he was struck with the size 
 of the house it was of very considerable extent, and in the 
 more favorable situations of London would have passed for a 
 very desirable and spacious tenement. An old man, whose 
 accurate precision of dress bespoke the tastes of the master, 
 opened the door, and after ushering Clarence through two long, 
 and, to his surprise, almost splendidly furnished rooms, led him 
 into a third, where, seated at a small writing-table, he found 
 Mr. Talbot. That person, one whom Clarence then little 
 thought would hereafter exercise no small influence over his 
 fate, was of a figure and countenance well worthy the notice of 
 a description. 
 
 His own hair, quite white, was carefully and artificially curled, 
 and gave a Grecian cast to features whose original delicacy and 
 exact, though small proportions, not even age could destroy. His 
 eyes were large, black, and sparkled with almost youthful vivacity ; 
 and his mouth, which was the best feature he possessed, devel- 
 oped teeth white and even as rows of ivory. Though small 
 and somewhat too slender in the proportions of his figure, 
 nothing could exceed the ease and the grace of his motions and 
 air ; and his dress, though singularly rich in its materials, eccentric 
 in its fashion, and, from its evident study, unseemly to his years, 
 served nevertheless to render rather venerable than ridiculous a 
 mien which could almost have carried off any absurdity, and 
 which the fashion of the garb peculiarly became. The tout en- 
 semble was certainly that of a man who was still vain of his.
 
 66 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 exterior, and conscious of its effect ; and it was as certainly im- 
 possible to converse with Mr. Talbot for five minutes, without 
 merging every less respectful impression in the magical fascina- 
 tion of his manner. 
 
 " I thank you, Mr. Linden," said Talbot, rising, " for your 
 accepting so readily an old man's invitation. If I have felt 
 pleasure in discovering that we were to be neighbors, you may 
 judge what that pleasure is to-day at finding you my visitor." 
 
 Clarence, who, to do him justice, was always ready at return- 
 ing a fine speech, replied in a similar strain, and the conversa- 
 tion flowed on agreeably enough. There was more than a 
 moderate collection of books in the room, and this circumstance 
 led Clarence to allude to literary subjects ; these Mr. Talbot 
 took up with avidity, and touched with a light but graceful 
 criticism upon many of the then modern, and some of the older, 
 writers. He seemed delighted to find himself understood and 
 appreciated by Clarence, and every moment of Linden's visit 
 served to ripen their acquaintance into intimacy. At length 
 they talked upon Copperas Bower and its inmates. 
 
 " You will find your host and hostess," said the old gentle- 
 man, " certainly of a different order from the persons with 
 whom it is easy to see you have associated ; but, at your happy 
 age, a year or two may be very well thrown away upon observ- 
 ing the manners and customs of those whom, in later life, you 
 may often be called upon to conciliate, or perhaps to control. 
 That man will nerer be a perfect gentleman who lives only with 
 gentlemen. To be a man of the world, we must view that world in 
 every grade, and in every perspective. In short, the most practical 
 art of wisdom, is that which extracts from things the very quality 
 they least appear to possess ; and the actor in the world, like the 
 actor on the stage, should find ' a basket-hilted sword very con- 
 venient to carry milk in.' * As for me, I have survived my rela- 
 tions and friends. I cannot keep late hours, nor adhere to the un- 
 healthy customs of good society ; nor do I think that, to a man 
 of my age and habits, any remuneration would adequately repay 
 the sacrifice of health or comfort. I am, therefore, well content 
 to sink into a hermitage in an obscure corner of this great town, 
 and only occasionally to revive my 'past remembrances of higher 
 state,' by admitting a few old acquaintances to drink my bachelor's 
 tea and talk over the news of the day. Hence, you see, Mr. Lin- 
 den, I pick up two or three novel anecdotes of state and scandal, 
 and maintain my importance at Copperas Bower, by retailing 
 them second hand. Now that you are one of the inmates of that 
 
 * See the witty inventory of a player's goods in the Taller.
 
 THfc DISOWNEp. 67 
 
 abode, I shall be more frequently its guest. By-the-by, I will 
 let you into a secret : know that I am somewhat a lover of the 
 marvellous, and like to indulge a little embellishing exaggeration 
 in anyplace where there is no chance of finding me out. Mind, 
 therefore, iny dear Mr. Linden, that you take no ungenerous 
 advantage of this confession ; but suffer me, now and then, to 
 tell my stories my own way, even when you think truth would 
 require me to tell them in another." 
 
 " Certainly," said Clarence, laughing ; " let us make an 
 agreement : you shall tell your stories as you please, if you will 
 grant me the same liberty in paying my compliments : and if I 
 laugh aloud at the stories, you shall promise me not to laugh 
 aloud at the compliments." 
 
 " It is a bond," said Talbot ; " and a very fit exchange of 
 service it is. It will be a problem in human nature to see who 
 has the best of it : you shall pay your court by flattering the 
 people present, and I mine, by abusing those absent. Now, in 
 spite of your youth and curling locks, I will wager that I suc- 
 ceed the best ; for in vanity there is so great a mixture of envy 
 that no compliment is like a judicious abuse to enchant your 
 acquaintance, ridicule his friends." 
 
 "Ah, sir," said Clarence, " this opinion of yours is, I trust, a 
 little in the French school, where brilliancy is more studied than 
 truth, and where an ill opinion of our species always has the 
 merit of passing for profound." 
 
 Talbot smiled, and shook his head. " My dear young friend," 
 said he, "it is quite right that you, who are coming into the 
 world, should think well of it ; and it is also quite right that I, 
 who am going out of it, should console myself by trying to des- 
 pise it. However, let me tell you, my young friend, that he 
 whose opinion of mankind is not too elevated will always be the 
 most benevolent, because the most indulgent, to those errors 
 incidental to human imperfection : to place our nature in too 
 flattering a view is only to court disappointment, and end in 
 misanthropy. The man who sets out with expecting to find 
 all his fellow-creatures heroes of virtue, will conclude by con- 
 demning them as monsters of vice ; and, on the contrary, the 
 least exacting judge of actions will be the most lenient. If God, 
 in his own perfection, did not see so many frailties in us, think 
 you he would be so gracious to our virtues? " 
 
 " And yet," said Clarence, " we remark, every day, examples 
 of the highest excellence." 
 
 "Yes," replied Talbot, "of the highest, but not of the most 
 constant, excellence. He knows very little of the human heart
 
 68 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 who imagines we cannot do a good action ; but, alas ! he knows 
 still less of it who supposes we can be always doing good ac- 
 tions. In exactly the same ratio we see every day the greatest 
 crimes are committed ; but we find no wretch so depraved as 
 to be always committing crimes. Man cannot be perfect even 
 in guilt." 
 
 In this manner Talbot and his young visitor conversed, till 
 Clarence, after a stay of unwarrantable length, rose to depart. 
 
 " Well," said Talbot, "if we now rightly understand each 
 other, we shall be the best friends in the world. As we shall 
 expect great things from each other sometimes, we will have no 
 scruple in exacting a heroic sacrifice every now and then ; for 
 instance I will ask you to punish yourself by an occasional 
 tete-a-tete with an ancient gentleman ; and, as we can also, by 
 the same reasoning, pardon great faults in each other, if they 
 are not often committed, so I will forgive you, with all my heart, 
 whenever you refuse my invitations, if you do not refuse them 
 often. And now farewell till we meet again." 
 
 It seemed singular, and almost unnatural to Linden, that a 
 man like Talbot, of birth, fortune, and great fastidiousness of 
 taste and temper, should have formed any sort of acquaintance, 
 however slight and distant, with the facetious stock-jobber and 
 his wife ; but the fact is easily explained by a reference to the 
 vanity which we shall see hereafter made the ruling passion of 
 Talbot's nature. This vanity, which, branching forth into a 
 thousand eccentricities, displayed itself in the singularity of his 
 dress, the studied yet graceful warmth of his manner, his at- 
 tention to the minutiae of life, his desire, craving and insatiate, 
 to receive from every one, however insignificant, his obolum of 
 admiration this vanity, once flattered by the obsequious hom- 
 age it obtained from the wonder and reverence of the Cop- 
 perases, reconciled his taste to the disgust it so frequently and 
 necessarily conceived ; and, having in great measure resigned 
 his former acquaintance, and wholly outlived his friends, he 
 was contented to purchase the applause which had become to 
 him a necessary of life, at the humble market more immediate- 
 ly at his command. 
 
 There is no dilemma in which Vanity cannot find an expe- 
 dient to develop its form no stream of circumstances in 
 which its buoyant and light nature will not rise to float upon 
 the surface. And its ingenuity is as fertile as that of the player 
 who (his wardrobe allowing him no other method of playing the 
 fop) could still exhibit the prevalent passion for distinction by 
 wearing stockings of different colors.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 69 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ' ' Who dares 
 
 Interpret then my life for me, as 'twere 
 One of the undistinguishable many ? " COLERIDGE'S Wallenstrin. 
 
 THE first time Clarence had observed the young artist, he had 
 taken a deep interest in his appearance. Pale, thin, undersized, 
 and slightly deformed, the sanctifying mind still shed over the 
 humble frame a spell more powerful than beauty. Absent in 
 manner, melancholy in air, and never conversing except upon 
 subjects upon which his imagination was excited, there was yet 
 a gentleness about him which could not fail to conciliate and 
 prepossess ; nor did Clarence omit any opportunity to soften 
 his reserve, and wind himself into his more intimate acquain- 
 tance. Warner, the only support of an aged and infirm grand- 
 mother (who had survived her immediate children), was distant- 
 ly related to Mrs Copperas ; and that lady extended to him, 
 with ostentatious benevolence, her favor and support. It is 
 true, that she did not impoverish the young Adolphus to enrich 
 her kinsman, but she allowed him a seat at her hospitable 
 board, whenever it was not otherwise filled ; and all that she 
 demanded in return was a picture of herself, another of Mr. 
 Copperas, a third of Master Adolphus, a fourth of the black cat, 
 and from time to time sundry other lesser productions of his 
 genius, of which, through the agency of Mr. Brown, she secretly 
 disposed at a price that sufficiently remunerated her for what- 
 ever havoc the slender appetite of the young painter was able 
 to effect. 
 
 By this arrangement, Clarence had many opportunities of 
 gaining that intimacy with Warner which had become to him an 
 object ; and though the painter, constitutionally diffident and 
 shy, was at first averse to, and even awed by, the ease, boldness, 
 fluent speech, and confident address of a man much younger 
 than himself, yet at last he could not resist the being decoyed 
 into familiarity ; and the youthful pair gradually advanced 
 from companionship into friendship. There was a striking con- 
 trast between the two ; Clarence was bold and frank, Warner 
 close and timid. Both had superior abilities but the abilities 
 of Clarence were for action, those of Warner for art : both were 
 ambitious, but the ambition of Clarence was that of circum- 
 stances rather than character ; compelled to carve his own 
 fortunes without sympathy or aid, he braced his mind to the 
 effort, though naturally too gay for the austerity, and too gen-
 
 70 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 ial for the selfishness of ambition. But the very essence of 
 Warner's nature was the feverish desire of fame ; it poured 
 through his veins like lava ; it preyed as a worm upon his cheek; 
 it corroded his natural sleep ; it blackened the color of his 
 thoughts; it shut out, as with an impenetrable wall, the whole- 
 some energies and enjoyments and objects of living men ; and, 
 taking from him all the vividness of the present, all the tender- 
 ness of the past, constrained his heart to dwell forever and for- 
 ever amidst the dim and shadowy chimeras of a future he was 
 fated never to enjoy. 
 
 But these differences of character, so far from disturbing, 
 rather cemented their friendship ; and while Warner (notwith- 
 standing his advantage of age) paid involuntary deference to 
 the stronger character of Clarence, he, in his turn, derived that 
 species of pleasure by which he was most gratified, from the 
 affectionate and unenvious interest Clarence took in his specu- 
 lations of future distinction, and the unwearying admiration 
 with which he would sit by his side, and watch the colors start 
 from the canvas, beneath the real, though uncultured, genius 
 of the youthful painter. Hitherto, Warner had bounded his 
 attempts to some of the lesser efforts of the art ; he had now 
 yielded to the urgent enthusiasm of his nature, and conceived 
 the plan of an historical picture. Oh ! what sleepless nights, 
 what struggles of the teeming fancy with the dense brain, what 
 labors of the untiring thought, wearing and intense as disease 
 itself, did it cost the ambitious artist to work out in the stillness 
 of his soul, and from its confused and conflicting images, the 
 design of this long meditated and idolized performance. But 
 when it was designed ; when shape upon shape grew and 
 swelled, and glowed from the darkness of previous thought 
 upon the painter's mind ; when, shutting his eyes in the very 
 credulity of delight, the whole work arose before him, glossy 
 with its fresh hues, bright, completed, faultless, arrayed, as it 
 were, and decked out for immortality oh ! then what a full 
 and gushing moment of rapture broke like a released stream 
 upon his soul ! What a recompense for wasted years, health, 
 and hope ! What a coronal to the visions and transports of 
 Genius ; brief, it is true, but how steeped in the very halo of a 
 light that might well be deemed the glory of heaven ! 
 
 But the vision fades, the gorgeous shapes sweep on into 
 darkness, and, waking from his reverie, the artist sees before 
 him only the dull walls of his narrow chamber ; the canvas 
 stretched a blank upon its frame ; the works, maimed, crude, 
 unfinished, of an inexperienced hand, lying idly around ; and
 
 THE DISOWNED. 7 1 
 
 feels himself himself > but one moment before the creator of a 
 world of wonders, the master spirit of shapes glorious and 
 majestical beyond the shapes of men dashed down from his 
 momentary height, and despoiled both of his sorcery and his 
 throne. 
 
 It was Justin such a moment that Warner, starting up, saw 
 Linden (who had silently entered his room) standing motion- 
 less before him. 
 
 "Oh, Linden!" said the artist, "I have had so superb a 
 dream a dream which, though I have before snatched some 
 such vision by fits and glimpses, I never beheld so realized, so 
 perfect as now ; and but you shall see, you shall judge for 
 yourself; I will sketch out the design for you"; and with a 
 piece of chalk, and a rapid hand, Warner conveyed to Linden 
 the outline of his conception. His young friend was eager in 
 his praise and his predictions of renown, and Warner listened 
 to him with a fondness, which spread over his pale cheek a 
 richer flush than lover ever caught from the whispers of his 
 beloved. 
 
 "Yes," said he, as he rose, and his sunken and small eye 
 flashed out with a feverish brightness, "yes, if my hand does 
 not fail my thought, it shall rival even " Here the young 
 painter stopped short, abashed at that indiscretion of enthu- 
 siasm about to utter to another the hoarded vanities hitherto 
 locked in his heart of hearts as a sealed secret, almost from 
 himself. 
 
 "But come," said Clarence affectionately, "your hand is 
 feverish and dry, and of late you have seemed more languid than 
 you were wont come, Warner, you want exercise : it is a 
 beautiful evening, and you shall explain your picture still farther 
 to me as we walk." 
 
 Accustomed to yield to Clarence, Warner mechanically and 
 abstractedly obeyed ; they walked out into the open streets. 
 
 "Look around us," said Warner, pausing, "look among this 
 toiling, and busy, and sordid mass of beings, who claim with us 
 the fellowship of clay. The poor labor, the rich feast ; the only 
 distinction between them is that of the insect and the brute ; 
 like them they fulfil the same end, and share the same oblivion ; 
 they die, a new race springs up, and the very grass upon their 
 graves fades not so soon as their memory. Who, that is con- 
 scious of a higher nature, would not pine and fret himself away 
 to be confounded with these ? Who would not burn, and 
 sicken, and parch, with a delirious longing to divorce himself 
 from so vile a herd ? What have their petty pleasures, and
 
 >JT2 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 their mean aims to atone for the abasement of grinding down 
 our spirits to their level ? Is not the distinction from their 
 blended and common name a sufficient recompense for all that 
 ambition suffers or foregoes ? Oh, for one brief hour (I ask no 
 more) of living honor, one feeling of conscious, unfearing cer- 
 tainty, that Fame has conquered Death ; and then for this 
 humble and impotent clay, this drag on the spirit which it does 
 not assist but fetter, this wretched machine of pains and aches, 
 and feverish throbbings, and vexed inquietudes, why, let the 
 worms consume it, and the grave hide for Fame there is no 
 grave." 
 
 At that moment one of those unfortunate women, who earn 
 their polluted sustenance by becoming the hypocrites of pas- 
 sion, abruptly accosted them. 
 
 "Miserable wretch ! " said Warner loathingly, as he pushed 
 her aside ; but Clarence, with a kindlier feeling, noticed that 
 her haggard cheek was wet with tears, and that her frame, weak 
 and trembling, could scarcely support itself; he, therefore, 
 with that promptitude of charity, which gives ere it discrimi- 
 nates, put some pecuniary assistance in her hand, and joined 
 his comrade. 
 
 " You would not have spoken so tauntingly to the poor girl 
 had you remarked her distress," said Clarence. 
 
 " And why," said Warner mournfully, " why be so cruel as 
 to prolong, even for a few hours, an existence which mercy 
 would only seek to bring nearer to the tomb? That unfor- 
 tunate is but one of the herd, one of the victims to pleasures 
 which debase by their progress, and ruin by their end. Yet 
 perhaps she is not worse than the usual followers of love ; of 
 love that passion the most worshipped, yet the least 'divine, 
 selfish and exacting, drawing its aliment from destruction, 
 and its very nature from tears." 
 
 "Nay," said Clarence, "you confound the two loves, the 
 Eros and the Anteros, gods whom my good tutor was wont so 
 sedulously to distinguish : you surely do not inveigh thus 
 against all love? " 
 
 " I cry you mercy," said Warner, with something of sarcasm 
 in his pensiveness of tone. "We must not dispute, so I will 
 hold my peace ; but make love all you will, what are the false 
 smiles of a lip which a few years can blight as an autumn leaf ? 
 what the homage of a heart as feeble and mortal as your own ? 
 Why, I with a few strokes of a little hair, and an idle mixture 
 of worthless colors, will create a beauty in whose mouth there 
 shall be no hollowness in whose lip there shall be no fading
 
 THE DISOWNED. 73 
 
 there, in your admiration you shall have no need of flattery, 
 and no fear of falsehood ; you shall not be stung with jealousy, 
 nor maddened with treachery ; nor watch with a breaking 
 heart over waning bloom, and departing health, till the grave 
 open, and your perishable paradise is not. No the mimic 
 work is mightier than the original, for it outlasts it : your love 
 cannot wither it, or your desertion destroy your very death, 
 as the being who called it into life, only stamps it with a holier 
 value." 
 
 "And so then," said Clarence, " you would seriously relin- 
 quish, for the mute copy of the mere features, those affections 
 which no painting can express ? " 
 
 "Ay," said the painter, with an energy unusual to his quiet 
 manner, and slightly wandering in his answer from Clarence's 
 remark, "Ay, one serves not two mistresses mine is the glory 
 of my art. Oh ! what are the cold shapes of this tame earth, 
 where the footsteps of the gods have vanished, and left no 
 trace, the blemished forms, the debased brows, and the jarring 
 features, to the glorious and gorgeous images which I can 
 conjure up at my will ? Away with human beauties, to him 
 whose nights are haunted with the forms of angels and wan- 
 derers from the stars, the spirits of all things lovely and 
 exalted in the universe : the universe as it was when to 
 fountain, and stream, and hill, and to every tree which the 
 summer clothed, was allotted the vigil of a Nymph ! when 
 through glade, and by waterfall, at glossy noontide, or under 
 the silver stars, the forms of Godhead and Spirit were seen to 
 walk ; when the sculptor modeled his mighty work from the 
 beauty and strength of Heaven, and the poet lay in the shade 
 to dream of the Naiad and the Faun, and the Olympian 
 dwellers whom he waked in rapture to behold ; and the painter, 
 not as now, shaping from shadow and in solitude the dim glories 
 of his heart, caught at once his inspiration from the glow of 
 earth and its living wanderers, and, lo, the canvas breathed ! 
 Oh ! what are the dull realities and the abortive offspring of 
 this altered and humbled world the world of meaner and 
 dwarfish men to him whose realms are peopled with visions 
 like these ?." 
 
 And the artist, whose ardor, long excited, and pent within, 
 had at last thus audibly, and to Clarence's astonishment, burst 
 forth, paused, as if to recall himself from his wandering enthu- 
 siasm. Such moments of excitement were, indeed, rare with 
 him, except when utterly alone, and even then, were almost 
 invariably followed by that depression of spirit by which all
 
 74 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 overwrought susceptibility is succeeded. A change came over 
 his face, like that of a cloud when the sunbeam, which gilded, 
 leaves it, and with a slight sigh, and a subdued tone, he re- 
 sumed : 
 
 " So, my friend, you see what our art can do even for the 
 humblest professor, when I, a poor, friendless, patronless artist, 
 can thus indulge myself by forgetting the present. But I have 
 not yet explained to you the attitude of my principal figure "; 
 and Warner proceeded once more to detail the particulars of 
 his intended picture. It must be confessed that he had chosen 
 a fine, though an arduous, subject : it was the Trial of Charles 
 the First ; and as the painter, with the enthusiasm of his pro- 
 fession and the eloquence peculiar to himself, dwelt upon the 
 various expressions of the various forms which that extraordinary 
 judgment court afforded, no wonder that Clarence forgot, with 
 the artist himself, the disadvantages Warner had to encounter, 
 in the inexperience of an unregulated taste, and an imperfect 
 professional education. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 "All manners take a tincture from our own, 
 Or come discolored through our passions shown." POPE. 
 
 " What ! give up liberty, property, and, as the Gazetteer says, lie down 
 to be saddled with wooden shoes ? " Vicar of Wakefield. 
 
 THERE was something in the melancholy and reflective char- 
 acter of Warner resembling that of Mordaunt ; had they lived 
 in these days, perhaps both the artist and the philosopher had 
 been poets. But (with regard to the latter) at that time poetry 
 was not the customary vent for deep thought, or passionate 
 feeling. Gray, it is true, though unjustly condemned as artificial 
 and meretricious in his style, had infused into the scanty works 
 which he has bequeathed to immortality a pathos and a rich- 
 ness foreign to the literature of the age ; and, subsequently, 
 Goldsmith, in the affecting yet somewhat enervate simplicity 
 of his verse, had obtained for Poetry a brief respite from a 
 school at once declamatory and powerless, and led her forth 
 for a "Sunshine Holiday," into the village green, and under 
 the hawthorn shade. But though the softer and meeker feelings 
 had struggled into a partial and occasional vent, those which 
 partook more of passion and of thought, the deep, the wild, 
 the fervid, were still without " the music of a voice." For the
 
 THE DISOWNED. 75 
 
 after-century it was reserved to restore what we may be 
 permitted to call the spirit of our national literature ; to 
 forsake the clinquant of the French mimickers of classic gold ; 
 to exchange a thrice-adulterated Hippocrene for the pure well 
 of Shakspeare and of nature ; to clothe philosophy in the 
 gorgeous and solemn majesty of appropriate music ; and to 
 invest passion with a language as burning as its thought, and 
 rapid as its impulse. At that time reflection found its natural 
 channel in metaphysical inquiry, or political speculation : both 
 valuable, perhaps, but neither profound. It was a bold, and a 
 free, and an inquisitive age, but not one in which thought ran 
 over its set and stationary banks, and watered even the common 
 flowers of verse: not one in which Lucretius could have 
 embodied the dreams of Epicurus ; Shakspeare lavished the 
 mines of a superhuman wisdom upon his fairy palaces and 
 enchanted islea ; or the Beautifier * of this common earth have 
 called forth 
 
 " The motion of the spirit that impels 
 All thinking things, all objects of all thought " ; 
 
 or Disappointment and Satiety have hallowed their human 
 griefs by a pathos wrought from whatever is magnificent, and 
 grand, and lovely in the unknown universe ; or the specula- 
 tions of a great but visionary f mind have raised, upon 
 subtlety and doubt, a vast and irregular pile of verse, full of 
 dim-lighted cells and winding galleries, in which what treasures 
 lie concealed ! That was an age in which poetry took one 
 path, and contemplation another ; those who were addicted to 
 the latter pursued it in its orthodox roads ; and many whom 
 Nature, perhaps, intended for poets, the wizard Custom con- 
 verted into speculators or critics. 
 
 It was this which gave to Algernon's studies their peculiar 
 hue ; while, on the other hand, the taste for the fine arts which 
 then universally prevailed, directed to the creations of paint- 
 ing, rather than those, of poetry, more really congenial to his 
 powers, the intense imagination and passion for glory which 
 marked and pervaded the character of the artist. 
 
 But as we have seen that that passion for glory made the 
 great characteristic difference between Clarence and Warner, 
 so also did that passion terminate any resemblance which War- 
 ner bore to Algernon Mordaunt. With the former, a rank and 
 unwholesome plant, it grew up to the exclusion of all else : 
 with the latter, subdued and regulated, it sheltered, not withered, 
 
 * Wordsworth. t Shelley.
 
 76 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 the virtues by which it was surrounded. With Warner, ambi- 
 tion was a passionate desire to separate himself by fame from 
 the herd of other men ; with Mordaunt, to bind himself by 
 charity yet closer to his kind : with the one it produced a dis- 
 gust to his species ; with the other, a pity and a love : with the 
 one, power was the badge of distinction ; with the other, the 
 means to bless ! But our story lingers. 
 
 It was now the custom of Warner to spend the whole day at 
 his work, and wander out with Clarence, when the evening 
 darkened, to snatch a brief respite of exercise and air. Often, 
 along the lighted and populous streets, would the two young 
 and unfriended competitors for this world's high places roam 
 with the various crowd, moralizing as they went, or holding dim 
 conjecture upon their destinies to be. And often would they 
 linger beneath the portico of some house where, " haunted with 
 great resort," Pleasure and Pomp held their nightly revels, to 
 listen to the music that, through the open windows, stole over 
 the rare exotics with which wealth mimics the southern scents, 
 and floated, mellowing by distance, along the unworthy streets, 
 and while they stood together, silent, and each feeding upon 
 separate thoughts, the artist's pale lip would curl with scorn, 
 as he heard the laugh and the sounds of a frivolous and hollow 
 mirth ring from the crowd within, and startle the air from the 
 silver spell which music had laid upon it. "These," would he 
 say to Clarence, " these are the dupes of the same fever as 
 ourselves : like us, they strive, and toil, and vex their little 
 lives for a distinction from their race. Ambition comes to 
 them, as to all ; but they throw for a different prize than we 
 do ; theirs is the honor of a day, ours is immortality ; yet they 
 take the same labor, and are consumed by the same care. And, 
 fools that they are, with their gilded names and their gaudy 
 trappings, they would shrink in disdain from that comparison 
 with us which we, with a juster fastidiousness, blush at this 
 moment to acknowledge. 
 
 From these scenes they would rove on, and, both delighting 
 in contrast, enter some squalid and obscure quarter of the city. 
 There, one night, quiet observers of their kind, they paused 
 beside a group congregated together by some common cause of 
 obscene merriment or unholy fellowship a group on which low 
 vice had set her sordid and hideous stamp to gaze and draw 
 strange humors or a motley moral from that depth and ferment 
 of human nature, into whose sink the thousand streams of civi- 
 lization had poured their dregs and offal. 
 
 "You survey these," said the painter, marking each with the
 
 THE DISOWNED. 77 
 
 curious eye of his profession : " they are a base horde, it is 
 true, but they have their thirst of fame, their aspirations even 
 in the abyss of crime, or the loathsomeness of famished want. 
 Down in yon cellar, where a farthing rushlight glimmers upon 
 haggard cheeks, distorted with the idiotcy of drink there, in 
 that foul attic, from whose casement you see the beggar's rags 
 hang to dry, or rather to crumble in the reeking and filthy 
 air farther on, within those walls which, -black and heavy as 
 the hearts they hide, close our miserable prospect, there, even 
 there, in the mildewed dungeon, in the felon's cell, on the very 
 scaffold shelf Ambition hugs her own hope, or scowls upon 
 her own despair. Yes ! the inmates of those walls had their 
 perilous game of honor, their 'hazard of the die," in which vice 
 was triumph and infamy success. We do but share their pas- 
 sion, though we direct it to a better object." 
 
 Pausing for a moment, as his thoughts flowed into a some- 
 what different channel of his character, Warner continued 
 "We have now caught a glimpse of the two great divisions of 
 mankind ; they who riot in palaces, and they who make mirth 
 hideous in rags and hovels : own that it is but a poor survey 
 in either. Can we be contemptible with these, or loathsome 
 with those ? Or rather have we not a nobler spark within us, 
 which we have but to fan into a flame, that shall burn forever, 
 when these miserable meteors sink into the corruption from 
 which they rise ?" 
 
 " But," observed Clarence, " these are the two extremes ; the 
 pinnacle of civilization too worn and bare for any more noble 
 and vigorous fruit, and the base upon which the cloud descends 
 in rain and storm. Look to the central portion of society ; 
 there the soil is more genial, and its produce more rich." 
 
 "Is it so, in truth?" answered Warner; "pardon me, I 
 believe not : the middling classes are as human as the rest. 
 There is the region, the heart of Avarice, systematized, 
 spreading, rotting, the very fungus and leprosy of social states- 
 suspicion, craft, hypocrisy, servility to the great, oppression 
 to the low, the wax-like mimicry of courtly vices, the hardness 
 of flint to humble woes ; thought, feeling, the faculties and 
 impulses of man, all ulcered into one great canker Gain ; 
 these make the general character of the middling class, the 
 unleavened mass of that mediocrity which it has been the wis- 
 dom of the shallow to applaud. Pah ! we too are of this class, 
 this potter's earth, this paltry mixture of mud and stone ; but 
 we, my friend, we will knead gold into our clay." 
 
 " But look," said Clarence, pointing to the group before
 
 f 8 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 them ; "look, yon wretched mother, whose voice an instant ago 
 uttered the coarsest accents of maudlin and intoxicated prosti- 
 tution, is now fostering her infant, with a fondness stamped 
 upon her worn cheek and hollow eye, which might shame the 
 nice maternity of nobles ; and there too, yon wretch whom, 
 in the reckless effrontery of hardened abandonment, we our- 
 selves heard a few minutes since boast of his dexterity in theft, 
 and openly exhibiuts token look, he is now, with a Samaritan's 
 own charity, giving the very goods for which his miserable life 
 was risked, to that attenuated and starving stripling ! No^ 
 Warner, no ! even this mass is not unleavened. The vilest 
 infamy is not too deep for the Seraph Virtue to descend and 
 illumine its abyss ! " 
 
 " Out on the weak fools ! " said the artist, bitterly : " it would 
 be something, if they could be consistent even in crime ! " and, 
 placing his arm in Linden's, he drew him away. 
 
 As the picture grew beneath the painter's hand, Clarence 
 was much struck with the outline and expression of counte- 
 nance given to the regicide Bradshaw. 
 
 " They are but an imperfect copy of the living original from 
 whom I have borrowed them," said Warner, in answer to 
 Clarence's remark upon the sternness of the features. " But 
 that original, a relation of mine, is coming here to-day you 
 shall see him." 
 
 While Warner was yet speaking, the person in question 
 entered. His were, indeed, the form and face worthy to be 
 seized by the painter. The peculiarity of his character made 
 him affect a plainness of dress unusual to the day* and approach- 
 ing to the simplicity, but not the neatness, of Quakerism. His 
 hair, then, with all the better ranks, a principal object of 
 cultivation, was wild, dishevelled, and, in wiry flakes of the 
 sablest hue, rose abruptly from a forehead on which either 
 thought or passion had written its annals with an iron pen ; the 
 lower part of the brow, which overhung the eye, was singularly 
 sharp and prominent ; while the lines, or rather furrows, traced 
 under the eyes and nostrils, spoke somewhat of exhaustion and 
 internal fatigue. But this expression was contrasted and con- 
 tradicted by the firmly compressed lip ; the lighted, steady, 
 stern eye ; the resolute and even stubborn front, joined to 
 proportions strikingly athletic, and a stature of uncommon 
 height. 
 
 "Well, Wolfe," said the young painter to the person we have 
 described, " it is indeed a kindness to give me a second sitting." 
 
 " Tush, boy ! " answered Wolfe : " all men have their vain
 
 THE DISOWNED. 79 
 
 points, and I own that I am not ill pleased that these rugged 
 features should be assigned, even in fancy, to one of the 
 noblest of those men who judged the mightiest cause in which 
 a country was ever plaintiff, a tyrant criminal, and a world 
 witness ! " 
 
 While Wolfe was yet speaking, his countenance, so naturally 
 harsh, took a yet sterner aspect, and the artist, by a happy 
 touch, succeeded in transferring it to the canvas. 
 
 " But, after all," continued Wolfe, "it shames me to lend aid 
 to an art frivolous in itself, and almost culpable in times when 
 Freedom wants the head to design, and, perhaps, the hand to 
 execute, far other and nobler works than the blazoning of her 
 past deeds upon perishable canvas." 
 
 A momentary anger at the slight put upon his art crossed the 
 pale brow of the artist ; but he remembered the character of the 
 man, and continued his work in silence. 
 
 " You consider then, sir, that these are times in which liberty 
 is attacked ? " said Clarence. 
 
 "Attacked ! " repeated Wolfe " attacked ! " and then sud- 
 denly sinking his voice into a sort of sneer " why, since the 
 event which this painting is designed to commemorate I know 
 not if we have ever had one solitary gleam of liberty break along 
 the great chaos of jarring prejudice and barbarous law which 
 we term, forsooth, a glorious constitution. Liberty attacked ! 
 no, boy but it is a time when Liberty may be gained." 
 
 Perfectly unacquainted with the excited politics of the day, 
 or the growing and mighty spirit which then stirred through 
 the minds of men, Clarence remained silent ; but his evident 
 attention flattered the fierce republican, and he proceeded. 
 
 " Ay," he said slowly, and as if drinking in a deep and stern 
 joy from his conviction in the truth of the words he uttered 
 "Ay, I have wandered over the face of the earth, and I have 
 warmed my soul at the fires which lay hidden under its quiet 
 surface ; I have been in the city and the desert the herded 
 and banded crimes of the Old World, and the scattered, but 
 bold, hearts which are found among the savannahs of the New ; 
 and in either I have beheld that seed sown which, from a 
 mustard grain, too scanty for a bird's beak, shall grow up to be 
 a shelter and a home for the whole family of man. I have 
 looked upon the thrones of kings, and lo, the anointed ones 
 were in purple and festive pomp ; and I looked beneath the 
 thrones, and I saw Want and Hunger and despairing Wrath 
 gnawing the foundations away. I have stood in the streets of 
 that great city where Mirth seems to hold an eternal jubilee,
 
 8o THE DISOWNED. 
 
 and beheld the noble riot while the peasant starved ; and the 
 priest build altars to Mammon piled from the earnings of 
 groaning Labor, and cemented with blood and tears. But I 
 looked farther, and saw, in the rear, chains sharpened into 
 swords, misery ripening into justice, and famine darkening 
 into revenge ; and I laughed as I beheld, for I knew that the 
 day of the oppressed was at hand." 
 
 Somewhat awed by the prophetic tone, though revolted by 
 what seemed to him the novelty and the fierceness, of the 
 sentiments of the republican, Clarence after a brief pause said : 
 
 "And what of our own country?" 
 
 Wolfe's brow darkened. " The oppression here," said he, 
 "has not been so weighty, therefore the reaction will be less 
 strong; the parties are more blended, therefore their separation 
 will be more arduous ; the extortion is less strained, therefore 
 the endurance will be mora meek ; but, soon or late, the 
 struggle must come ; bloody will it be if the strife be even ; 
 gentle and lasting, if the people predominate." 
 
 "And if the rulers be the strongest?" said Clarence. 
 
 " The struggle will be renewed," replied Wolfe doggedly. 
 
 " You still attend those oratorical meetings, cousin, I think," 
 said Warner. 
 
 " I do," said Wolfe; "and if you are not so utterly absorbed 
 in your vain and idle art as to be indifferent to all things 
 nobler, you will learn yourself to take interest in what con- 
 cerns I will not say your country but mankind. For you, 
 young man (and the republican turned to Clarence), I would 
 fain hope that life has not already been diverted from the 
 greatest of human objects ; if so, come to-morrow night to 
 our assembly, and learn from worthier lips than mine the pre- 
 cepts and the hopes for which good men live or die." 
 
 "I will come at all events to listen, if not to learn," said Clar- 
 ence eagerly, for his curiosity was excited. And the republican, 
 having now fulfilled the end of his visit, rose and departed. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 " Bound to suffer persecution 
 And martyrdom with resolution, 
 T'oppose himself against the hate 
 And vengeance of ttie incensed state." Hudibras. 
 
 BORN of respectable, though not wealthy, parents, John Wolfe 
 was one of those fiery and daring spirits which, previous to
 
 THE DISOWNED. 8l 
 
 some mighty revolution, Fate seems to scatter over various parts 
 of the earth, even those removed from the predestined explo- 
 sion ; heralds of the events in which they are fitted, though not 
 fated, to be actors. The period at which he is presented to 
 the reader was one considerably prior to that French Revolu- 
 tion so much debated, and so little understood. But some 
 such event, though not foreseen by the common, had been al- 
 ready foreboded by the more enlightened, eye; and Wolfe, from 
 a protracted residence in France, among the most discontented 
 of its freer spirits, had brought hope to that burning enthusi- 
 asm which had long made the pervading passion of his existence. 
 
 Bold to ferocity, generous in devotion to folly in self-sacri- 
 fice, unflinching in his tenets to a degree which rendered their 
 ardor ineffectual to all times, because utterly inapplicable to 
 the present, Wolfe was one of those zealots whose very virtues 
 have the semblance of vice, and whose very capacities for dan- 
 ger become harmless from the rashness of their excess. 
 
 It was not among the philosophers and reasoners of France 
 that Wolfe had drawn strength to his opinions : whatever such 
 companions might have done to his tenets, they would at least 
 have moderated his actions. The philosopher may aid, or ex- 
 pedite, a change ; but never does the philosopher in any age, or 
 of any sect, countenance a crime. But of philosophers Wolfe 
 knew little, and probably despised them for their temper- 
 ance : it was among fanatics ignorant, but imaginative that 
 he had strengthened the love, without comprehending the 
 nature, of republicanism. Like Lucian's painter, whose flattery 
 portrayed the one-eyed prince in profile, he viewed only that 
 side of the question in which there was no defect, and gave 
 beauty to the whole by concealing the half. Thus, though on 
 his return to England herding with the common class of his 
 reforming brethren, Wolfe possessed many peculiarities and 
 distinctions of character which in rendering him strikingly 
 adapted to the purpose of the novelist, must serve as a caution 
 to the reader not to judge of the class by the individual. 
 
 With a class of republicans in England there was a strong 
 tendency to support their cause by reasoning. With Wolfe, 
 whose mind was little wedded to logic, all was the offspring of 
 turbulent feelings, which, in rejecting arguments, substituted 
 declamation for syllogism. This effected a powerful and irrec- 
 oncilable distinction between Wolfe and the better part of his 
 comrades ; for the habits of cool reasoning, whether true or 
 false, are little likely to bias the mind towards those crimes to 
 which Wolfe's irregulated emotions might possibly urge him,
 
 82 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 and give to the characters, to which they are a sort of common 
 denominator, something of method and much of similarity. 
 But the feelings those orators which allow no calculation, and 
 baffle the tameness of comparison rendered Wolfe alone, 
 unique, eccentric in opinion or action, whether of vice or vinue. 
 
 Private ties frequently moderate the ardor of our public en- 
 thusiasm. Wolfe had none. His nearest relation was Warner, 
 and it may readily be supposed that with the pensive and con- 
 templative artist he had very little in common. He had never 
 married, nor had ever seemed to wander from his stern and 
 sterile path, in the most transient pursuit of the pleasures of 
 sense. Inflexibly honest, rigidly austere in his moral char- 
 acter his bitterest enemies could detect no flaw poor, even to 
 indigence, he had invariably refuged all overtures of the govern- 
 ment thrice imprisoned and heavily fined for his doctrines, no 
 fear of a future, no remembrance of the past, punishment could 
 ever silence his bitter eloquence or moderate the passion of his 
 distempered zeal kindly, though rude, his scanty means were 
 ever shared by the less honest and disinterested followers of 
 his faith ; and he had been known for days to deprive himself 
 of food, and for nights of shelter, for the purpose of yielding 
 food and shelter to another. 
 
 Such was the man doomed to forsake, through a long and 
 wasted life, every substantial blessing, in pursuit of a shadowy 
 good ; with the warmest benevolence in his heart, to relinquish 
 private affections, and to brood even to madness over public 
 offences to sacrifice everything in a generous, though erring, 
 devotion for that freedom whose cause, instead of promoting, 
 he was calculated to retard ; and, while he believed himself the 
 martyr of a high and uncompromising virtue, to close his ca- 
 reer with the greatest of human crimes. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 1 ' Faith, methinks his humor is good, and his purse will buy good company." 
 
 The Parson s Wedding. 
 
 WHEN Clarence returned home, after the conversation re- 
 corded in our last chapter, he found a note from Talbot, invit- 
 ing him to meet some friends of the latter at supper that even- 
 ing. It was the first time Clarence had been asked, and he 
 looked forward with some curiosity and impatience to the hour 
 appointed in the note.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 83 
 
 It is impossible to convey any idea of the jealous rancor felt 
 by Mr. and Mrs. Copperas on hearing of this distinction a 
 distinction which " the perfect courtier " had never once be- 
 stowed upon themselves. 
 
 Mrs. Copperas tossed her head, too indignant for words ; and 
 the stock-jobber, in the bitterness of his soul, affirmed, with a 
 meaning air, " that he dared say, after all, that the old gentle- 
 man was not so rich as he gave out." 
 
 On entering Talbot's drawing-room, Clarence found about 
 seven or eight people assembled : their names, in proclaiming 
 the nature of the party, indicated that the aim of the host was 
 to combine aristocracy and talent. The literary acquirements 
 and worldly tact of Talbot, joined to the adventitious circum- 
 stances of birth and fortune, enabled him to effect this object, 
 so desirable in polished society, far better than we generally 
 find it effected now. The conversation of these guests was 
 light and various. The last bon mot of Chesterfield, the last 
 sarcasm of Horace Walpole, Goldsmith's " Traveller," Shen- 
 stone's " Pastorals," and the attempt of Mrs. Montagu to bring 
 Shakespeare into fashion in all these subjects the graceful wit 
 and exquisite taste of Talbot shone pre-eminent ; and he had 
 almost succeeded in convincing a profound critic that Gray 
 was a poet more likely to live than Mason, when the servant 
 announced supper. 
 
 That was the age of suppers ! Happy age ! Meal of ease 
 and mirth ; when Wine and Night lit the lamp of Wit ! O, 
 what precious things were said and looked at those banquets 
 of the soul ! There epicurism was in the lip as well as the 
 palate, and one had humor for a hors d'oeuvre, and repartee for an 
 entremet. In dinner there is something too pompous, too formal, 
 for the true ease of Table Talk. One's intellectual appetite, 
 uke the physical, is coarse but dull. At dinner one is fit only 
 for eating ; after dinner only for politics. But supper was a 
 glorious relic of the ancients. The bustle of the day had thor- 
 oughly wound up the spirit, and every stroke upon the dial- 
 plate of wit was true to the genius of the hour. The wallet of 
 diurnal anecdote was full, and craved unloading. The great 
 meal that vulgar first love of the appetite was over, and one 
 now only flattered it into coquetting with another. The mind, 
 disengaged and free, was no longer absorbed in a cutlet or bur- 
 thened with a joint. The gourmand carried the nicety of his 
 physical perception to his moral, and applauded a bon mot 
 instead of a bonne bouche. 
 
 Then too one had no necessity to keep a reserve of thought
 
 84 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 for the after-evening ; supper was the final consummation, the 
 glorious funeral pyre of day. One could be merry till bed- 
 time without an interregnum. Nay, if in the ardor of con- 
 vivialism one did I merely hint of the possibility of such an 
 event if one did exceed the narrow limits of strict ebriety, 
 and open the heart with a ruby key, one had nothing to dread 
 from the cold, or, what is worse, the warm looks of ladies in 
 the drawing-room ; no fear that an imprudent word, in the 
 amatory fondness of the fermented blood, might expose one to 
 matrimony and settlements. There was no tame, trite medium 
 of propriety and suppressed confidence, no bridge from board 
 to bed, over which a false step (and your wine cup is a mar- 
 vellous corruptor of ambulatory rectitude) might precipitate 
 into an irrecoverable abyss of perilous communication or un- 
 wholesome truth. One's pillow became at once the legitimate 
 and natural bourne to "the overheated brain"; and the gen- 
 erous rashness of the ccenatorial reveller was not damped by 
 untimeous caution or ignoble calculation. 
 
 But " we have changed all that now"; Sobriety has become 
 the successor of suppers ; the great ocean of moral encroach- 
 ment has not left us one little island of refuge. Miserable sup- 
 per-lovers that we are, like the native Indians of America, a 
 scattered and daily disappearing race, we wander among 
 strange customs, and behold the innovating and invading Din- 
 ner spread gradually over the very space of time in which the 
 majesty of Supper once reigned undisputed and supreme ! 
 
 " O, ye heavens, be kind. 
 And feel, them earth, for this afflicted race." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 As he was sitting down to the table Clarence's notice was 
 arrested by a somewhat suspicious and unpleasing occurrence. 
 The supper room was on the ground floor, and, owing to the 
 heat of the weather, one of the windows, facing the small gar- 
 den, was left open. Through this window Clarence distinctly 
 saw the face of a man look into the room for one instant, with 
 a prying and curious gaze, and then as instantly disappear. As 
 no one else seemed to remark this incident, and the general 
 attention was somewhat noisily engrossed by the subject of 
 conversation, Clarence thought it not worth while to mention a 
 circumstance for which the impertinence of any neighboring 
 servant, or drunken passer-by, might easily account. An 
 apprehension, however, of a more unpleasant nature shot 
 across him, as his eye fell upon the costly plate which Talbot 
 rather ostentatiously displayed, and then glanced to the single
 
 THE DISOWNED. 85 
 
 and aged servant, who was, beside his master, ihe only male 
 inmate of the house. Nor could he help saying to Talbot, in 
 the course of the evening, that he wondered he was not afraid 
 of hoarding so many articles of value in a house at once lonely 
 and ill guarded. 
 
 "Ill guarded !" said Talbot, rather affronted, "why, I and 
 my servant always sleep here ! " 
 
 To this Clarence thought it neither prudent nor well-bred to 
 offer further remark. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 " Meetings, or public calls he never miss'd, 
 To dictate often, always to assist. 
 
 * * ' * * * 
 
 To his experience and his native sense, 
 He joined a bold, imperious eloquence : 
 The grave, stern look of men inform'd and wise, 
 A full command of feature, heart and eyes, 
 An awe-compelling frown, and fear-inspiring size." CRABBE. 
 
 THE next evening Clarence, mindful of Wolfe's invitation, 
 inquired from Warner (who repaid the contempt of the repub- 
 lican for the painter's calling by a similar feeling for the zeal- 
 ot's) the direction of the oratorical meeting, and repaired there 
 alone. It was the most celebrated club (of that description) 
 of the day, and well worth attending, as a gratification to thi 
 curiosity, if not an improvement to the mind. 
 
 On entering, he found himself in a long room, tolerably well 
 lighted, and still better filled. The sleepy countenances of the 
 audience, the whispered conversation carried on at scattered 
 intervals, the listless attitudes of some, the frequent yawns of 
 others, the eagerness with which attention was attracted to the 
 opening door, when it admitted some new object of interest, 
 the desperate resolution with which some of the more energetic 
 turned themselves towards the orator, and then, with a faint 
 shake of the head, turned themselves again hopelessly away 
 were all signs that denoted that no very eloquent declaimer 
 was in possession of the " house." It was, indeed, a singularly 
 dull, monotonous voice which, arising from the upper end of 
 the room, dragged itself on towards the middle, and expired 
 with' a sighing sound before it reached the end. The face of 
 the speaker suited his vocal powers ; it was small, mean, and of 
 a round stupidity, without anything even in fault that could
 
 86 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 possibly command attention, or even the excitement of disap- 
 probation : the very garments of the orator seemed dull and 
 heavy, and, like the Melancholy of Milton, had a " leaden 
 look." Now and then some words, more emphatic than oth- 
 ers stones breaking, as it were, with a momentary splash, the 
 stagnation of the heavy stream produced from three very 
 quiet, unhappy-looking persons, seated next to the speaker, his 
 immediate friends, three single isolated " hears ! " 
 
 " The force of friendship could no farther go." 
 
 At last the orator, having spoken through, suddenly stopped ; 
 the whole meeting seemed as if a weight had been taken from 
 it ; there was a general bu^i of awakened energy, each stretched 
 his limbs, and resettled himself in his place, 
 
 " And turning to his neighbor, said, 
 ' Rejoice ! ' " 
 
 A pause ensued the chairman looked round the eyes of 
 the meeting followed those of their president, with an universal 
 and palpable impatience, towards an obscure corner of the 
 room : the pause deepened for one moment, and then was 
 broken ; a voice cried "Wolfe ! " and at that signal the whole 
 room shook with the name. The place which Clarence had 
 taken did not allow him to see the object of these cries, till he 
 rose from his situation, and, passing two rows of benches, stood 
 forth in the middle space of the room ; then, from one to one, 
 went round the general roar of applause ; feet stamped, hands 
 clapped, umbrellas set their sharp points to the ground, and 
 walking-sticks thumped themselves out of shape in the uni- 
 versal clamor. Tall, gaunt, and erect, the speaker possessed, 
 even in the mere proportions of his frame, that physical power 
 which never fails, in a popular assembly, to gain attention to 
 mediocrity, and to throw dignity over faults. He looked very 
 slowly round the room, remaining perfectly still and motion- 
 less, till the clamor of applause had entirely subsided, and 
 every ear, Clarence's no less eagerly than the rest, was strained, 
 and thirsting to catch the first syllables of his voice. 
 
 It was then with alow, very deep, and somewhat hoarse tone, 
 that he began ; and it was not till he had spoken for several 
 minutes that the iron expression of his face altered, that the 
 drooping hand was raised, and that the suppressed, yet power- 
 ful, voice began to expand and vary in its volume. He had 
 then entered upon a new department of his subject. The 
 question was connected with the English constitution, and
 
 THE DISOWNED. 7 
 
 Wolfe was now preparing to put forth, in long and blackened 
 array, the alleged evils of an aristocratical form of government. 
 Then it was as if the bile and bitterness of years were poured 
 forth in a terrible and stormy wrath then his action became 
 vehement, and his eye flashed forth unutterable fire ; his voice, 
 solemn, swelling and increasing with each tone in its height 
 and depth, filled, as with something palpable and perceptible, 
 the shaking walls. The listeners a various and unconnected 
 group, bound by no tie of faith or of party, many attracted by 
 curiosity, many by the hope of ridicule, some abhorring the 
 tenets expressed, and nearly all disapproving their principles, 
 or doubting their wisdom the listeners, certainly not a group 
 previously formed or molded into enthusiam, became rapt and 
 earnest, their very breath forsook them. 
 
 Linden had never before that night heard a public speaker ; 
 but he was of a thoughtful and rather calculating mind, and 
 his early habits of decision, and the premature cultivation of 
 his intellect, rendered him little susceptible, in genera}, to the 
 impressions of the vulgar ; nevertheless, in spite of himself, he 
 was hurried away by the stream, and found that the force and 
 rapidity of the speaker did not allow him even time for the dis- 
 sent and disapprobation which his republican maxims and 
 fiery denunciations perpetually excited in a mind aristocratic 
 both by creed and education. At length, after a peroration of 
 impetuous and magnificent invective, the orator ceased. 
 
 In the midst of the applause that followed, Clarence left the 
 assembly ; he could not endure the thought that any duller or 
 more commonplace speaker should fritter away the spell which 
 yet bound and engrossed his spirit. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 "At the bottom of the staircase was a small door, which gave way before 
 Nigel, as he precipitated himself upon the scene of action, a cocked pistol 
 in one hand, etc." Fortunes of Nigel. 
 
 THE night, though not utterly dark, was rendered capricious 
 and dim by alternate wind and rain ; and Clarence was delayed 
 in his return homeward by seeking occasional shelter from the 
 rapid and heavy showers which hurried by. It was during one 
 of the temporary cessations of the rain that he reached Copperas 
 Bower, and while he was searching in his pockets for the key 
 which was to admit him, he observed two men loitering about
 
 88 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 his neighbor's house. The light was not sufficient to give him 
 more than a scattered and imperfect view of their motions. 
 Somewhat alarmed, he stood for several moments at the door, 
 watching them as well as he was able ; nor did he enter the 
 house till the loiterers had left their suspicious position, and, 
 walking onwards, were hid entirely from him by the distance 
 and darkness. 
 
 " It really is a dangerous thing for Talbot," thought Clarence, 
 as he ascended to his apartment, " to keep so many valuables, 
 and only one servant, and that one as old as himself too. How- 
 ever, as I am by no means sleepy, and my room is by no means 
 cool, I may as well open my window, and see if those idle 
 fellows make their reappearance." Suiting the action to the 
 thought, Clarence opened his little casement, and leant wist- 
 fully out. 
 
 He had no light in his room, for none was ever left for him. 
 This circumstance, however, of course enabled him the better 
 to penetrate the dimness and haze of the night, and, by the help 
 of the fluttering lamps, he was enabled to take a general, 
 though not minute, survey of the scene below. 
 
 I think I have before said that there was a gard.cn between 
 Talbot's house and Copperas Bower ; this was bounded by a 
 wall, which confined Talbot's peculiar territory of garden, and 
 this wall, describing a parallelogram, faced also the road. It 
 contained two entrances one the principal adytus, in the 
 shape of a comely iron gate, the other a wooden door, which, 
 being a private pass, fronted the intermediate garden before 
 mentioned, and was exactly opposite to Clarence's window. 
 
 Linden had been more than ten minutes at his post, and had 
 just begun to think his suspicions without foundation, and his 
 vigil in vain, when he observed the same figures he had seen 
 before advance slowly from the distance, and pause by the 
 front gate of Talbot's mansion. 
 
 Alarmed and anxious, he redoubled his attention ; he stretched 
 himself, as far as his safety would permit, out of the window ; 
 the lamps, agitated by the wind, which swept by in occasional 
 gusts, refused to grant to his straining sight more than an in- 
 accurate and unsatisfying survey. Presently a blast, more 
 violent than ordinary, suspended as it were the falling columns 
 of rain, and left Clarence in almost total darkness ; it rolled 
 away, and the momentary calm which ensued enabled him to 
 see that one of the men was stooping by the gate, and the other 
 standing apparently on the watch at a little distance. Another 
 gust shook the lamps, and again obscured his view : and when
 
 THE DISOWNED. 8$ 
 
 it had passed onward in its rapid course, the men had left the 
 gate, and were in the garden beneath his window. They crept 
 cautiously, but swiftly, along the opposite wall, till they came 
 to the small door we have before mentioned ; here they halted, 
 and one of them appeared to occupy himself in opening the 
 door. Now, then, fear was changed into certainty, and it seemed, 
 without doubt, that the men, having found some difficulty or 
 danger in forcing the stronger or more public entrance, had 
 changed their quarter of attack. No more time was to be lost ; 
 Clarence shouted aloud, but the high wind probably prevented 
 the sound reaching the ears of the burglars, or at least rendered 
 it dubious and confused. The next moment, and before 
 Clarence could repeat his alarm, they had opened the door, 
 and were within the neighboring garden, beyond his view. 
 Very young men, unless their experience has outstripped their 
 youth, seldom have much presence of mind ; that quality, which 
 is the opposite to surprise, comes to us in those years when 
 nothing seems to us strange or unexpected. But a much older 
 man than Clarence might have well been at a loss to know what 
 conduct to adopt in the situation in which our hero was placed. 
 The visits of the watchman to that (then) obscure and ill- 
 inhabited neighborhood, were more regulated by his indolence 
 than his duty, and Clarence knew that it would be in vain to 
 listen for his cry, or tarry for his assistance. He himself was 
 utterly unarmed, but the stock-jobber had a pair of horse pistols, 
 and, as this recollection flashed upon him, the pause of delibera- 
 tion ceased. 
 
 With a swift step he descended the first flight of stairs, and, 
 pausing at the chamber door of the faithful couple, knocked 
 upon its panels with a loud and hasty summons. The second 
 repetition of the noise produced the sentence, uttered in a very 
 trembling voice, of "Who's there?" 
 
 " It is I, Clarence Linden," replied our hero ; " lose no time 
 in opening the door." 
 
 This answer seemed to reassure the valorous stock-jobber. 
 He slowly undid the bolt, and turned the key. 
 
 "In Heaven's name, what do you want, Mr. Linden?" 
 said he. 
 
 " Ay," cried a sharp voice from the more internal recesses 
 of the chamber, " what do you want, sir, disturbing us in the 
 bosom of our family, and at the dead of night ? " 
 
 With a rapid voice, Clarence repeated what he had seen, and 
 requested the broker to accompany him to Talbot's house, of 
 at least to lend him his pistols.
 
 90 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " He shall do no such thing," cried Mrs. Copperas. " Come 
 here, Mr. C., and shut the door directly." 
 
 "Stop, my love," said the stock-jobber, " stop a moment." 
 
 " For God's sake," cried Clarence, " make no delay ; the 
 poor old man may be murdered by this time." 
 
 "It's no business of mine," said the stock-jobber. 
 
 " If Adolphus "had not broken the rattle I would not have 
 minded the trouble of springing it ; but you are very much 
 mistaken if you think I am going to leave my warm bed, in 
 order to have my throat cut." 
 
 "Then give me your pistols," cried Clarence; "I will go 
 alone." 
 
 "I shall commit no such folly," said the stock-jobber ; "if 
 you are murdered, I may have to answer it to your friends, and 
 pay for your burial. Besides, you owe us for your lodgings 
 go to your bed, young man, as I shall to mine." And so say- 
 ing, Mr. Copperas proceeded to close the door. 
 
 But enraged at the brutality of the man, and excited by the 
 urgency of the case, Clarence did not allow him so peaceable 
 a retreat. With a strong and fierce grasp, he seized the astonished 
 Copperas by the throat, and shaking him violently, forced his 
 own entrance into the sacred nuptial chamber. 
 
 " By Heaven," cried Linden, in a savage and stern tone, for 
 his blood was up, " I will twist your coward's throat, and save 
 the murderer his labor, if you do not instantly give me up your 
 pistols." 
 
 The stock-jobber was panic-stricken. "Take them," he 
 cried in the extremest terror ; "there they are on the chimney- 
 piece, close by." 
 
 " Are they primed and loaded ? " said Linden, not relaxing 
 his gripe. 
 
 "Yes, yes ! " said the stock-jobber, " loose my throat, or you 
 will choke me ! " and, at that instant, Clarence felt himself 
 clasped by the invading hands of Mrs. Copperas. 
 
 " Call off your wife," said he, " or I will choke you ! " and 
 he tightened his hold, " and tell her to give me the pistols." 
 
 The next moment Mrs. Copperas extended the debated 
 weapons towards Clarence. He seized them, flung the poor 
 stock-jobber against the bed-post, hurried downstairs, opened 
 the back door which led into the garden, flew across the 
 intervening space, arrived at the door, and entering Talbot's 
 garden, paused to consider what was the next step to be taken. 
 
 A person equally brave as Clarence, but more cautious, would 
 not have left the house without alarming Mr. de Warens, even
 
 THE DISOWNED. 91 
 
 in spite of the failure with his master ; but Linden only thought 
 of the pressure of time, and the necessity of expedition, and he 
 would have been a very unworthy hero of romance had he felt 
 fear for two antagonists, with a brace of pistols at his command, 
 and a high and good action in view. 
 
 After a brief, but decisive, halt, he proceeded rapidly round 
 the house, in order to ascertain at which part the ruffians had 
 admitted themselves, should they (as indeed there was little 
 doubt) have already effected their entrance. 
 
 He found the shutters of one of the principal rooms on the 
 ground floor had been opened, and through the aperture he 
 caught the glimpse of a moving light, which was suddenly 
 obscured. As he was about to enter, the light again flashed 
 out : he drew back just in time, carefully screened himself 
 behind the shutter, and, through one of the chinks, observed 
 what passed within. Opposite to the window was a door which 
 conducted to the hall and principal staircase ; this door was 
 open, and in the hall, at the foot of the stairs, Clarence saw- 
 two men ; one carried a dark lantern, from which the light 
 proceeded, and some tools of the nature of which Clarence was 
 naturally ignorant : this was a middle-sized, muscular man, 
 dressed in the rudest garb of an ordinary laborer ; the other 
 was much taller and younger, and his dress was of rather a 
 less ignoble fashion. 
 
 " Hist ! hist ! " said the taller one, in a low tone, " did you 
 not hear a noise, Ben? " 
 
 " Not a pin fall ; but stow your whids, man ! " 
 
 This was all that Clarence heard in a connected form ; but 
 as the wretches paused, in evident doubt how to proceed, he 
 caught two or three detached words, which his ingenuity 
 rapidly formed into sentences. " No, no ! sleeps to the left 
 old man above plate chest we must have the blunt too. 
 Come, track up the dancers, and dowse the glim." And at the 
 last words the light was extinguished, and Clarence's quick and 
 thirsting ears caught their first steps on the stairs as they died 
 away and all was hushed. 
 
 It had several times occurred to Clarence to rush from his 
 hiding-place, and fire at the ruffians, and perhaps that measure 
 would have been the wisest he could have taken ; but Clarence 
 had never discharged a pistol in his life, and he felt, therefore, 
 that his aim must be uncertain enough to render a favorable 
 position and a short distance essential requisites. Both these 
 were, at present, denied to him ; and although he saw no 
 weapons about the persons of the villains, yet he imagined
 
 92 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 they would not have ventured on so dangerous an expedition 
 without firearms ; and if he failed, as would have been most 
 probable, in his two shots, he concluded that, though the 
 alarm would be given, his own fate would be inevitable. 
 
 If this was reasoning upon false premises, for housebreakers 
 seldom or never carry loaded fire-arms, and never stay for 
 revenge, when their safety demands escape, Clarence may be 
 forgiven for not knowing the customs of housebreakers, and 
 for not making the very best of an extremely novel and dan- 
 gerous situation. 
 
 No sooner did he find himself in total darkness, than he 
 bitterly reproached himself for his late backwardness, and, 
 inwardly resolving not again to miss any opportunity which 
 presented itself, he entered the window, groped along the room 
 into the hall, and found his way very slowly, and after much 
 circumlocution, to the staircase. 
 
 He had just gained the summit, when a loud cry broke upon 
 the stillness : it came from a distance, and was instantly 
 hushed ; but he caught, at brief intervals, the sound of angry 
 and threatening voices. Clarence bent down anxiously, in the 
 hope that some solitary ray would escape through the crevice 
 of the door within which the robbers were engaged. But 
 though the sounds came from the same floor as that on which 
 he now trod, they seemed far and remote, and not a gleam of 
 light broke the darkness. 
 
 He continued, however, to feel his way in the direction from 
 which the sounds proceeded, and soon found himself in a 
 narrow gallery ; the voices seemed more loud and near as he 
 advanced ; at last he distinctly heard the words : 
 
 "Will you not confess where it is placed ?" 
 
 " Indeed, indeed," replied an eager and earnest voice, which 
 Clarence recognized as Talbot's, "This is all the money I have 
 in the house the plate is above my servant has the key take 
 it take all but save his life and mine." 
 
 "None of your gammon," said another and rougher voice 
 than that of the first speaker : "we know you have more blunt 
 than this a paltry sum of fifty pounds, indeed ! " 
 
 " Hold ! " cried the other ruffian, "here is a picture set with 
 diamonds, that will do, Ben. Let go the old man." 
 
 Clarence was now just at hand, and probably from a sudden 
 change in the position of the dark lantern within, a light 
 abruptly broke from beneath the door and streamed along the 
 passage, 
 
 "No, no, no ! " cried the old man, in a loud yet tremulous
 
 THE DISOWNED. $3 
 
 voice " No, not that, anything else, but I will defend that 
 with my life." 
 
 " Ben, my lad," said the ruffian, " twist the old fool's neck : 
 we have no more time to lose." 
 
 At that very moment the door was flung violently open, and 
 Clarence Linden stood within three paces of the reprobates and 
 their prey. The taller villain had a miniature in his hand, and the 
 old man clung to his legs with a convulsive but impotent clasp: 
 the other fellow had already his gripe upon Talbot's neck, and 
 his right hand grasped a long case-knife. 
 
 With a fierce and flashing eye, and a cheek deadly pale with 
 internal and resolute excitement, Clarence confronted the 
 robbers. 
 
 " Thank Heaven," cried he, " I am not too late ! " And 
 advancing yet another step toward the shorter ruffian, who 
 struck mute with the suddenness of the apparition, still 
 retained his grasp of the old man, he fired his pistol, with a 
 steady and close aim ; the ball penetrated the wretch's brain, 
 and without sound or sigh he fell down dead, at the very feet of 
 his just destroyer. The remaining robber had alre-dy medi- 
 tated, and a second more sufficed to accomplish his escape. 
 He sprang towards the door : the ball whizzed beside him, but 
 touched him not. With a safe and swift step, long inured to 
 darkness, he fled along the passage ; and Linden, satisfied with 
 the vengeance he had taken upon his comrade, did not harass 
 him with an unavailing pursuit. 
 
 Clarence turned to assist Talbot. The old man was stretched 
 upon the floor insensible, but his hand grasped the miniature 
 which the plunderer had dropped in his flight and tenor, and 
 his white and ashen lip was pressed convulsively upon the 
 recovered treasure. 
 
 Linden raised and placed him on his bed, and while employed 
 in attempting to revive him, the ancient domestic, alarmed by 
 the report of the pistol, came, poker in hand, to his assistance. 
 
 By little and little they recovered the object of their attention. 
 
 His eyes rolled wildly round the room, and he muttered : 
 
 "Off, off ! ye shall not rob me of my only relic of her 
 where is it ? have you got it ? the picture, the picture ? " 
 
 "It is here, sir, it is here," said the old servant, "it is in 
 your own hand." 
 
 Talbot's eye fell upon it ; he gazed at it for same moments, 
 pressed it to his lips, and then, sitting erect, and looking wildly 
 round, he seemed to awaken to the sense of his late danger and 
 his present deliverance.
 
 94 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 * Ah, fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed, 
 
 Or the death they bear, 
 The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove, 
 
 With the wings of care ! 
 In the battle in the darkness in the need, 
 
 Shall mine cling to thee! 
 Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, 
 
 It may bring to thee ! " SHELLEY. 
 
 LETTER FROM ALGERNON MORDAUNT TO ISABEL ST. LEGER. 
 
 " You told me not to write to you. You know how long, but 
 not how uselessly, Ihave obeyed you. Did you think, Isabel, 
 that my love was of that worldly and common order which re- 
 quires a perpetual aliment to support it ? Did you think that, 
 if you forbade the stream to flow visibly, its sources would be 
 exhausted, and its channels dried up? This may be the pas- 
 sion of others ; it is not mine. Months have passed since we 
 parted, and since then you have not seen me : this letter is the 
 first token you have received from a remembrance which can- 
 not die. But do you think that I have not watched, and 
 tended upon you, and gladdened my eyes with gazing on your 
 beauty, when you have not dreamed that I was by? Ah, Isa- 
 bel, your heart should have told you of it mine would, had 
 you been so near me ! " 
 
 " You receive no letters from me, it is true think you that 
 my hand and heart are therefore idle ? No. I write to you a 
 thousand burning lines ; I pour out my soul to you : I tell you 
 of all I suffer: my thoughts, my actions, my very dreams, are 
 all traced upon paper. I send them not to you, but I read 
 them over and over, and when I come to your name, I pause, 
 and shut my eyes, and then ' Fancy has her power,' and lo ! 
 ' you are by my side ! ' 
 
 " Isabel, our love has not been a holiday and joyous senti- 
 ment ; but I feel a solemn and unalterable conviction that our 
 union is ordained. 
 
 "Others have many objects to distract and occupy the 
 thoughts which are once forbidden a single direction, but we 
 have none. At least, to me you are everything. Pleasure, 
 splendor, am'bition, all are merged into one great and eternal 
 thought, and that is you ! 
 
 "Others have told me, and I believed them, that I was hard, 
 and cold, and stern so perhaps I was before I knew you, buv
 
 THE DISOWNED. 95 
 
 now I am weaker and softer than a child. There is a stone 
 which is of all the hardest and the chillest, but when once set 
 on fire it is unquenchable. You smile at my image, perhaps, 
 and I should smile if I saw it in the writing of another ; for all 
 that I have ridiculed in romance, as exaggerated, seems now to 
 me too cool and too commonplace for reality. 
 
 "But this is not what I meant to write to you ; you are ill, 
 dearest and noblest Isabel, you are ill ! I am the cause, and 
 you conceal it from me ; and you would rather pine away and 
 die than suffer me to lose one of those worldly advantages which 
 are in my eyes but as dust in the balance, it is in vain to deny 
 it. I heard from others of your impaired health ; I have wit- 
 nessed it myself. Do you remember last night when you were 
 in the room with your relations, and they made you sing a 
 song too which you used to sing to me, and when you came to 
 the second stanza your voice failed you and you burst into 
 tears, and they instead of soothing reproached and chid you, 
 and you answered not, but wept on ? Isabel, do you remember 
 that a sound was heard at the window and a groan ? Even 
 they were startled, but they thought it was the wind, for the 
 night was dark and stormy, and they saw not it was / yes, my 
 devoted, my generous love, it was I who gazed upon you, and 
 from whose heart that voice of anguish was wrung ; and I saw 
 your cheek was pale and thin, and that the canker at the core 
 had preyed upon the blossom. 
 
 " Think you, after this, that I could keep silence or obey your 
 request? No, dearest, no ! Is not my happiness your object? 
 I have the vanity to believe so ; and am I not the best judge 
 how that happiness is to be secured ? I tell you I say it calmly, 
 coldly, dispassionately not from the imagination, not even 
 from the heart, but solely from the reason that I can bear 
 everything rather that the loss of you ; and that if the evil of 
 my love scathe and destroy you, I shall consider and curse my- 
 self as your murderer! Save me from this extreme of misery, 
 my yes, my Isabel ! I shall be at the copse where we have so 
 often met before, to-morrow at noon. You will meet me ; and 
 if I cannot convince you, I will not ask you to be persuaded. 
 
 "A. M." 
 
 And Isabel read this letter, and placed it at her heart, and 
 felt less miserable than she had done for months ; for, though 
 she wept, there was sweetness in the tears which the assurance 
 of his love, and the tenderness of his remonstrance, had called 
 forth. She met him how could she refuse ? and the struggle
 
 96 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 was past. Though not "convinced " she was "persuaded"; 
 for her heart, which refused his reasonings, melted at his re- 
 proaches and his grief. But she would not consent to unite her 
 fate with him at once, for the evils of that step to his interests 
 were immediate and near; she was only persuaded to permit 
 their correspondence and occasional meetings, in which, how- 
 ever imprudent they might be for herself, the disadvantages to 
 her lover were distant and remote. It was of him only that she 
 thought : for him she trembled ; for him she was the coward 
 and the woman : for herself she had no fears and no forethought. 
 
 And Algernon was worthy of this devoted love, and returned 
 it as it was given. Man's love, in general, is a selfish and ex- 
 acting sentiment : it demands every sacrifice, and refuses all. 
 But the nature of Mordaunt was essentially high and disinter- 
 ested, and his honor, like his love, was not that of the world : 
 it was the ethereal and spotless honor of a lofty and generous 
 mind, the honor which custom can neither give nor take away; 
 and, however impatiently he bore the deferring of an union, in 
 which he deemed that he was the only sufferer, he would not 
 have uttered a sigh or urged a prayer for that union, could it, 
 in the minutest or remotest degree, have injured or degrad- 
 ed her. 
 
 These are the hearts and natures which make life beautiful : 
 these are the shrines which sanctify love : these are the divi- 
 ner spirits for whom there is kindred and commune with every- 
 thing exalted and holy in heaven and earth. For them Nature 
 unfolds her hoarded poetry, and her hidden spells : for their 
 steps are the lonely mountains, and the still woods have a mur- 
 mur for their ears : for them there is strange music in the wave, 
 and in the whispers of the light leaves, and rapture in the voices 
 of the birds : their souls drink, and are saturated with the mys- 
 teries of the Universal Spirit, which the philosophy of old times 
 believed to be God himself. They look upon the sky with a 
 gifted vision, and its dove-like quiet descends and overshadows 
 their hearts : the Moon and the Night are to them wells of 
 Castalian inspiration and golden dreams ; and it was one of 
 them, who, gazing upon the Evening Star, felt in the inmost 
 sanctuary of his soul, its mysterious harmonies with his most 
 worshipped hope, his most passionate desire, and dedicated it 
 to LOVE.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 97 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 Maria. Here's the brave old man's love, 
 Bianca. That loves the young man. 
 
 The Woman s Prize : or, the Tamer Tame<t, 
 
 "No, my dear Clarence, you have placed confidence in me, 
 and it is now my duty to return it ; you have told me your his- 
 tory and origin, and I will inform you of mine, but not yet. At 
 present we will talk of you. You have conferred upon me what 
 our universal love of life makes us regard as the greatest of hu- 
 man obligations ; and though I can bear a large burden of 
 gratitude, yet I must throw off an atom or two, in using my 
 little power in your behalf. Nor is this all : your history has 
 also given you another tie upon my heart, and in granting you a 
 legitimate title to my good offices, removes any scruple you 
 might otherwise have had in accepting them. 
 
 "I have just received this letter from Lord , the minis- 
 ter for foreign affairs : you will see that he has appointed you 
 
 to the office of attachd &\. . You will also oblige me by 
 
 looking over this other letter at your earliest convenience ; the 
 trifling sum which it contains will be repeated every quarter : 
 it will do very well for an attache ' : when you are an ambassa- 
 dor, why, we must equip you by a mortgage on Scarsdale ; and 
 now, my dear Clarence, tell me all about the Copperases." 
 
 I need not say who was the speaker of the above sentences : 
 sentences, apparently of a very agreeable nature ; nevertheless, 
 Clarence seemed to think otherwise, for the tears gushed into 
 his eyes, and he was unable for several minutes to reply. 
 
 " Come, my young friend," said Talbot kindly ; " I have no 
 near relations among whom I can choose a son I like better 
 than you, nor you any at present from whom you might select 
 a more desirable father, consequently, you must let me look 
 upon you as my own flesh and blood ; and, as I intend to be a 
 very strict and peremptory father, I expect the most silent and 
 scrupulous obedience to my commands. My first parental 
 order to you is to put up those papers, and to say nothing more 
 about them ; for I have a great deal to talk to you about upon 
 other subjects." 
 
 And by these and similar kind-hearted and delicate remon- 
 strances, the old man gained his point. From that moment 
 Clarence looked upon him with thegrateful and venerating love 
 of a son ; and I question very much, if Talbot had really been
 
 98 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 the father of our hero, whether he would have liked so hand- 
 some a successor half so well. 
 
 The day after this arrangement, Clarence paid his debt to 
 the Copperases, and removed to Talbot's house. With this 
 event commenced a new era in his existence : he was no longer 
 an outcast and a wanderer : out of alien ties he had wrought 
 the link of a close and even paternal friendship : life, brilliant 
 in its prospects, and elevated in its ascent, opened flatteringly 
 before him ; and the fortune and courage, which had so well 
 provided for the present, were the best omens and auguries for 
 the future. 
 
 One evening, when the opening autumn had made its ap- 
 proaches felt, and Linden and his new parent were seated alone 
 by a blazing fire, and had come to a full pause in their conver- 
 sation, Talbot, shading his face with the friendly pages of the 
 " Whitehall Evening Paper," as if to protect it from the heat, 
 said : 
 
 " I told you, the other day, that I would give you, at some 
 early opportunity, a brief sketch of m-y life. This confidence 
 is due to you in return for yours ; and since you will soon leave 
 me, and I am an old man, whose life no prudent calculation 
 can fix, I may as well choose the present time to favor you with 
 my confessions." 
 
 Clarence expressed and looked his interest, and the old man 
 thus commenced : 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A VAIN MAN. 
 
 " I was the favorite of my parents, for I was quick at my 
 lessons, and my father said I inherited my genius from him ; 
 and comely in my person, and my mother said that my good 
 looks came from her. So the honest pair saw in their eldest 
 son the union of their own attractions, and thought they 
 were making much of themselves when they lavished their ca- 
 resses upon me. They had another son, poor Arthur I think 
 I see him now ! He was a shy, quiet, subdued boy, of a very 
 plain personal appearance. My father and mother were vain, 
 showy, ambitious people of the world, and they were as ashamed 
 of my brother as they were proud of myself. However, he after- 
 wards entered the army, and distinguished himself highly. He 
 died in battle, leaving an only daughter, who married, as you 
 know, a nobleman of high rank. Her subsequent fate it is now 
 needless to relate. 
 
 " Petted and pampered from my childhood, I grew up with 
 a profound belief in my own excellences, and a feverish and ir-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 99 
 
 ritating desire to impress every one who came in my way with 
 the same idea. There is a sentence in Sir William Temple, 
 which I have often thought of with a painful conviction of its 
 truth : 'A restlessness in men's minds to be something they are 
 not, and to have something they have not, is the root of allim* 
 morality.' * At school, I was confessedly the cleverest boy in 
 my remove ; and, what I valued equally as much, I was the 
 best cricketer of the best eleven. Here, then, you will say my 
 vanity was satisfied no such thing ! There was a boy who 
 shared my room, and was next me in the school ; we were, 
 therefore, always thrown together. He was a great, stupid, 
 lubberly cub, equally ridiculed by the masters, and disliked by 
 the boys : will you believe that this individual was the express 
 and almost sole object of my envy ? He was more than my 
 rival, he was my superior ; and I hated him with all the unleav- 
 ened bitterness of my soul. 
 
 " I have said he was my superior it was in one thing. He 
 could balance a stick, nay, a cricket-bat, a poker, upon his 
 chin, and I could not ; you laugh, and so can I now, but it was 
 no subject of laughter to me then. This circumstance, trifling 
 as it may appear to you, poisoned my enjoyment. The boy 
 saw my envy, for I could not conceal it ; and as all fools are 
 malicious, and most fools ostentatious, he took a particular 
 pride and pleasure in displaying his dexterity, and 'showing off ' 
 my discontent. You can form no idea of the extent to which 
 this petty insolence vexed and disquieted me. Even in my 
 sleep, the clumsy and grinning features of this tormenting imp 
 haunted me like a spectre ; my visions were nothing but chins 
 and cricket-bats ; walking sticks sustaining themselves upon 
 human excrescences, and pokers dancing a hornpipe upon the 
 tip of a nose. I assure you that I have spent hours in secret 
 seclusion, practicing to rival my hated comrade, and my face 
 see how one vanity quarrels with another was little better than 
 a map of bruises and discolorations. 
 
 " 1 actually became so uncomfortable as to write home and 
 request to leave the school. I was then about sixteen, and rny 
 indulgent father, in granting my desire, told me that I was too 
 old and too advanced in my learning to go to any other aca- 
 demic establishment than the University. The day before I 
 left the school, I gave, as was usually the custom, a breakfast 
 to all my friends ; the circumstance of my tormentor's sharing 
 my room obliged me to invite him among the rest. However, 
 I was in high spirits, and being an universal favorite with my 
 
 * And of all %p<y\. Author.
 
 tOO THE DISOWNED. 
 
 schoolfellows, I succeeded in what was always to me an object 
 of social ambition, and set the table on a roar ; yet, when our 
 festival was nearly expired, and I began to allude more particu- 
 larly to my approaching departure, my vanity was far more 
 gratified, for my feelings were far more touched, by observing 
 the regret and receiving the good wishes of all my companions. 
 I still recall that hour as one of the proudest and happiest of 
 my life ; but it had its immediate reverse. My evil demon put 
 it into my tormentor's head to give me one last parting pang of 
 jealousy. A large umbrella happened accidentally to be in my 
 room ; Crompton such was my schoolfellow's name saw and 
 seized it ; ' Look, Talbot,' said he, with his taunting and hideous 
 sneer, 'you can't do this'; and placing the point of the um- 
 brella upon his forehead, just above the eyebrow, he performed 
 various antics around the room. 
 
 "At that moment I was standing by the fire-place and con- 
 versing with two boys upon whom, above all others, I wished 
 to leave a favorable impression. My foolish soreness on this 
 one subject had been often remarked, and as I turned, in abrupt 
 and awkward discomposure, from the exhibition, I observed 
 my two schoolfellows smile and exchange looks. I am not 
 naturally passionate, and even at that age I had, in ordinary 
 cases, great self-command ; but this observation, and the cause 
 which led to it, threw me off my guard. Whenever we are ut- 
 terly under the command of one feeling we cannot be said to 
 have our reason ; at that instant I literally believe I was beside 
 myself. What ! in the very flush of the last triumph that that 
 scene would ever afford me ; amidst the last regrets of my early 
 friends, to whom I fondly hoped to bequeath a long and brilliant 
 remembrance, to be thus bearded by a contemptible rival, and 
 triumphed over by a pitiful, yet insulting, superiority ; to close 
 my condolences with laughter ; to have the final solemnity of 
 my career thus terminating in mockery, and ridicule substituted 
 as an ultimate reminiscence in the place of an admiring regret; 
 all this, too, to be effected by one so long hated, one whom I 
 was the only being forbidden the comparative happiness of de- 
 spising? I could not brook it ; the insult the insulter were 
 too revolting. As the unhappy buffoon approached me, thrust- 
 ing his distorted face towards mine, I seized and pushed him 
 aside, with a brief curse and a violent hand. The sharp point 
 of the umbrella slipped ; my action gave it impetus and weight : 
 it penetrated his eye, and spare me, spare me the rest."* 
 
 * This instance of vanity, and, indeed, the whole of Talbot's history, is literally from 
 facts.
 
 THE DISOWNED. IOI 
 
 The old man bent down and paused for a few moments be- 
 fore he resumed. 
 
 "Crompton lost his eye, but my punishment was as severe 
 as his. People who are very vain are usually equally sus- 
 ceptible, and they who feel one thing acutely will so feel 
 another. For years, aye, for many years afterwards, the recol- 
 lection of my folly goaded me with the bitterest and most un- 
 ceasing remorse. Had I committed murder, my conscience 
 could scarce have afflicted me more severely. I did not regain 
 my self-esteem till I had somewhat repaired the injury I had 
 done. Long after that time Crompton was in prison, in great 
 and overwhelming distress. I impoverished myself to release 
 him ; I sustained him and his family till fortune rendered my 
 assistance no longer necessary ; and no triumphs were ever 
 more sweet to me than the sacrifices I was forced to submit to 
 in order to restore him to prosperity. 
 
 " It is natural to hope that this accident had, at least, the 
 effect of curing me of my fault ; but it requires philosophy in 
 yourself, or your advisers, to render remorse of future avail. 
 How could I amend my fault, when I was not even aware of 
 it ? Smarting under the effects, I investigated not the cause, 
 and I attributed to irascibility and vindictiveness what had a 
 deeper and more dangerous origin. 
 
 "At college, in spite of all my advantages of birth, fortune, 
 health, and intellectual acquirements, I had many things besides 
 the one enemy of remorse to corrode my tranquillity of mind. 
 I was sure to find some one to excel me in something, and this 
 wes enough to embitter my peace. Our living Goldsmith is my 
 favorite poet, and I perhaps insensibly venerate the genius the 
 more because I find something congenial in the infirmities of 
 the man. / can fully credit the anecdotes recorded of him. / 
 too could once have been jealous of a puppet handling a spon- 
 toon ; / too could once have been miserable if two ladies at the 
 theatre were more the objects of attention than myself ! You, 
 Clarence, will not despise me for this confession ; those who 
 knew me less would. Fools ! there is no man so great as not 
 to have some littleness more predominant than all his greatness. 
 Our virtues are the dupes, and often only the playthings, of our 
 follies ! 
 
 "I entered the world with what advantages, and what avid- 
 ity ! I smile, but it is mournfully, in looking back to that day. 
 Though rich, high-born, and good-looking, I possessed not one 
 of these three qualities in that eminence which could alone 
 satisfy my love of superiority and desire of effect. I knew this
 
 102 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 somewhat humiliating truth, for, though vain, I was not con. 
 ceited. Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit ; for, 
 while the former makes us all nerve to the opinion of others, 
 the latter is perfectly satisfied with its opinion of itself. 
 
 " I knew this truth, and as Pope, if he could not be the 
 greatest of poets, resolved to be the most correct, so I strove, 
 since I could not be the handsomest, the wealthiest, and the 
 noblest of my contemporaries, to excel them, at least, in the 
 grace and consummateness of manner ; and in this, after 
 incredible pains, after diligent apprenticeship in the world, 
 and intense study in the closet, I at last flattered myself that I 
 had succeeded. Of all success, while we are yet in the flush 
 of youth, and its capacities of enjoyment, I can imagine none 
 more intoxicating or gratifying than the success of society, and 
 I had certainly some years of its triumph and e'clat. I was 
 courted, followed, flattered, and sought by the most envied 
 and fastidious circles in England, and even in Paris ; for 
 society, so indifferent to those who disdain it, overwhelms with 
 its gratitude profuse though brief those who devote them- 
 selves to its amusement. The victim to sameness and ennui, 
 it offers, like the pallid and luxurious Roman, a reward for a 
 new pleasure ; and, as long as our industry or talent can afford 
 the pleasure; the reward is ours. At that time, then, I reaped 
 the full harvest of my exertions ; the disappointment and vex- 
 ation were of later date. 
 
 " I now come to the great era of my life Love. Among 
 my acquaintance was Lady Mary Walden, a widow of high 
 birfrh, and noble, though not powerful connections. She lived 
 about twenty miles from London, in a beautiful retreat ; and, 
 though not rich, her jointure, rendered ample by economy, 
 enabled her to indulge her love of society. Her house was 
 always as full as its size would permit, and I was among the 
 most welcome of its visitors. She had an only daughter even 
 now, through the dim mists of years, that beautiful and fairy 
 form rises still and shining before me, undimmed by sorrow, 
 unfaded by time. Caroline Walden was the object of general 
 admiration, and her mother, who attributed the avidity with 
 which her invitations were accepted by all the wits and fine 
 gentlemen of the day to the charms of her own conversation, 
 little suspected the face and wit of her daughter to be the 
 magnet of attraction. I had no idea at that time of marriage, 
 still less could I have entertained such a notion, unless the 
 gtep had greatly exalted my rank and prospects. 
 
 "The poor and powerless Caroline Walden was therefore the
 
 THE DISOWNED. IOJ 
 
 last person for whom I had what the jargon of mothers terms 
 'serious intentions.' However, I was struck with her exceed- 
 ing loveliness, and amused by the vivacity of her manners ; 
 moreover, my vanity was excited by the hope of distancing all 
 my competitors for the smiles of the young beauty. Accord- 
 ingly I set myself out to please, and neglected none of those 
 subtle and almost secret attentions which, of all flatteries, are 
 the most delicate and successful : and I succeeded. Caroline 
 loved me with all the earnestness and devotion which charac- 
 terize the love of woman. It never occurred to her that I 
 was only trifling with those affections which it seemed so 
 ardently my intention to win. She knew that my fortune was 
 large enough to dispense with the necessity of fortune with my 
 wife, and in birth she would have equalled men of greater pre- 
 tensions to myself ; added to this, long adulation had made 
 her sensible, though not vain, of her attractions, and she lis- 
 tened with a credulous ear to the insinuated flatteries I was so 
 well accustomed to instil, 
 
 " Never shall I forget no, though I double my present 
 years the shock, the wildness of despair with which she first 
 detected the selfishness of my homage ; with which she saw 
 that I had only mocked her trusting simplicity ; and -that 
 while she had been lavishing the richest treasures of her heart 
 before the burning altars of Love, my idol had been Vanity, 
 and my offerings deceit. She tore herself from the profana- 
 tion of my grasp ; she shrouded herself from my presence. 
 All interviews with me were rejected ; all my letters returned 
 to me unopened ; and though, in the repentance of my heart, 
 I entreated, I urged her to accept vows that were no longer 
 insincere, her pride became her punishment, as well as my 
 own. In a moment of bitter and desperate feeling, she ac- 
 cepted the offers of another, and made the marriage bond a 
 fatal and irrevocable barrier to our reconciliation and union. 
 
 "Oh ! how I now cursed my infatuation ; how passionately 
 I recalled the past ! ho\v coldly I turned from the hollow and 
 false world, to whose service I had sacrificed my happiness, 
 to muse and madden over the prospects I had destroyed, and 
 the loving and noble heart I had rejected ! Alas ! after all, 
 what is so ungrateful as that world for which we renounce so 
 much ! Its votaries resemble the Gymnosophists of old, and 
 while they profess to make their chief end pleasure, we can 
 only learn that they expose themselves to every torture and 
 every pain ! 
 
 " Lord Merton, the man whom Caroline now called husband,
 
 104 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 was among the wealthiest and most dissipated of his order ; 
 and two years after our separation I met once more with the 
 victim of my unworthiness, blazing in ' the 'full front' of 
 courtly splendor ! the leader of its gaieties, and the cynosure 
 of her followers. Intimate with the same society, we were per- 
 petually cast together, and Caroline was proud of displaying 
 the indifference towards me, which, if she felt not, she had at 
 least learnt artfully to assume. This indifference was her 
 ruin. The depths of my evil passion were again sounded and 
 aroused, and I resolved yet to humble the pride and conquer 
 the coldness which galled to the very quick the morbid acute- 
 ness of my self-love. I again attached myself to her train I 
 bowed myself to the very dust before her. What to me were 
 her chilling reply and disdainful civilities ? only still stronger 
 excitements to persevere. 
 
 "I spare you and myself the gradual progress of my 
 schemes. A woman may recover her first passion, it is true ; but 
 then she must replace it with another. That other was denied 
 to Caroline ; she had not even children to engross her 
 thoughts and to occupy her affections; and the gay world, 
 which to many becomes an object, was to her only an escape. 
 
 " Clarence, my triumph came ! Lady Walden (who had 
 never known our secret) invited me to her house ; Caroline 
 was there. In the same spot where we had so often stood 
 before, and in which her earliest affections were insensibly 
 breathed away, in that same spot I drew from her colorless 
 and trembling lips the confession of her weakness, the restored 
 and pervading power of my remembrance. 
 
 " But Caroline was a proud and virtuous woman ; even 
 while her heart betrayed her, her mind resisted ; and in the 
 very avowal of her unconquered attachment, she renounced 
 and discarded me forever. I am not an ungenerous, though a 
 vain man ; but my generosity was wayward, tainted, and im- 
 perfect. I could have borne the separation ; I could have sev- 
 ered myself from her ; I could have flown to the uttermost 
 parts of the earth ; I could have hoarded there my secret, 
 yet unextinguished love, and never disturbed her quiet by a 
 murmur ; but then the fiat of separation must have come from 
 me ! My vanity could not bear that her lips should reject me ; 
 that my part was not to be the nobility of sacrifice, but the 
 submission of resignation. However, my better feelings were 
 aroused, and though I could not stifle, I concealed, my selfish 
 repinings. We parted : she returned to town, I buried myself 
 in the country ; and, amidst the literary studies to which,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 105 
 
 though by fits and starts, I was passionately devoted, I endeav- 
 ored to forget my ominous and guilty love. 
 
 " But I was then too closely bound to the world not to be 
 perpetually reminded of its events. My retreat was thronged 
 with occasional migrators from London ; my books were 
 mingled with the news and scandal of the day. All spoke to 
 me of Lady Merton ; not as I loved to picture her to myself, 
 pale and sorrowful, and brooding over my image ; but gay, 
 dissipated, the dispenser of smiles, the prototype of joy. I con- 
 trasted this account of her with the melancholy and gloom of 
 my own feelings, and I resented her seeming happiness as an 
 insult to myself. 
 
 " In this angry and fretful mood I returned to London. My 
 empire was soon resumed ; and now, Linden, comes the most 
 sickening part of my confessions. Vanity is a growing and 
 insatiable disease : what seems to its desires as wealth to-day, 
 to-morrow it rejects as poverty. I was at first contented to 
 know that I was beloved ; by degrees, slow, yet sure, I desired 
 that others should know it also. J longed to display my power 
 over the celebrated and courted Lady Merton, and to put the 
 last crown to my reputation and importance. The envy of 
 others is the food of our own self-love. Oh, you know not, you 
 dream not, of the galling mortifications to which a proud 
 woman, whose love commands her pride, is subjected ! I im- 
 posed upon Caroline the most humiliating, the most painful 
 .trials ; I would allow her to see none but those I pleased ; to 
 go to no place where I withheld my consent ; and I hesitated 
 not to exert and testify my power over her affections, in pro- 
 portion to the publicity of the opportunity. 
 
 "Yet, with all this littleness, would you believe that I loved 
 Caroline with the most ardent and engrossing passion ? I have 
 paused behind her, in order to kiss the ground she trod on ; I 
 have staid whole nights beneath her window, to catch one 
 glimpse of her passing form, even though I had spent hours of 
 the day-time in her society ; and, though my love burned and 
 consumed me, like a fire, I would not breathe a single wish 
 against her innocence, or take advantage of my power to ac- 
 complish what I knew, from her virtue and pride, no atone- 
 ment could possibly repay. Such are the inconsistencies of the 
 heart, and such, while they prevent our perfection, redeem us 
 from the utterness of vice ! Never, even in my wildest days, 
 was I blind to the glory of virtue, yet never, till my latest years, 
 have I enjoyed the faculty to avail myself of my perception. 
 I resembled the mole, which by Boyle is supposed to possess
 
 IO6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 the idea of light, but to be unable to comprehend the objects 
 on which it shines. 
 
 "Among the varieties of my prevailing sin was a weakness, 
 common enough to worldly men. While I ostentatiously played 
 off the love I had excited, I could not bear to show the love I 
 felt. In our country, and perhaps, though in a less degree, in all 
 other highly artificial states, enthusiasm, or even feeling of any 
 kind, is ridiculous ; and I could not endure the thought that 
 my treasured and secret affections should be dragged from their 
 retreat, to be cavilled and carped at by 
 
 ' Every beardless, vain comparative.' 
 
 ' This weakness brought on the catastrophe of my love ; for, 
 mark me, Clarence, it is through our weaknesses that our vices 
 are punished ! One night I went to a masquerade ; and, while 
 I was sitting in a remote corner, three of my acquaintances, 
 whom I recognized, though they knew it not, approached and 
 rallied me upon my romantic attachment to Lady Merton. One 
 of them was a woman of a malicious and sarcastic wit ; the 
 other two were men whom I disliked, because their pretensions 
 interfered with mine ; they were diners-out, and anecdote- 
 mongers. Stung to the quick by their sarcasm and laughter, I 
 replied in a train of mingled arrogance and jest ; at last I spoke 
 slightingly of the person in question ; and these profane and 
 false lips dared not only to disown the faintest love to that 
 being who was more to me than all on earth, but even to speak 
 of herself with ridicule, and her affection with disdain. 
 
 " In the midst of this, I turned and beheld, within hearing, 
 a figure which I knew upon the moment. O heaven ! the 
 burning shame and agony of that glance ! It raised its mask 
 I saw that blanched cheek, and that trembling lip ! and I 
 knew that the iron had indeed entered into her soul. 
 
 " Clarence, I never beheld her again alive. Within a week 
 from that time she was a corpse. She had borne much, suf- 
 fered much, and murmured not ; but this shock pressed too 
 hard, came too home, and from the hand of him for whom she 
 would have sacrificed all ! I stood by her in death ; I beheld 
 my work ; and I turned away, a wanderer and a pilgrim upon 
 the face of the earth. Verily, I have had my reward." 
 
 The old man paused, in great emotion ; and Clarence, who 
 could offer him no consolation, did not break the silence. In 
 a few minutes Talbot continued : 
 
 "From that time, the smile of woman was nothing to me ; I 
 seemed to grow old in a single day. Life lost to me all its
 
 THE DISOWNED. 107 
 
 objects. A dreary and desert blank stretched itself before me 
 the sounds of creation had only in my ears one voice the past, 
 the future, one image. I left my country for twenty years, and 
 lived an idle and hopeless man in the various courts of the 
 continent. 
 
 " At the age of fifty I returned to England ; the wounds of 
 the past had not disappeared, but they were scarred over ; and 
 I longed, like the rest of my species, to have an object in view. 
 At that age, if we have seen much of mankind, and possess the 
 talents to profit by our knowledge, we must be one of two sects : 
 a politician or a philosopher. My time was not yet arrived for 
 the latter, so I resolved to become the former ; but this was 
 denied me, for my vanity had assumed a different shape. It is 
 true that I cared no longer for the reputation women can be- 
 stow ; but I was eager for the applause of men, and I did not 
 like the long labor necessary to attain it. I wished to make a 
 short road to my object, and 1 eagerly followed every turn but 
 the right one, in the hopes of its leading me sooner to my goal. 
 
 "The great characteristic of a vain man, in contradistinction 
 to an ambitious man, and his eternal obstacle to a high and 
 honorable fame, is this : he requires for an expenditure of 
 trouble too speedy a reward ; he cannot wait for years, and 
 climb, step by step, to a lofty object : whatever he attempts, he 
 must seize at a single grasp. Added to this, he is incapable of 
 an exclusive attention to one end ; the universality of his 
 cravings is not contented, unless it devours all ; and thus he is 
 perpetually doomed to fritter away his energies by grasping at 
 the trifling baubles within his reach, and in gathering the worth- 
 less fruit which a single sun can mature. 
 
 " This, then, was my fault, and the cause of my failure. I 
 could not give myself up to finance, nor puzzle through the 
 intricacies of commerce : even the common parliamentary 
 drudgeries of constant attendance and late hours were insup- 
 portable to me ; and so after two or three 'splendid orations,' 
 as my friends termed them, I was satisfied with the puffs of the 
 pamphleteers, and closed my political career. I was now, then, 
 the wit and the conversationalist. With my fluency of speech 
 and variety of information, these were easy distinctions ; and 
 the popularity of a dinner table, or the approbation of a literary 
 coterie, consoled me for the more public and more durable 
 applause I had resigned. 
 
 "But even this gratification did not last long. I fell ill ; and 
 the friends who gathered round the wit fled from the valetu- 
 dinarian. This disgusted me, and when I was sufficiently re-
 
 Io8 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 covered, I again returned to the continent. But I had a fit of 
 misanthropy and solitude upon me, and so it was not to courts 
 and cities, the scenes of former gaieties, that I repaired ; on 
 the contrary, I hired a house by one of the most sequestered 
 of the Swiss lakes, and, avoiding the living, I surrendered my- 
 self, without interruption or control, to commune with the 
 dead. I surrounded myself with books, and pored, with a 
 curious and searching eye, into those works which treat partic- 
 ularly upon 'man.' My passions were over, my love of pleasure 
 and society was dried up, and I had now no longer the obsta- 
 cles which forbid us to be wise ; I unlearnt the precepts my 
 manhood had acquired, and in my old age I commenced philos- 
 opher ; Religion lent me her aid, and by her holy lamp my 
 studies were conned and my hermitage illumined. 
 
 " There are certain characters which, in the world, are evil, 
 and in seclusion are good : Rousseau, whom I know well, is 
 one of them. These persons are of a morbid sensitiveness, 
 whish is perpetually galled by collision with others. In short, 
 they are under the dominion of VANITY ; and that vanity, never 
 satisfied, and always restless in the various competitions of 
 society, produces 'envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitable- 
 ness !' but, in solitude, the good and benevolent dispositions 
 with which our self-love no longer interferes have room to ex- 
 pand and ripen without being cramped by opposing interests ; 
 this will account for many seeming discrepancies in character. 
 There are also some men, in whom old age supplies the place 
 of solitude, and Rousseau's antagonist and mental antipodes, 
 Voltaire, is of this order. The pert, the malignant, the ar- 
 rogant, the lampooning author, in his youth and manhood, has 
 become, in his old age, the mild, the benevolent, and the vener- 
 able philosopher. Nothing is more absurd than to receive the 
 characters of great men so implicitly upon the word of a 
 biographer ; and nothing can be less surprising than our eternal 
 disputes upon individuals ; for no man throughout life is the 
 same being, and each season of our existence contradicts the 
 characteristics of the last. 
 
 "And now in my solitude and my old age, a new spirit en- 
 tered within me ; the game in which I had engaged so vehe- 
 mently was over for me ; and I joined to my experience as a 
 player my coolness as a spectator ; I no longer struggled with 
 my species, and I began insensibly to love them. I established 
 schools, and founded charities ; and, in secret, but active, 
 services to mankind, I employed my exertions and lavished my 
 desires.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 109 
 
 " From this amendment I date the peace of mind and elasti- 
 city which I now enjoy ; and in my later years, the happiness 
 which I pursued in my youth and maturity so hotly, yet so in- 
 effectually, has flown unsolicited to my breast. 
 
 " About five years ago I came again to England, with the in- 
 tention of breathing my last in the country which gave me 
 birth. I retired to my family home ; I endeavored to divert 
 myself in agricultural improvements, and my rental was con- 
 sumed in speculation. This did not please me long : I sought 
 society society in Yorkshire ! You may imagine the result : I 
 was out of my element ; the mere distance from the metropolis, 
 from all genial companionship, sickened me with a vague feel- 
 ing of desertion and solitude : for the first time in my life I 
 felt" my age and my celibacy. Once more I returned to town, 
 a complaint attacked my lungs, the physicians recommended 
 the air of this neighborhood, and I chose the residence I now 
 inhabit. Without being exactly in London, I can command 
 its advantages, and obtain society as a recreation, without buy- 
 ing it by restraint. I am not fond of new faces, nor any longer 
 covetous of show ; my old servant therefore contented me : for 
 the future, I shall, however, satisfy your fears, remove to a safer 
 habitation, and obtain a more numerous guard. It is, at all 
 events, a happiness to me that fate, in casting me here, and ex- 
 posing me to something of danger, has raised up, in you, a 
 friend for my old age, and selected from this great universe of 
 strangers one being to convince my heart that it has not 
 outlived affection. My tale is done ; may you profit by its 
 moral !" 
 
 When Talbot said, that our characters were undergoing a 
 perpetual change he should have made this reservation : the 
 one ruling passion remains to the last ; it may be modified, but 
 it never departs : and it is these modifications which do, for 
 the most part, shape out the channels of our change : or, as 
 Helvetius has beautifully expressed it, " we resemble those ves- 
 sels which the waves still carry towards the south, when the 
 north wind has ceased to blow," but in our old age, this passion, 
 having little to feed on, becomes sometimes dormant and inert, 
 and then our good qualities rise, as it were from an incubus, 
 and have their sway. 
 
 Yet these cases are not common, and Talbot was a remark- 
 able instance, for he was a remarkable man. His mind had 
 not slept while the age advanced, and thus it had swelled as it 
 were from the bondage of its earlier passions and prejudices.
 
 110 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 But little did he think, in the blindness of self-delusion though 
 it was so obvious to Clarence, that he could have smiled if he 
 had not rather inclined to weep at the frailties of human 
 nature little did he think that the vanity which had cost him 
 so much remained "a monarch still," undeposed alike by his 
 philosophy, his religion, or his remorse ; and that, debarred by 
 circumstances from all wider and more dangerous field, it still 
 lavished itself upon trifles unworthy of his powers, and 
 puerilities dishonoring his age. Folly is a courtezan whom 
 we ourselves seek, whose favors we solicit at an enormous 
 price ! and who, like Lais, finds philosophers at her door, scarce- 
 ly less frequently than the rest of mankind ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 Mrs. Trinket. What d'ye buy what d'ye lack, gentlemen ? 
 Gloves, ribbons, and essences ribbons, gloves, and essences. ETHEREGE. 
 
 " AND so, my love," said Mr. Copperas, one morning at 
 breakfast, to his wife, his right leg being turned over his left, 
 and his dexter hand conveying to his mouth a huge morsel of 
 buttered cake, " and so, my love, they say that the old fool 
 is going to leave the jackanapes all his fortune ? " 
 
 "They do say so, Mr. C.: for my part I am quite out of 
 patience with the art of the young man ; I dare say he is no 
 better than he should be ; he always had a sharp look, and for 
 ought I know, there may be more in that robbery than you or 
 I dreamt of, Mr. Copperas. It was a pity," continued Mrs. 
 Copperas, upbraiding her lord with true matrimonial tenderness 
 and justice, for the consequences of his having acted from her 
 advice "it was a pity, Mr. C., that you should have refused 
 to lend him the pistols to go to the old fellow's assistance, for 
 then who knows but " 
 
 " I might have converted them into pocket pistols," inter- 
 rupted Mr. C., " and not have overshot the mark, my dear 
 ha, ha, ha ! " 
 
 " Lord, Mr. Copperas, you are always making a joke of every- 
 thing." 
 
 " No, my dear, for once I am making a joke of nothing." 
 
 " Well, I declare it's shameful," cried Mrs. Copperas, still 
 following up her own indignant meditations, " and after taking 
 such notice of Adolphus, too, and all ! " 
 
 " Notice, my dear ! mere words," returned Mr. Copperas,
 
 THE DISOWNED. Ill 
 
 " mere words, like ventilators, which make a great deal of air, 
 but never raise the wind ; but don't put yourself in a stew, my 
 love, for the doctors say that copperas in a stew is poison ! " 
 
 At this moment Mr. de Warens, throwing open the door, 
 announced Mr. Brown ; that gentleman entered with a sedate 
 but cheerful air. " Well, Mrs. Copperas, your servant ; any 
 table linen wanted ? Mr. Copperas, how do you do ? I can 
 give you a hint about the stocks. Master Copperas, you are 
 looking bravely ; don't you think he wants some new pin- 
 befores, ma'am ? But Mr. Clarence Linden, where is he ? Not 
 up yet, 1 dare say ? Ah, the present generation is a generation 
 of sluggards, as his worthy aunt, Mrs. Minden, used to say." 
 
 " I am sure," said Mrs. Copperas, with a disdainful toss of 
 the head, " I know nothing about the young man. He has 
 left us : a very mysterious piece of business indeed, Mr. Brown ; 
 and now I think of it, I can't help saying that we were by no 
 means pleased with your introduction ; and by the by, the 
 chairs you bought for us at the sale were a mere take-in, so 
 slight that Mr. Walruss broke two of them by only sitting 
 down." 
 
 " Indeed, ma'am ? " said Mr. Brown, with expostulating 
 gravity ; " but then Mr. Walruss is so very corpulent. But the 
 young gentleman, what of him ?" continued the broker, art- 
 fully turning from the point in dispute. 
 
 " Lord, Mr. Brown, don't ask me : it was the unluckiest step 
 we ever made to admit him into the bosom of our family ; 
 quite a viper, I assure you ; absolutely robbed poor Adolphus." 
 
 "Lord help us! " said Mr. Brown, with a look which "cast 
 a browner horror " o'er the room, " who would have thought 
 it ? and such a pretty young man ! " 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Copperas, who, occupied in finishing the 
 buttered cake, had hitherto kept silence, " I must be off. 
 Tom I mean de Warens have you stopped the coach ? " 
 
 " Yees, sir." 
 
 " And what coach is it ?" 
 
 " It be the Swallow, sir." 
 
 " Oh, very well. And now, Mr. Brown, having swallowed in 
 the roll, I will e'en roll in the Swallow. Ha, ha, ha ! At any 
 rate," thought Mr. Copperas, as he descended the stairs, " he 
 has not heard that before." 
 
 " Ha, ha ! " gravely chuckled Mr. Brown ; " what a very 
 facetious, lively gentleman Mr. Copperas is. But touching this 
 ungrateful young man, Mr. Linden, ma'am ? " 
 
 "Oh, don't tease me, Mr. Brown, I must see after my domes-
 
 112 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 tics : ask Mr. Talbot, the old miser in the next house, the 
 havarr, as the French say." 
 
 " Well, now," said Mr. Brown, following the good lady down- 
 stairs "how distressing for me and to say that he was Mrs. 
 Minden's nephew, too ! " 
 
 But Mr. Brown's curiosity was not so easily satisfied, and 
 finding Mr. de Warens leaning over the "front" gate, and 
 "pursuing with wistful eyes" the departing "Swallow," he 
 stopped, and, accosting him, soon possessed himself of the 
 facts that "old Talbot had been robbed and murdered, but 
 that Mr. Linden had brought him to life again ; and that old 
 Talbot had given him a hundred thousand pounds, and 
 adopted him as his son ; and that how Mr. Linden was going 
 to be sent to foreign parts, as an ambassador, or governor, or 
 great person ; and that how meester andmeeses were quite 'cut 
 up' about it." 
 
 All these particulars having been duly deposited in the mind 
 of Mr. Brown, they produced an immediate desire to call upon 
 the young gentleman, who, to say nothing of his being so very 
 nearly related to his old customer, Mrs. Minden, was always 
 so very great a favorite with him, Mr. Brown. 
 
 Accordingly, as Clarence was musing over his approaching 
 departure, which was now very shortly to take place, he was 
 somewhat startled by the apparition of Mr. Brown " Charm- 
 ing day, sir charming day," said the friend of Mrs. Minden 
 "just called in to congratulate you. I have a few articles, sir, 
 to present you with quite rarities, I assure you quite 
 presents, I may say. I picked them up at a sale of the late 
 Lady Waddilove's most valuable effects. They are just the 
 things, sir, for a gentleman going on a foreign mission. A most 
 curious ivory chest, with an Indian padlock, to hold confiden- 
 tial letters belonged formerly, sir, to the great Mogul ; and a 
 beautiful diamond snuff-box, sir, with a picture of Louis XVI. 
 on it, prodigiously fine, and will look so loyal too ; and, sir, it' 
 you have any old aunts in the county, to send a farewell present 
 to, I have some charmingly fine cambric, a superb Dresden tea 
 set, and a lovely little ' ape,' stuffed by the late Lady W. herself." 
 
 " My good sir," began Clarence. 
 
 "Oh, no thanks, sir none at all too happy to serve a 
 relation of Mrs. Minden always proud to keep up family con- 
 nections. You will be at home to-morrow, sir, at eleven I 
 will look in your most humble servant, Mr. Linden." And, 
 almost upsetting Talbot, who had just entered, Mr. Brown 
 bowed himself out.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " We talked with open heart and tongue. 
 
 Affectionate and true ; 
 A pair of friends, though I was young 
 And Matthew seventy-two." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 MEANWHILE the young artist proceeded rapidly with his 
 picture. Devoured by his enthusiasm, and utterly engrossed 
 by the sanguine anticipation of a fame which appeared to him 
 already won, he allowed himself no momentary interval of 
 relaxation ; his food was eaten by starts, and without stirring 
 from his easel ; his sleep was broken and brief by feverish 
 dreams ; he no longer roved with Clarence, when the evening 
 threw her shade over his labors ; all air and exercise he utterly 
 relinquished ; shut up in his narrow chamber, he passed the 
 hours in a fervid and passionate self-commune, which, even in 
 suspense from his work, riveted his thoughts the closer to its 
 object. All companionship, all intrusion, he bore with irri- 
 tabilityand impatience. Even Clarence found himself excluded 
 from the presence of his friend : even his nearest relation, who 
 doated on the very ground which he hallowed with his footstep, 
 was banished from the haunted sanctuary of the painter ; 
 from the most placid of human beings, Warner seemed to have 
 grown the most morose. 
 
 Want of rest, abstinence from food, the impatience of the 
 strained spirit and jaded nerves, all contributed to waste the 
 health, while they excited the genius, of the artist. A crimson 
 spot, never before seen there, burnt in the centre of his pale 
 cheek ; his eye glowed with a brilliant but unnatural fire ; his 
 features grew sharp and attenuated ; his bones worked from 
 his whitening and transparent skin ; and the soul and frame, 
 turned from their proper and kindly union, seemed contesting, 
 with fierce struggles, which should obtain the mastery and the 
 triumph. 
 
 But neither his new prospects, nor the coldness of his friend, 
 diverted the warm heart of Clarence from meditating how he 
 could most effectually serve the artist before he departed from 
 the country. It was a peculiar object of desire to Warner 
 that the most celebrated painter of the day, who was in terms 
 of intimacy with Talbot, and who with the benevolence of 
 real superiority was known to take a keen interest in the 
 success of more youthful and inexperienced genius, it was a 
 peculiar object of desire to Warner, that Sir Joshua Reynolds
 
 114 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 should see his picture before it was completed ; and Clarence, 
 aware of this wish, easily obtained from Talbot a promise that 
 it should be effected. That was the least service of his zeal : 
 touched by the earnestness of Linden's friendship, anxious to 
 oblige in any way his preserver, and well pleased himself to be 
 the patron of merit, Talbot readily engaged to obtain for 
 Warner whatever the attention and favor of high rank or 
 literary distinction could bestow. " As for his picture," said 
 Talbot (when, the evening before Clarence's departure, the 
 latter was renewing the subject), "I shall myself become the 
 purchaser, and at a price which will enable our friend to afford 
 leisure and study for the completion of his next attempt ; but 
 even at the risk of offending your friendship, and disappointing 
 your expectations, I will frankly tell you, that I think Warner 
 overrates, perhaps not his talents, but his powers ; not his 
 ability for doing something great hereafter, but his capacity of 
 doing it at present. In the pride of his heart, he has shown 
 me many of his designs, and I am somewhat of a judge : they 
 want experience, cultivation, taste, and, above all, a deeper 
 study of the Italian masters. They all have the defects of a 
 feverish coloring, an ambitious desire of effect, a wavering and 
 imperfect outline, an ostentatious and unnatural strength of 
 light and shadow ; they show, it is true, a genius of no ordinary 
 stamp, but one ill-regulated, inexperienced, and utterly left to 
 its own suggestions for a model. However, I am glad he 
 wishes for the opinion of one necessarily the best judge ; let 
 him bring the picture here by Thursday ; on that day my friend 
 has promised to visit me ; and now let us talk of you and your 
 departure." 
 
 The intercourse of men of different ages is essentially 
 unequal : it must always partake more or less of advice on one 
 side and deference on the other ; and although the easy and 
 unpedantic turn of Talbot's conversation made his remarks 
 rather entertaining than obviously admonitory, yet they were 
 necessarily tinged with his experience, and regulated by his 
 interest in the fortunes of his young friend. 
 
 "My dearest Clarence,"' said he affectionately, "we are 
 about to bid each other a long farewell. I will not damp your 
 hopes and anticipations by insisting on the little chance there 
 is that you should ever see me again. You are about to enter 
 upon the great world, and have within you the desire and the 
 power of success ; let me flatter myself that you can profit by 
 my experience. Among the Colloquia of Erasmus, there is a 
 very entertaining dialogue between Apicius and a man who,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 115 
 
 desirous of giving a feast to a very large and miscellaneous 
 party, comes to consult the epicure what will be the best means 
 to give satisfaction to all. Now you shall be this Spudseus (so 
 I think he is called), and I will be Apicius ; for the world, 
 after all, is nothing more than a great feast of different 
 strangers, with different tastes, and of different ages, and we 
 must learn to adapt ourselves to their minds, and our tempta- 
 tions to their passions, if we wish to fascinate or even content 
 them. Let me then call your attention to the hints and 
 maxims which 1 have in this paper amused myself with draw- 
 ing up for your instruction. Write to me from time to time, 
 and I will, in replying to your letters, give you the best advice 
 in my power. For the rest, my dear boy, I have only to 
 request that you will be frank, and I, in my turn, will promise 
 that when I cannot assist I will never reprove. And now, 
 Clarence, as the hour is late, and you leave us early to-morrow, 
 I will no longer detain you. God bless you and keep you. 
 You are going to enjoy life I to anticipate death ; so that you 
 can find in me little congenial to yourself ; but, as the good 
 Pope said to our Protestant countryman, 'Whatever the differ- 
 ence between us, I know well that an old man's blessing is 
 never without its value.'" 
 
 As Clarence clasped his benefactor's hand, the tears gushed 
 from his eyes. Is there one being, stubborn as the rock to 
 misfortune, whom kindness does not affect? For my part, 
 kindness seems to me to come with a double grace and tender- 
 ness from the old ; it seems in them the hoarded and long 
 purified benevolence of years ; as if it had survived and con- 
 quered the baseness and selfishness of the ordeal it had passed ; 
 as if the winds, which had broken the form, had swept in vain 
 across the heart, and the frosts, which had chilled the blood 
 and whitened the thin locks, had possessed no power over the 
 warm tide of the affections. It is the triumph of nature over 
 art ; it is the voice of the angel which is yet within us. Nor 
 is this all : the tenderness of age is twice blessed blessed in 
 its trophies over the obduracy of encrusting and withering 
 years, blessed because it is tinged with the sanctity of the 
 grave ; because it tells us that the heart will blossom even 
 upon the precincts of the tomb, and flatters us with the 
 inviolacy and immortality of love.
 
 Il6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 " Cannot I create, 
 
 " Cannot I form, cannot I fashion forth 
 Another world, another universe ? " KEATS. 
 
 THE next morning Clarence, in his way out of town, directed 
 his carriage (the last and not the least acceptable present from 
 Talbot) to stop at Warner's door. Although it was scarcely sun- 
 rise, the aged grandmother of the artist was stirring, and opened 
 the door to the early visitor. Clarence passed her with a brief 
 salutation hurried up the narrow stairs, and found himself in 
 the artist's chamber. The windows were closed, and the air of 
 the room was confined and hot. A few books, chiefly of his- 
 tory and poetry, stood in confused disorder upon some shelves 
 opposite the window. Upon a table beneath them lay a flute, 
 once the cherished recreation of the young painter, but now 
 long neglected and disused : and, placed exactly opposite to 
 Warner, so that his eyes might open upon his work, was the 
 high-prized and already more than half-finished picture. 
 
 Clarence bent over the bed ; the cheek of the artist rested 
 upon his arm in an attitude unconsciously picturesque ; the 
 other arm was tossed over the coverlid, and Clarence was 
 shocked to see how emaciated it had become. But ever and 
 anon the lips of the sleeper moved restlessly, and words, low 
 and inarticulate, broke out. Sometimes he started abruptly, 
 and a bright but evanescent flush darted over his faded and 
 hollow cheek ; and once the fingers of the thin hand, which lay 
 upon the bed, expanded, and suddenly closed in a firm and al- 
 most painful grasp ; it was then that, for the first time, the 
 words of the artist became distinct. 
 
 " Ay, ay," said he, " I have thee, I have thee, at last. Long, 
 very long, thou hast burnt up my heart like fuel, and mocked 
 me, and laughed at my idle efforts ; but now, now, I have thee. 
 Fame, Honor, Immortality, whatever thou art called, I have 
 thee, and thou canst not escape ; but it is almost too late ! " 
 And, as if wrung by some sudden pain, the sleeper turned heavi- 
 ly round, groaned audibly, and awoke. 
 
 " My friend," said Clarence soothingly, and taking his hand, 
 " I have come to bid you farewell. I am just setting off for the 
 continent, but I could not leave England without once more 
 seeing you. I have good news, too, for you." And Clarence 
 proceeded to repeat Talbot's wish that Warner should bring the 
 picture to his house on the following Thursday, that Sir Joshua
 
 THE DISOWNED. 1 17 
 
 might inspect it. He added also, in terms the flattery of which 
 his friendship could not resist exaggerating, Talbot's desire to 
 become the purchaser of the picture. 
 
 " Yes," said the artist, as his eye glanced delightedly over 
 his labor ; "yes, I believe when it is once seen there will be 
 many candidates ! " 
 
 " No doubt," answered Clarence ; " and for that reason you 
 cannot blame Talbot for wishing to forestall all other compet- 
 itors for the prize ": and then continuing the encouraging 
 nature of the conversation, Clarence enlarged upon the new 
 hopes of his friend, besought him to take time, to spare his 
 health, and not to injure both himself and his performance by 
 over-anxiety and hurry. Clarence concluded by retailing Tal- 
 bot's assurance that in all cases and circumstances he (Talbot) 
 considered himself pledged to be Warner's supporter and friend. 
 
 With something of impatience, mingled with pleasure, the 
 painter listened to all these details ; nor was it to Linden's zeal, 
 nor to Talbot's generosity, but rather to the excess of his own 
 merit, that he secretly attributed the brightening prospect af- 
 forded him. 
 
 The difference which Warner, though of a disposition natu- 
 rally kind, evinced at parting with a friend who had always 
 taken so strong an interest in his behalf, and whose tears at that 
 moment contrasted forcibly enough with the apathetic cold- 
 ness of his own farewell, was a remarkable instance how acute 
 vividness on a single point will deaden feeling on all others. 
 Occupied solely and burningly with one intense thought, which 
 was to him love, friendship, health, peace, wealth, Warner 
 could not excite feelings, languid and exhausted with many 
 and fiery conflicts, to objects of minor interest, and perhaps he 
 inwardly rejoiced that his musings and his study would hence- 
 forth be sacred even from friendship. 
 
 Deeply affected, for his nature was exceedingly unselfish, 
 generous, and susceptible, Clarence tore himself away, placed 
 in the grandmother's hand a considerable portion of the sum 
 he had received from Talbot, hurried into his carriage, and 
 found himself on the high road to fortune, pleasure, distinction, 
 and the continent. 
 
 But while Clarence, despite of every advantage before him, 
 hastened to a court of dissipation and pleasure, with feelings in 
 which regretful affection for those he had left darkened his 
 worldly hopes, and mingled with the sanguine anticipations of 
 youth, Warner, poor, low-born, wasted with sickness, destitute 
 of friends, shut out by his temperament from the pleasures of
 
 Jl8 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 his age, burned with hopes far less alloyed than those of Clar- 
 ence, and found in them, for the sacrifice of all else, not only 
 a recompense, but a triumph. 
 
 Thursday came. Warner had made one request of Talbot, 
 which had with difficulty been granted : it was that he himself 
 might, unseen, be the auditor of the great painter's criticisms, 
 and that Sir Joshua should be perfectly unaware of his presence. 
 It had been granted with difficulty, because Talbot wished to 
 spare Warner the pain of hearing remarks which he felt would 
 be likely to fall far short of the sanguine self-elation of the 
 young artist ; and it had been granted because Talbot imag- 
 ined that, even should this be the case, the pain would be more 
 than counterbalanced by the salutary effect it might produce. 
 Alas ! vanity calculates but poorly upon the vanity of others ! 
 What a virtue we should distil from frailty ; what a world of 
 pain we should save our brethren, if we would suffer our own 
 weakness to be the measure of theirs ! 
 
 Thursday came : the painting was placed by the artist's own 
 hand in the most favorable light; a curtain, hung behind it, 
 served as a screen for Warner, who, retiring to his hiding-place, 
 surrendered his heart to delicious forebodings of the critic's 
 wonder, and golden anticipations of the future destiny of his 
 darling work. Not a fear dashed the full and smooth cup of 
 his self-enjoyment. He had lain awake the whole of the night, 
 in restless and joyous impatience for the morrow. At day- 
 break he had started from his bed, he had unclosed his shut- 
 ters, he had hung over his picture with a fondness greater, if 
 possible, than he had ever known before ; like a mother, he felt 
 as if his own partiality was but a part of an universal tribute ; 
 and, as his aged relative turned her dim eyes to the painting, 
 and, in her innocent idolatry, rather of the artist than his work, 
 praised, and expatiated, and foretold, his heart whispered, "If 
 it wring this worship from ignorance, what will be the homage 
 of science?" 
 
 He who first laid down the now hackneyed maxim, that diffi- 
 dence is the companion of genius, knew very little of the work- 
 ings of the human heart. True, there may have been a few 
 such instances, and it is probable that in this maxim, as in most, 
 the exception made the rule. But what could ever reconcile 
 genius to its sufferings, its sacrifices, its fevered inquietudes, 
 the intense labor which can alone produce what the shallow 
 world deems the giant offspring of a momentary inspiration ; 
 what could ever reconcile it to these but the haughty and un- 
 quenchable consciousness of internal power ; the hope which
 
 THE DISOWNED. fl$ 
 
 has the fulness of certainty that in proportion to the toil is the 
 reward ; the sanguine and impetuous anticipation of glory, 
 which burst the boundaries of time and space, and ranges im- 
 mortality with a prophet's rapture ? Rob Genius of its confi- 
 dence, of its lofty self-esteem, and you clip the wings of the 
 eagle ; you domesticate, it is true, the wanderer you could not 
 hitherto comprehend, in the narrow bounds of your household 
 affections : you abase and tame it more to the level of your or- 
 dinary judgments, but you take from it the power to soar ; the 
 hardihood which was content to brave the thunder-cloud and 
 build its eyrie on the rock, for the proud triumph of rising above 
 its kind, and contemplating with a nearer eye the majesty of 
 heaven. 
 
 But if something of presumption is a part of the very essence 
 of genius, in Warner it was doubly natural, for he was still in 
 the heat and flush of a design, the defects of which he had not 
 yet had the leisure to examine ; and his talents, self-taught and 
 self-modelled, had never received either the excitement of emu- 
 lation or the chill of discouragement from the study of the 
 masterpieces of his art. 
 
 The painter had not been long alone in his concealment be- 
 fore he heard steps ; his heart beat violently, the door opened, 
 and he saw, through a small hole which he purposely made in 
 the curtain, a man with a benevolent and prepossessing counte- 
 nance, whom he instantly recognized as Sir Joshua Reynolds, 
 enter the room, accompanied by Talbot. They walked up to 
 the picture ; the painter examined it closely, and in perfect 
 silence. " Silence," thought Warner, " is the best homage of 
 admiration"; but he trembled with impatience to hear the ad- 
 miration confirmed by words those words came too soon. 
 
 "It is the work of a clever man, certainly," said Sir Joshua ; 
 "but" (terrible monosyllable) "of one utterly unskilled in the 
 grand principles of his art ; look here, and here, and here, for 
 instance," and the critic, perfectly unconscious of the torture 
 he inflicted, proceeded to point out the errors of the work. 
 Oh, the agony, the withering agony, of that moment to the 
 ambitious Artist ! In vain he endeavored to bear up against 
 the judgment in vain he endeavored to persuade himself that 
 it was the voice of envy which in these cold, measured, defining 
 accents, fell like drops of poison upon his heart. He felt at 
 once, and as if by a magical inspiration, the truth of the verdict; 
 the scales of self-delusion fell from his eyes ; by a hideous 
 mockery, a kind of terrible pantomime, his goddess seemed at a 
 word, a breath, transformed into a monster ; life, which had
 
 I2d THE DISOWNED. 
 
 been so lately concentrated into a single hope, seemed now, at 
 once and forever, cramped, curdled, blistered into a single dis- 
 appointment. 
 
 "But," said Talbot, who had in vain attempted to arrest the 
 criticisms of the painter (who, very deaf at all times, was, at 
 that time in particular, engrossed by the self-satisfaction always 
 enjoyed by one expatiating on his favorite topic) " but," said 
 Talbot, in a louder voice, "you own there is great genius in the 
 design?" 
 
 " Certainly, there is genius," replied Sir Joshua, in a tone of 
 calm and complacent good-nature ; " but what is genius with- 
 out culture ? You say the artist is young, very young ; let him 
 take time. I do not say let him attempt a humbler walk let 
 him persevere in the lofty one he has chosen, but let him first 
 retrace every step he has taken ; let htm devote days, months, 
 years, to the most diligent study of the immortal masters of the 
 divine art, before he attempts (to exhibit, at least), another 
 historical picture. He has mistaken, altogether, the nature of 
 invention ; a fine invention is nothing more than a fine devia- 
 tion from, or enlargement on, a fine model ; imitation, if noble 
 and general, insures the best hope of originality. Above all, 
 let your young friend, if he can afford it, visit Italy." 
 
 " He shall afford it," said Talbot kindly, "for he shall have 
 whatever advantages I can procure him ; but you see the pic- 
 ture is only half completed he could alter it ! " 
 
 "He hadbetter burn it!" replied the painter, with a gentle smile. 
 
 And Talbot, in benevolent despair, hurried his visitor out of 
 the room. He soon returned to seek and console the artist, 
 but the artist was gone; the despised, the fatal picture, the 
 blessing and curse of so many anxious and wasted hours, had 
 vanished also with its creator. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 " What is this soul, then ? Whence 
 Came it ? It does not seem my own, and I 
 Have no self-passion or identity ! 
 Some fearful end must be 
 
 ***** 
 
 There never lived a mortal man, who bent 
 
 His appetite beyond his natural sphere, 
 
 But starved and died." KEATS'S Endymion. 
 
 ON entering his home, Warner pushed aside, for the first 
 time in his life with disrespect, his aged and kindly relation,
 
 THE DISOWNED. I2t 
 
 who, as if in mockery of the unfortunate artist, stood prepared 
 to welcome and congratulate his return. Bearing his picture 
 in his arms, he rushed upstairs, hurried into his room, and 
 locked the door. Hastily he tore aside the cloth which had 
 been drawn over the picture ; hastily and tremblingly he placed 
 it upon the frame accustomed to support it, and then, with a 
 long, long, eager, searching, scrutinizing glance, he surveyed 
 the once-beloved mistress of his worship. Presumption, vanity, 
 exaggerated self-esteem, are, in their punishment, supposed to 
 excite ludicrous, not sympathetic, emotions ; but there is an 
 excess of feeling, produced by whatever cause it may be, into 
 which, in spite of ourselves, we are forced to enter. Even fear, 
 the most contemptible of the passions, becomes tragic the 
 moment it becomes an agony. 
 
 "Well, well ! " said Warner at last, speaking very slowly, "it 
 is over it was a pleasant dream but it is over I ought to be 
 thankful for the lesson." Then suddenly changing his mood 
 and tone, he repeated, " Thankful ! for what ? that I am a 
 wretch a wretch more utterly hopeless, and miserable, and 
 abandoned, than a man who freights with all his wealth, his 
 children, his wife, the hoarded treasures and blessings of an 
 existence, one ship, one frail, worthless ship, and, standing 
 himself on the shore, sees it suddenly go down ! Oh, was I 
 not a fool a right noble fool a vain fool an arrogant fool 
 a very essence and concentration of all things that make a fool, 
 to believe such delicious marvels of myself ! What, man ! 
 (here his eye saw in the opposite glass his features, livid and 
 haggard with disease, and the exhausting feelings which preyed 
 within him) what, man ! would nothing serve thee but to be a 
 genius thee whom Nature stamped with her curse! Dwarf- 
 like and distorted, mean in stature and in lineament, thou wert, 
 indeed, a glorious being to perpetuate grace and beauty, the 
 majesties and dreams of art ! Fame for thee, indeed ha 
 ha ! Glory ha ha ! a place with Titian, Correggio, Raphael 
 ha ha ha ! O, thrice modest, thrice reasonable fool ! But 
 this vile daub ; this disfigurement of canvas ; this loathed and 
 wretched monument of disgrace ; this notable candidate for 
 ha ha immortality ! this I have, at least, in my power." 
 And seizing the picture, he dashed it to the ground, and 
 trampled it with his feet upon the dusty boards, till the moist 
 colors presented nothing but one confused and dingy stain. 
 
 This sight seemed to recall him for a moment. He paused, 
 lifted up the picture once more, and placed it on the table. 
 "But," he muttered, "might not this critic be envious ? am I
 
 12? THE DISOWNED. 
 
 sure that he judged rightly fairly? The greatest masters 
 have looked askant and jealous at their pupil's works. And 
 then, how slow, how cold, how damned cold, how indifferently 
 he spoke ; why, the very art should have warmed him more. 
 Could he have No, no, no : it was true, it was ! I felt the 
 conviction thrill through me like a searing iron. Bum it did 
 he say ay burn it it shall be done this instant." 
 
 And, hastening to the door, he undid the bolt. He staggered 
 back as he beheld his old and nearest surviving relative, the 
 mother of his father, seated upon the ground beside the door, 
 terrified by the exclamations she did not dare to interrupt. She 
 rose slowly, and with difficulty, as she saw him ; and, throwing 
 around him the withered arms which had nursed his infancy, 
 exclaimed, " My child ! my poor poor child ! what has come 
 to you of late? you, who were so gentle, so mild, so quiet you 
 are no longer the same and oh, my son, how ill you look : your 
 father looked so just before he died ! " 
 
 "111!" said he, with a sort of fearful gaiety, "ill no I 
 never was so well I have been in a dream till now but I have 
 woke at last. Why, it is true that I have been silent and shy, 
 but I will be so no more. I will laugh, and talk, and walk, and 
 make love, and drink wine, and be all that other men are. 
 Oh, we will be so merry. But stay here, while I fetch a 
 light." 
 
 "A light, my child, for what ? " 
 
 "For a funeral ! " shouted Warner, and, rushing past her, he 
 descended the stairs, and returned almost in an instant with a 
 light. 
 
 Alarmed and terrified, the poor old woman had remained 
 motionless, and weeping violently. Her tears Warner did not 
 seem to notice ; he pushed her gently into the room, and began 
 deliberately, and without uttering a syllable, to cut the picture 
 into shreds. 
 
 "What are you about, my child?" cried the old woman; 
 " you are mad, it is your beautiful picture that you are de- 
 stoying ! " 
 
 Warner did not reply, but, going to the hearth, piled to- 
 gether, with nice and scrupulous care, several pieces of paper, 
 and stick, and matches, into a sort of pyre ; then,, placing the 
 shreds of the picture upon it, he applied the light, and the 
 whole was instantly in a blaze. 
 
 "Look, look ! " cried he, in an hysterical tone, " how it burns, 
 and crackles, and blazes ! What master ever equalled it 
 now ? no fault now in those colors no false tints in that light
 
 THE DISOWNED. J2$ 
 
 and shade ! See how that flame darts up and soars ! that 
 flame is my spirit ! Look is it not restless ? does it not 
 aspire bravely ? why, all its brother flames are grovellers to 
 it ! and now why don't you look ! it falters fades 
 droops and ha ha ha ! poor idler, the fuel is consumed 
 and it is darkness ! " 
 
 As Warner uttered these words his eyes reeled ; the room 
 swam before him : the excitement of his feeble frame had 
 reached its highest pitch ; the disease of many weeks had at- 
 tained its crisis ; and, tottering back a few paces, he fell upon 
 the floor, the victim of a delirious and raging fever. 
 
 But it was not thus that the young artist was to die. He was 
 reserved for a death, that, like his real nature, had in it more of 
 gentleness and poetry. He recovered, by slow degrees, and 
 his mind, almost in spite of himself, returned to that profession 
 from which it was impossible to divert the thoughts and 
 musings of many years. Not that he resumed the pencil and 
 the easel ; on the contrary, he could not endure them in his 
 sight ; they appeared, to a mind festered and sore, like a 
 memorial and monument of shame. But he nursed within him 
 a strong and ardent desire to become a pilgrim to that beauti- 
 ful land of which he had so often dreamed, and which the in- 
 nocent destroyer of his peace had pointed out as the theatre of 
 inspiration, and the nursery of future fame. 
 
 The physicians who, at Talbot's instigation, attended him, 
 looked at his hectic cheek and consumptive frame, and readily 
 flattered his desire : and Talbot, no less interested in Warner's 
 behalf on his own account, than bound by his promise to 
 Clarence, generously extended to the artist that bounty which 
 is the most precious prerogative of the rich. Notwithstanding 
 her extreme age, his grandmother insisted upon attending him : 
 there is in the heart of woman so deep a well of love, that no 
 age can freeze it. They made the voyage : they reached the 
 shore of the myrtle and the vine, and entered the imperial 
 city. The air of Rome seemed at first to operate favorably 
 upon the health of the English artist. His strength appeared 
 to increase, his spirit to expand ; and though he had relapsed 
 into more than his original silence and reserve, he resumed, 
 with apparent energy, the labors of the easel : so that they who 
 looked no deeper than the surface might have imagined the 
 scar healed, and the real foundation of future excellence begun. 
 
 But while Warner most humbled himself before the gods of 
 the pictured world ; while the true principles of the mighty 
 art opened in their fullest glory on his soul ; precisely at this
 
 124 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 very moment shame and despondency were most bitter at his 
 heart : and while the enthusiasm of the painter kindled, the 
 ambition of the man despaired. But still he went on, transfusing 
 into his canvas the grandeur and simplicity of the Italian school ; 
 still, though he felt palpably within him the creeping advance 
 of the deadliest and surest enemy to fame, he pursued with an un- 
 wearied ardor the mechanical completion of his task; still the 
 morning found him bending before the easel, and the night 
 brought to his solitary couch meditation, rather than sleep. The 
 fire, the irritability which he had evinced before his illness, had 
 vanished, and the original sweetness of his temper had returned ; 
 he littered no complaint, he dwelt upon no anticipation of 
 success; hope and regret seemed equally dead within him ; 
 and it was only when he caught the fond, glad eyes of his aged 
 attendant that his own filled with tears, or that the serenity of 
 his brow darkened unto sadness. 
 
 This went on for some months ; till one evening they found 
 the painter by his window, seated opposite to an unfinished 
 picture ; the pencil was still in his hand : the quiet of settled 
 thought was still upon his countenance ; the soft breeze of a 
 southern twilight waved the hair livingly from his forehead the 
 earliest star of a southern sky lent to his cheek something of 
 that subdued lustre which, when touched by enthusiasm, it had 
 been accustomed to wear ; but these were only the mockeries 
 of life : life itself was no more ! He had died, reconciled, 
 perhaps, to the loss of fame in discovering that art is to be 
 loved for itself and not for the rewards it may bestow upon 
 the artist. 
 
 There are two tombs close to each other in the stranger's 
 burial-place at Rome : they cover those for whom life, unequally 
 long, terminated in the same month. The one is of a woman, 
 bowed with the burden of many years : the other darkens over 
 the dust of the young artist. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 " Think upon n.y grief, 
 And on the justice of my flying hence, 
 To keep me from a most unholy match." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 " But are you quite sure," said General St. Leger, " are you 
 quite sure that this girl still permits Mordaunt's addresses ?" 
 
 "Sure!" cried Miss Diana St. Leger, "sure, General! I 
 saw it with my own eyes. Thev were standing together in the
 
 THE DISOWNED. 12* 
 
 
 
 copse, when I, who had long had my suspicions, crept up, and 
 saw them ; and Mr. Mordaunt held her hand, and kissed it 
 every moment. Shocking and indecorous ! " 
 
 "I hate that man ! as proud as Lucifer," growled the Gen- 
 eral. "Shall we lock her up, or starve her?" 
 
 " No, General, something better than that." 
 
 " What, my love ? flog her ! " 
 
 "She's too old for that, brother ; we'll marry her." 
 
 " Marry her ! " 
 
 " Yes, to Mr. Glumford ; you know that he has asked her 
 several times." 
 
 " But she cannot bear him." 
 
 " We'll make her bear him, General St. Leger." 
 
 " But if she marries, I shall have nobody to nurse me when 
 I have the gout." 
 
 "Yes, brother : I know of a nice little girl, Martha Richard- 
 son, your second cousin's youngest daughter : you know he 
 has fourteen children, and you may have them all, one after 
 another, if you like." 
 
 " Very true, Diana let the jade marry Mr. Glumford." 
 
 " She shall," said the sister ; " and I'll go about it this very 
 moment : meantime I'll take care that she does not see her 
 lover any more." 
 
 About three weeks after this conversation, Mordaunt, who 
 had in vain endeavored to see Isabel, who had not even heard 
 from her, whose letters had been returned to him unopened, 
 and who, consequently, was in despair, received the following 
 note : 
 
 "This is the first time I have been able to write to you, or at 
 least to get my letter conveyed : it is a strange messenger that 
 I have employed, but I happened formerly to make his 
 acquaintance, and accidentally seeing him to-day, the extremity 
 of the case induced me to give him a commission which I 
 could trust to no one else. Algernon, are not the above sen- 
 tences written with admirable calmness? are they not very ex- 
 planatory, very consistent, very cool? and yet do you know 
 that I firmly believe I am going mad ? My brain turns round 
 and round, and my hand burns so that I almost think that, like 
 our old nurse's stories of the fiend, it will scorch the paper as 
 I write. And I see strange faces in my sleep, and in my waking, 
 all mocking at me, and they torture and haunt me ; and when 
 I look at those faces, I see no human relenting, no ! though I 
 weep and throw myself on niy knees, and implore them to save
 
 126 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 me. Algernon, my only hope is in you. You know that I have 
 always hitherto refused to ruin you ; and even now, though I 
 implore you to deliver me, I will not be so selfish as 
 as I know not what I write, but if I cannot be your wife 
 I will not be his ! No ! if they drag me to church, it shall be 
 to my grave, not my bridal. ISABEL ST. LEGER." 
 
 When Mordaunt had read this letter, which, in spite of its 
 incoherence, his fears readily explained, he rose hastily ; his 
 eyes rested upon a sober-looking man, clad in brown. The 
 proud love no spectators to their emotions. 
 
 "Who are you, sir?" said Algernon quickly. 
 
 " Morris Brown," replied the stranger, coolly and civilly. 
 " Brought that letter to you, sir ; shall be very happy to serve 
 you with anything else ; just fitted out a young gentleman as 
 ambassador, a nephew to Mrs. Minden very old friend of mine. 
 Beautiful slabs you have here, sir, but they want a few nick- 
 nacks ; shall be most happy to supply you ; got a lovely little 
 ape, sir, stuffed by the late Lady Waddilove ; it would look 
 charming with this old-fashioned carving : give the room quite 
 the air of a museum ! " 
 
 "And so," said Mordaunt, for whose ear the eloquence of 
 Mr. Brown contained only one sentence, "and so you brought 
 this note, and will take back my answer?" 
 
 " Yes, sir ; anything to keep up family connections I knew a 
 Lady Morden very well very well indeed, sir a relation of 
 yours, I presume, by the similarity of name ; made her many valu- 
 able presents ; shall be most happy to do the same to you when 
 you are married, sir. You will refurnish the house, I suppose ? 
 Let me see fine proportions to this room, sir about thirty-six 
 feet by twenty-eight ; I'll do the thing twenty percent, cheaper 
 than the trade ; and touching the lovely little " 
 
 "Here," interrupted Mordaunt, "you will take this note, and 
 be sure that Miss Isabel St. Leger has it as soon as possible ; 
 oblige me by accepting this trifle a trifle indeed compared 
 with my gratitude, if this note reaches its destination safely." 
 
 " I am sure," said Mr. Brown, looking with surprise at the 
 gift, which he held with no unwilling hand, " I am sure, sir, that 
 you are very generous, and strongly remind me of your relation, 
 Lady Morden ; and if you would like the lovely little ape as a 
 present I mean really a present you shall have it, Mr. 
 Mordaunt." 
 
 But Mr. Mordaunt had left the room, and the sober Morris, 
 looking round, and cooling in his generosity, said to himself,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 "It is well he did not hear me, however; but I hope he will 
 marry the nice young lady, for I love doing a kindness. This 
 house must be refurnished no lady will like these old-fashioned 
 chairs." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 " Squire and fool are the same thing here." FARQUHAR. 
 
 " In such a night 
 
 Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, 
 And, with an unthrift love, did run from Venice." SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 THE persecutions which Isabel had undergone had indeed 
 preyed upon her reason as well as her health ; and in her brief 
 intervals of respite from the rage of the uncle, the insults of the 
 aunt, and, worse than all, the addresses of the intended bride- 
 groom, her mind, shocked and unhinged, reverted with such 
 intensity to the sufferings she endured as to give her musings 
 the character of insanity. It was in one of these moments 
 that she had written to Mordaunt ; and had the contest continued 
 much longer the reason of the unfortunate and persecuted girl 
 would have totally deserted her. 
 
 She was a person of acute, and even poignant, sensibilities, 
 and these the imperfect nature of her education had but little 
 served to guide or to correct ; but as her habits were pure and 
 good, the impulses which spring from habit were also sinless 
 and exalted, and, if they erred, "they leant on virtue's side," 
 and partook rather of a romantic and excessive generosity than 
 of the weakness of womanhood or the selfishness of passion. 
 All the misery and debasement of her equivocal and dependent 
 situation had not been able to drive her into compliance with 
 Mordaunt's passionate and urgent prayers ; and her heart was 
 proof even to the eloquence of love, when that eloquence pointed 
 towards the worldly injury and depreciation of her lover ; but 
 this new persecution was utterly unforeseen in its nature and 
 intolerable from its cause. To marry another to be torn for- 
 ever from one in whom her whole heart was wrapped to be 
 forced not only to forego his love, but to feel that the very 
 thought of him was a crime ; all this, backed by the vehement 
 and galling insults of her relations, and the sullen and unmoved 
 meanness of her intended bridegroom, who answered her can- 
 dor and confession with a stubborn indifference and renewed 
 overtures, made a load of evil which could neither be borne with 
 resignation nor contemplated with patience.
 
 128 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 She was sitting, after she had sent her letter, with her two rela- 
 tions, for they seldom trusted her out of their sight, when Mr. 
 Glumford was announced. Now, Mr. George Glumford was a 
 country gentleman of what might be termed a third-rate family in 
 the county: he possessed about twelve hundred a year, to say 
 nothing of the odd pounds, shillings, and pence, which, however, 
 did not meet with such contempt in his memory or estimation ; 
 was of a race which could date as far back as Charles Second ; had 
 been educated at a country school with sixty others, chiefly in- 
 ferior to himself in rank ; and had received the last finish at a very 
 small hull at Oxford. In addition to these advantages, he had 
 been indebted to nature for a person five feet eight inches high, 
 and stout in proportion ; for hair very short, very straight, and 
 of a red hue, which even through powder cast out a mellow glow ; 
 for an obstinate, dogged sort of nose, beginning in snub, and 
 ending in bottle , for cold, small, gray eyes, a very small mouth, 
 pinched up and avaricious ; and very large, very freckled, yet 
 rather white hands, the nails of which were punctiliously cut 
 into a point every other day, with a pair of scissors which Mr. 
 Glumford often boasted had been in his possession since his 
 eighth year ; viz., for about thirty-two legitimate revolutions 
 of the sun. 
 
 He was one of those persons who are equally close and ad- 
 venturous ; who love the Mat of a little speculation, but take 
 exceeding good care that it should be, in their own graceful 
 phrase, "on the safe side of the hedge." In pursuance of this 
 characteristic of mind, he had resolved to fall in love with 
 Miss Isabel St. Leger ; for she being very dependent, he could 
 boast to her of his disinterestedness, and hope that she would be 
 economical through a principle of gratitude ; and being the 
 nearest relation to the opulent General St. Leger, and his un- 
 married sister, there seemed to be every rational probability of 
 her inheriting the bulk of their fortunes. Upon these hints of 
 prudence spake Mr. George Glumford. 
 
 Now, when Isabel, partly in her ingenuous frankness, partly 
 from the passionate promptings of her despair, revealed to him 
 her attachment to another, and her resolution never, with her 
 own consent, to become his, it seemed to the slow, but not un- 
 calculating, mind of Mr. Glumford not by any means desirable 
 that he should forego his present intentions, but by all means 
 desirable that he should make this reluctance of Isabel's an 
 excuse for sounding the intentions and increasing the posthu- 
 mous liberality of the East Indian and his sister. 
 
 "The girl is of my nearest blood," said the Major-general,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 I2 9 
 
 "and if I don't leave my fortune to her, who the devil should I 
 leave it to, sir?" and so saying, the speaker, who was in a fell 
 paroxysm of the gout, looked so fiercely at the hinting wooer, 
 that Mr. George Glumford, who was no Achilles, was some- 
 what frightened, and thought it expedient to hint no more. 
 
 "My brother," said Miss Diana, "is so odd ; but he is the 
 most generous of men : besides, the girl has claims upon him." 
 
 Upon these speeches, Mr. Glumford thought himself secure, 
 and inly resolving to punish the fool for her sulkiness and bad 
 taste, as soon as he lawfully could, he continued his daily visits, 
 and told his sporting acquaintance that his time was coming. 
 
 Revcnons a nos moutons, forgive this preliminary detail, and 
 let us return to Mr. Glumford himself, whom we left at the 
 door, pulling and fumbling at the glove which covered his 
 right hand, in order to present the naked palm to Miss Diana 
 St. Leger. After this act was performed, he approached Isabel, 
 and drawing his chair near to her, proceeded to converse with 
 her as the Ogre did with Puss in Boots ; viz., " as civilly as an 
 Ogre could do." 
 
 This penance had not proceeded far, before the door was 
 again opened, and Mr. Morris Brown presented himself to the 
 conclave. 
 
 "Your servant, General ; your servant, Madam. I took the 
 liberty of coming back again, Madam, because I forgot to show 
 you some very fine silks, the most extraordinary bargain in the 
 world quite presents ; and I have a Shwesbowl here, a superb 
 article, from the cabinet of the late Lady Waddilove." 
 
 Now Mr. Brown was a very old acquaintance of Miss Diana 
 St. Leger, for there is a certain class of old maids with whom 
 our fair readers are no doubt acquainted, who join to a great 
 love of expense a great love of bargains, and who never pur- 
 chase at the regular place if they can find any it regular vendor. 
 They are great friends of Jews and itinerants, hand-in-glove 
 with smugglers, Ladies Bountiful to pedlars, are diligent readers 
 of puffs and advertisements, and eternal haunters of sales and 
 auctions. Of this class was Miss Diana a most prominent in- 
 dividual ; judge, then, how acceptable to her was the acquaint- 
 ance of Mr. Brown. That indefatigable merchant of mis- 
 cellanies had, indeed, at a time when brokers were perhaps 
 rather more rare and respectable than now, a numerous country 
 acquaintance, and thrice a year he performed a sort of circuit 
 to all his customers and connections ; hence his visit to St. 
 Leger House, and hence Isabel's opportunity of conveying her 
 epistle.
 
 130 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 "Pray," said Mr. Glumford, who had heard much of Mr. 
 Brown's 'presents' from Miss Diana " pray don't you furnish 
 rooms, and things of that sort?" 
 
 "Certainly, sir, certainly, in the best manner possible." 
 
 "Oh ! very well, I shall want some rooms furnished soon ; 
 a bed-room, and a dressing-room ; and things of that sort, you 
 know. And so perhaps you may have something in your box 
 that will suit me, gloves, or handkerchiefs, or shirts, or things 
 of that sort." 
 
 "Yes, sir, everything, I sell everything," said Mr. Brown, 
 opening his box. " I beg pardon, Miss Isabel, I have dropt 
 my handkerchief by your chair ; allow me to stoop," and Mr. 
 Brown, stooping under the table, managed to effect his purpose : 
 unseen by the rest, a note was slipped into Isabel's hand, and, 
 under pretence of stooping, too, she managed to secure the 
 treasure. Love need well be honest if, even when it is most 
 true, it leads us into so much that is false ! 
 
 Mr. Brown's box was now unfolded before the eyes of the 
 crafty Mr. Glumford, who, having selected three pair of gloves, 
 offered the exact half of the sum demanded. 
 
 Mr. Brown lifted up his hands and eyes. 
 
 " You see," said the imperturbable Glumford, " that if you 
 let me have them for that, and they last me well, and don't 
 come unsewn, and stand cleaning, you'll have my custom in 
 furnishing the house, and rooms, and things of that sort." 
 
 Struck with the grandeur of this opening, Mr. Brown yielded, 
 and the gloves were bought. 
 
 "The fool!" thought the noble George, laughing in his 
 sleeve, "as if I should ever furnish the house from his box ! " 
 
 Strange that some men should be proud -of being mean. 
 
 The moment Isabel escaped to dress for dinner, she opened 
 her lover's note. It was as follows : 
 
 " Be in the room, your retreat, at nine this evening. Let the 
 window be left unclosed. Precisely at that hour I will be with 
 you. I shall have everything in readiness for your flight. Be 
 sure, dearest Isabel, that nothing prevents your meeting me 
 there, even if all your house follow or attend you. I will bear 
 you from all. Oh, Isabel ! in spite of the mystery and wretched- 
 ness of your letter, I feel too happy, too blest at the thought 
 that our fates will be at length united, and that the union is at 
 hand. Remember nine. A. M." 
 
 Love is a feeling which has so little to do with the world, 
 a passion so little regulated by the known laws of our more
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 steady and settled emotions, that the thoughts which it produces 
 are always more or less connected with exaggeration and 
 romance. To the secret spirit of enterprise which, however 
 chilled by his pursuits and habits, still burned within Mordaunt's 
 breast, there was a wild pleasure in the thought of bearing off 
 his mistress and his bride from the very home and hold of her 
 false friends and real foes ; while in the contradictions of the 
 same passion, Isabel, so far from exulting at her approaching 
 escape, trembled at her danger, and blushed for her temerity ; 
 and the fear and the modesty of woman almost triumphed over 
 her brief energy and fluctuating resolve. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 " We haste the chosen and the lovely bringing, 
 
 Love still goes with her from her place of birth ; 
 Deep, silent joy, within her soul is springing, 
 
 Though in her glance the light no more is mirth." 
 
 . MRS. HEMANS. 
 
 "DAMN it !" said the General. 
 
 "The vile creature!" cried Miss Diana. 
 
 "I don't understand things of that sort," ejaculated the be- 
 wildered Mr. Glumford. 
 
 "She has certainly gone," said the valiant General. 
 
 " Certainly ! " grunted Miss Diana. 
 
 "Gone ! " echoed the bridegroom not to be. 
 
 And she was gone ! never did more loving and tender heart 
 forsake all, and cling to a more loyal and generous nature. 
 The skies were darkened with clouds, 
 
 ' ' And the dim stars rushed through them rare and fast ; " 
 
 and the winds wailed with a loud and ominous voice ; and the 
 moon came forth with a faint and sickly smile, from her cham- 
 ber in the mist, and then shrunk back, and was seen no more; 
 but neither omen nor fear was upon Mordaunt's breast, as it 
 swelled beneath the dark locks of Isabel, which were pressed 
 against it. 
 
 As Faith clings the more to the cross of life, while the 
 wastes deepen around her steps, and the adders creep forth 
 upon her path, so love clasps that which is its hope and com- 
 fort the closer, for the desert which encompasses, and the dan- 
 gers which harass its way.
 
 1^2 "THE DISOWNED. 
 
 They had fled to London, and Isabel had been placed with 
 a very distant, and very poor, though very high-born relative 
 of Algernon, till the necessary preliminaries could be passed, 
 and the final bond knit. Yet still the generous Isabel would 
 have refused despite the injury to her own fame, to have rat- 
 ified an union which filled her with gloomy presentiments for 
 Mordaunt's fate ; and still Mordaunt by little and little broke 
 down her tender scruples and self-immolating resolves, and 
 ceased not his eloquence and his suit till the day of his nuptials 
 was set and come. 
 
 The morning rose bright and clear the autumn was draw- 
 ing towards its close, and seemed willing to leave its last re- 
 membrance tinged with the warmth and softness of its parent 
 summer, rather than with the stern gloom and severity of its 
 chilling successor. 
 
 And they stood beside the altar, and their vows were ex- 
 changed. A slight tremor came over Algernon's frame, a slight 
 shade darkened his countenance ; for even in that bridal hour 
 an icy and thrilling foreboding curdled to his heart ; it passed 
 the ceremony was over, and Mordaunt bore his blushing and 
 weeping bride from the church. His carriage was in attend- 
 ance ; for, not knowing how long the home of his ancestors 
 might be his, he was impatient to return to it. The old 
 Countess D'Arcy, Mordaunt's relation, with whom Isabel had 
 been staying, called them back to bless them ; for, even 
 through the coldness of old age, she was touched by the singu- 
 larity of their love, and affected by their nobleness of heart. 
 She laid her wan and shrivelled hand upon each, as she bade 
 them farewell, and each shrunk back involuntarily, for the cold 
 and light touch seemed like the fingers of the dead. 
 
 Fearful indeed is the vicinity of death and life the bridal 
 chamber and the charnel. That night the old woman died. 
 It appeared as if Fate had set its seal upon the union it had so 
 long forbidden, and had woven a dark thread even in the mar- 
 riage bond. At least, it tore from two hearts, over which the 
 cloud and the blast lay couched in a "grim repose," the last 
 shelter which, however frail and distant, seemed left to them 
 upon the inhospitable earth !
 
 THE DISOWNED. 133 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 " Live while ye may, yet happy pair : enjoy 
 Short pleasures, for long woes are to succeed." MILTON. 
 
 THE autumn and the winter passed away ; Mordaunt's rela- 
 tion continued implacable. Algernon grieved for this, inde- 
 pendent of worldly circumstances ; for, though he had seldom 
 seen that relation, yet he loved him for former kindness 
 rather promised, to be sure, than yet shown with the natural 
 warmth of an affection which has but few objects. However, 
 the old gentleman (a very short, very fat person very short, 
 and very fat people, when they are surly, are the devil and all ; 
 for the humors of their mind, like those of their body, have 
 something corrupt and unpurgeable in them) wrote him one 
 bluff, contemptuous letter, in a witty strain for he was a bit 
 of a humorist disowned his connection, and very shortly after- 
 wards died, and left all his fortune to the very Mr. Vavasour 
 who was at law with Mordaunt, and for whom he had always 
 openly expressed the strongest personal dislike spite to one 
 relation is a marvellous tie to another. Meanwhile the lawsuit 
 went on less slowly than lawsuits usually do, and the final de- 
 cision was very speedily to be given. 
 
 We said the autumn and winter were gone ; and it was in 
 one of those latter days in March, when, like a hoyden girl 
 subsiding into dawning womanhood, the rude weather mellows 
 into a softer and tenderer month, that, by the side of a stream, 
 overshadowed by many a brake and tree, sate two persons. 
 
 " I know not, dearest Algernon," said one, who was a female, 
 "if this is not almost the sweetest month in the year, because 
 it is the month of Hope" 
 
 " Ay, Isabel ; and they did it wrong who called it harsh, and 
 dedicated it to Mars. I exult even in the fresh winds which 
 hardier frames than mine shrink from, and I love feeling their 
 wild breath fan my cheek as I ride against it. I remember," 
 continued Algernon musingly, "that on this very day three 
 years ago, I was travelling through Germany, alone and on 
 horseback, and I paused, not far from Ens, on the banks of the 
 Danube ; the waters of the river were disturbed and fierce, and 
 the winds came loud and angry against my face, dashing the 
 spray of the waves upon me, and filling my spirit with a buoy- 
 ant and glad delight ; and at that time I had been indulging old 
 dreams of poetry, and had laid my philosophy aside ; and, in 
 the inspiration of the moment, I lifted up my hand towards the
 
 DISOWNED. 
 
 quarter whence the winds came, and questioned them audibly 
 of their birthplace and their bourne ; and, as the enthusiasm 
 increased, I compared them to our human life, which a mo- 
 ment is, and then is not j and, proceeding from folly to. folly, I 
 asked them, as if they were the interpreters of heaven, for a 
 type and sign of my future lot." 
 
 "And what said they ? " inquired Isabel, smiling, yet smiling 
 timidly. 
 
 " They answered not," replied Mordaunt ; " but a voice 
 within me seemed to say ' Look above ! ' and I raised my 
 eyes, but did not see thee, love so the Book of Fate lied." 
 
 "Nay, Algernon, what did you see? "asked Isabel, more 
 earnestly than the question deserved. 
 
 " I saw a thin cloud, alone amidst many dense ones scattered 
 around ; and as I gazed it seemed to take the likeness of a 
 funeral procession coffin, bearers, priest, all as clear in the 
 cloud as I have seen them upon earth : and I shuddered as I 
 saw ; but the winds blew the vapor onwards, and it mingled 
 with the broader masses of cloud ; and then, Isabel, the sun 
 shone forth for a moment, and I mistook, love, when I said 
 you were not there, for that sun was you ; but suddenly the 
 winds ceased, and the rain came on fast and heavy : so my 
 romance cooled, and my fever slaked I thought on the inn at 
 Ens, and the blessings of a wood fire, which is lighted in a 
 moment, and I spurred on my horse accordingly. 
 
 "It is very strange," said Isabel. 
 
 "What, love?" whispered Algernon, kissing her cheek. 
 
 " Nothing, dearest, nothing." 
 
 At that instant, the deer, which lay waving their lordly 
 antlers to and fro beneath the avenue which sloped upward 
 from the stream to the house, rose hurriedly and in confusion, 
 and stood gazing, with watchful eyes, upon a man advancing 
 towards the pair. 
 
 It was one of the servants with a letter. Isabel saw a faint 
 change (which none else could have seen) in Mordaunt's 
 countenance, as he recognized the writing and broke the seal. 
 When he had read the letter, his eyes fell upon the ground, 
 and then, with a slight start, he lifted them up, and gazed long 
 and eagerly around. Wistfully did he drink, as it were, into 
 his heart the beautiful and expanded scene which lay stretched 
 on either side ; the noble avenue which his forefathers had 
 planted as a shelter for their sons, and which now, in its majes- 
 tic growth and its waving boughs, seemed to say, " Lo ! ye 
 are repaid ! " and the never silent and silver stream, by which
 
 THE DISOWNED. 135 
 
 his boyhood had sat for hours, lulled by its music, and inhaling 
 the fragrance of the reed and wild-flower that decoyed the bee 
 to its glossy banks ; and the deer, to whose melancholy belling 
 he had listened so often in the gray twilight with a rapt and 
 dreaming ear ; and the green fern waving on the gentle hill, 
 from whose shade his young feet had startled the hare and the 
 infant fawn ; and far and faintly gleaming through the thick 
 trees, which clasped it as with a girdle, the old Hall, so asso- 
 ciated with vague hopes and musing dreams, and the dim 
 legends of gone time, and the lofty prejudices of ancestral 
 pride, all seemed to sink within him, as he gazed, like the last 
 looks of departing friends ; and when Isabel, who had not 
 dared to break a silence which partook so strongly of gloom, 
 at length laid her hand upon his arm, and lifted her dark, deep, 
 tender eyes to his, he said, as he drew her towards him, and a 
 faint, sickly smile played upon his lips : 
 
 " It is past, Isabel : henceforth we have no wealth but in 
 each other. The cause has been decided and and we are 
 beggars ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 " We expose our life to a quotidian ague of frigid impertinences, which 
 would make a wise man tremble to think of." COWLEY. 
 
 WE must suppose a lapse of four years from the date of 
 those events which concluded the last chapter ; and, to recom- 
 pense the reader, who, I know, has a little penchant for " High 
 Life," even in the last century, for having hitherto shown him 
 human beings in a state of society not wholly artificial, I beg 
 him to picture to himself a large room, brilliantly illuminated, 
 and crowded " with magnates of the land." Here (some in 
 saltatory motion, some in sedentary rest) are dispersed various 
 groups of young ladies and attending swains, talking upon the 
 subject of Lord Rochester's celebrated poem, viz. "Nothing!' 
 and, lounging around the door, meditating probably upon 
 the same subject, stand those unhappy victims of dancing 
 daughters, denominated " Papas." 
 
 The music has ceased the dancers have broken up, and 
 there is a general but gentle sweep towards the refreshment 
 room. In the crowd having just entered there glided a 
 young man of an air more distinguished and somewhat more 
 joyous than the rest. 
 
 "How do you do, Mr. Linden? "said a tall and (though
 
 136 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 somewhat/ajj<?'(?) very handsome woman, blazing with diamonds ; 
 " are you just come ? " 
 
 And here, by the way, I cannot resist pausing to observe, 
 that a friend of mine, meditating a novel, submitted a part of 
 the MS. to a friendly publisher. " Sir," said the bookseller, 
 " your book is very clever, but it wants dialogue." 
 
 "Dialogue?" cried my friend "you mistake it is all 
 dialogue." 
 
 "Ay, sir, but not what we call dialogue ; we want a little 
 conversation in fashionable life a little elegant chit-chat or 
 oo : and, as you must have seen so much of the beau nwnde, 
 you could do it to the life : we must have something light, and 
 witty, and entertaining." 
 
 " Light, witty, and entertaining ! " said our poor friend ; 
 " and how the deuce then is it to be like conversation in 
 'fashionable life" J When the very best conversation one can 
 get is so insufferably dull, how do you think that people will 
 be amused by reading a copy of the very worst ? " 
 
 "They are amused, sir," said the publisher, "and works of 
 this kind sett!" 
 
 " I am convinced," said my friend : for he was a man of 
 a placid temper ; he took the hint, and his book did sell ! 
 
 Now this anecdote rushed into my mind after the penning of 
 the little address of the lady in diamonds " How do you do, 
 Mr. Linden J Are you just come ? " and it received an 
 additional weight from my utter inability to put into the mouth 
 of Mr. Linden notwithstanding my desire of representing him 
 in the most brilliant colors any more happy and eloquent 
 answer than, " Only this instant ! " 
 
 However, as this is in the true spirit of elegant dialogue, I 
 trust my readers find it as light, witty, and entertaining as, 
 according to the said publisher, the said dialogue is always 
 found by the public. 
 
 While Clarence was engaged in talking with this lady, a very 
 pretty, lively, animated girl, with laughing blue eyes, which, 
 joined to the dazzling fairness of her complexion, gave a Hebe- 
 like youth to her features and expression, was led up to the 
 said lady by a tall young man, and consigned, with the cere- 
 monious bow of the meille cour, to her protection. 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Linden," cried the young lady, "I am very glad to 
 see you such a beautiful ball ! Everybody here that I most 
 like. Have you had any refreshments, mamma? But I need 
 not ask, for I am sure you have not ; do come, Mr. Linden will 
 be our cavalier."
 
 THE DISOWNED. 137 
 
 "Well, Flora, as you please," said the elder lady, with a 
 proud and fond look at her beautiful daughter ; and they 
 proceeded to the refreshment-room. 
 
 No sooner were they seated at one of the tables, than they 
 were accosted by Lord St. George, a nobleman whom Clarence, 
 before.he left England, had met more than once at Mr. Talbot's. 
 
 " London," said his lordship, to her of the diamonds, " has 
 not seemed like the same place since Lady Westborough 
 arrived ; your presence brings out all the other luminaries : 
 and therefore a young acquaintance of mine God bless me, 
 there he is, seated by Lady Flora very justly called you ' the 
 evening star.' " 
 
 " Was that Mr. Linden's pretty saying ? " said Lady West- 
 borough, smiling. 
 
 "It was," answered Lord St: George, "and, by the bye, he 
 is a very sensible, pleasant person, and greatly improved since 
 he left England last." 
 
 " What ! " said Lady Westborough, in a low tone (for Clarence 
 though in earnest conversation with Lady Flora, was within 
 hearing), and making room for Lord St. George beside her, 
 
 "What! did you know him before he went to ? You can 
 
 probably tell me, then, who that is to say what family he is 
 exactly of the Lindens of Devonshire, or or " 
 
 "Why, really," said Lord St. George, a little confused, for 
 no man likes to be acquainted with persons whose pedigree he 
 cannot explain, " I don't know what may be his family : I met 
 him at Talbot's four or five years ago ; he was then a mere 
 boy, but he struck me as being very clever, and Talbot since 
 told me that he was a nephew of his own." 
 
 " Talbot," said Lady Westborough musingly, "what Talbot?" 
 
 " Oh ! the Talbot the ci-devant jeune homme ! " 
 
 "What, that charming, clever, animated old gentleman, who 
 used to dress so oddly, and had been so celebrated a beau 
 gar ^ on in his day ? " 
 
 " Exactly so," said Lord St. George, taking snuff, and delighted 
 to find he had set his young acquaintance on so honorable a 
 footing. 
 
 " I did not know he was still alive," said Lady Westborough ; 
 and then, turning her eyes towards Clarence and her daughter, 
 she added carelessly, "Mr. Talbot is very rich, is he not ?" 
 
 " Rich as Croesus," replied Lord St. George, with a sigh. 
 
 " And Mr. Linden is his heir, I suppose? " 
 
 " In all probability," answered Lord St. George ; " though I 
 believe I can boast a distant relationship to Talbot. However,
 
 138 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 I could not make him fully understand it the other day, though 
 I took particular pains to explain it." 
 
 While this conversation was going on between the Marchion- 
 ess of Westborough and Lord St. George, a dialogue equally 
 interesting to the parties concerned, and, I hope, equally light, 
 witty, and entertaining to readers in general, was sustained 
 between Clarence and Lady Flora. 
 
 "How long shall you stay in England?" asked the latter, 
 looking down. 
 
 " I have not yet been able to decide," replied Clarence, " for 
 it rests with the ministers, not me. Directly Lord Aspeden 
 obtains another appointment, I am promised the office of 
 Secretary of Legation ; but till then, I am 
 
 ' A captive in Ajugusta's towers 
 To beauty and her train.' " 
 
 "Oh ! " cried Lady Flora, laughing, "you mean Mrs. Des- 
 borough and her train : see where they sweep ! Pray go and 
 render her homage." 
 
 "It/'j rendered," said Linden, in a low voice, "without so 
 long a pilgrimage, but perhaps despised." 
 
 Lady Flora's laugh was hushed ; the deepest blushes suffused 
 her cheeks, and the whole character of that face, before so 
 playful and joyous, seemed changed, as by a spell, into a grave, 
 subdued, and even timid look. 
 
 Linden resumed, and his voice scarcely rose above a 
 ivhisper. A whisper ! O delicate and fairy sound ! music 
 that speaketh to the heart, as if loth to break the spell that 
 binds it while it listens ! Sigh breathed into words, and freight- 
 ing love in tones languid, like homeward bees, by the very 
 sweets with which they are charged ! 
 
 " Do you remember," said he, " that evening at when we 
 
 last parted ? and the boldness which at that time you were 
 gentle enough to forgive ? " 
 
 Lady Flora replied not. 
 
 " And do you remember," continued Clarence, " that I told 
 you that it was not as an unknown and obscure adventurer that 
 I would claim the hand of her whose heart, as an adventurer, 
 I had won ? " 
 
 Lady Flora raised her eyes for one moment, and encounter- 
 ing the ardent gaze of Clarence, as instantly dropped them. 
 
 " The time is not yet come," said Linden, "for the fulfilment 
 of this promise ; but may I dare I hope, that when it does I 
 shall not be "
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 139 
 
 " Flora, my love," said Lady Westborough, " let me introduce 
 to you Lord Borodaile." 
 
 Lady Flora turned the spell was broken ; and the lovers 
 were instantly transformed into ordinary mortals. But. as 
 Flora, after returning Lord Borodaile's address, glanced her 
 eye towards Clarence, she was struck with the sudden and 
 singular change of his countenance ; the flush of youth and 
 passion was fled, his complexion was deadly pale, and his eyes 
 were fixed with a searching and unaccountable meaning upon 
 the face of the young nobleman, who was alternately address- 
 ing, with a quiet and somewhat haughty fluency, the beautiful 
 mother, and the more lovely, though less commanding daughter. 
 Directly Linden perceived that he was observed, he rose, turned 
 away, and was soon lost among the crowd. 
 
 Lord Borodaile, the son and heir of the powerful Earl of 
 Ulswater, was about the age of thirty, small, slight, and rather 
 handsome than otherwise, though his complexion was dark and 
 sallow ; and a very aquiline nose gave a stern and somewhat 
 severe air to his countenance. He had been for several years 
 abroad, in various parts of the continent, and (no other field 
 for an adventurous and fierce spirit presenting itself) had served 
 with the gallant Earl of Effingham, in the war between the 
 Turks and Russians, as a volunteer in the armies of the latter. 
 In this service he had been highly distinguished for courage 
 and conduct ; and, on his return to England about a twelve- 
 month since, had obtained the command of a cavalry regiment. 
 Passionately fond of his profession, he entered into its minutest 
 duties with a zeal not exceeded by the youngest and poorest 
 subaltern in the army. 
 
 His manners were very cold, haughty, collected, and self- 
 possessed, and his conversation that of a man who has culti- 
 vated his intellect rather in the world than in the closet. I 
 mean, that, perfectly ignorant of things, he was driven to con- 
 verse solely upon persons, and, having imbibed no other 
 philosophy than that which worldly deceits and disappoint- 
 ments bestow, his remarks, though shrewd, were bitterly sar- 
 castic, and partook of all the ill-nature for which a very scanty 
 knowledge of the world gives a sour and malevolent mind so 
 ready an excuse. 
 
 " How very disagreeable Lord Borodaile is ! " said Lady 
 Flora, when the object of the remark turned away, and 
 rejoined some idlers of his corps. 
 
 " Disagreeable ! " said Lady Westborough. " I think him
 
 140 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 charming ; he is so sensible. How true [his remarks on the 
 world are ! " 
 
 Thus is it always : the young judge harshly of those who 
 undeceive or revolt their enthusiasm ; and the more advanced 
 in years, who have not learned by a diviner wisdom to look 
 upon the human follies and errors by which they have suffered, 
 with a pitying and lenient eye, consider every maxim of severity 
 on those frailties as the proof of a superior knowledge, and 
 praise that as a profundity of thought which in reality is but 
 an infirmity of temper. 
 
 Clarence is now engaged in a minuet de la cour, with the 
 
 beautiful Countess of , the best dancer of the day in 
 
 England. Lady Flora is flirting with half a dozen beaux, the 
 more violently in proportion as she observes the animation with 
 which Clarence converses, and the grace with which his partner 
 moves ; and, having thus left our two principal personages 
 occupied and engaged, let us turn for a moment to a room 
 which we have not entered. 
 
 This is a forlorn, deserted chamber, destined to cards, which 
 are never played in this temple of Terpsichore. At the far 
 end of this room, opposite to the fire-place, are seated four 
 men, engaged in earnest conversation. 
 
 The tallest of these was Lord Quintown, a nobleman, 
 remarkable at that day for his personal advantages, his good 
 fortunes with the beau sexe, his attempts at parliamentary elo- 
 quence, in which he was lamentably unsuccessful, and his 
 adherence to Lord North. Next to him sat Mr. St. George, 
 the younger brother of Lord St. George, a gentleman to whom 
 power and place seemed married without hope of divorce, for, 
 whatever had been the changes of ministry for the last twelve 
 years, he, secure in a lucrative, though subordinate situation, 
 had " smiled at the whirlwind, and defied the storm," and, while 
 all things shifted and vanished round him, like clouds and 
 vapors, had remained fixed and stationary as a star. " Solid 
 St. George," was his appellative by his friends, and his enemies 
 did not grudge him the title. The third was the minister 
 
 for ; and the fourth was Clarence's friend, Lord Aspeden. 
 
 Now this nobleman, blessed with a benevolent, smooth, calm 
 countenance, valued himself especially upon his diplomatic 
 elegance in turning a compliment. 
 
 Having a great taste for literature as well as diplomacy, this 
 respected and respectable peer also possessed a curious felicity 
 for applying quotation ; and nothing rejoiced him so much as 
 when, in the same phrase, he was enab.'ed to set the two jewels
 
 THE DISOWNED. l^J 
 
 of his courtliness of flattery and his profundity of erudition. 
 Unhappily enough, his compliments were seldom as well taken 
 as they were meant ; and, whether from the ingratitude of the 
 person complimented, or the ill-fortune of the noble adulator, 
 seemed sometimes to produce indignation in place of delight. 
 It has been said that his civilities had cost Lord Aspeden four 
 duels and one beating; but these reports were probably the 
 malicious invention of those who had never tasted the delicacies 
 of his flattery. 
 
 Now these four persons, being all members of the Privy 
 Council, and being thus engaged in close and earnest confer- 
 ence, were, you will suppose, employed in discussing the 
 gravities and secrets of state no such thing : that whisper 
 from Lord Quintown, the handsome nobleman, to Mr. St. 
 George, is no hoarded and valuable information which would 
 rejoice the heart of the editor of an opposition paper, no dire- 
 ful murmur, "perplexing monarchs with the dread of change "; 
 it is only a recent piece of scandal, touching the virtue of a 
 lady of the court, which (albeit the sage listener seems to pay 
 so devout an attention to the news) is far more interesting to 
 the gallant and handsome informant than to his brother states- 
 man ; and that emphatic and vehement tone with which Lord 
 
 Aspeden is assuring the minister for of some fact, is merely 
 
 an angry denunciation of the chicanery practiced at the last 
 Newmarket. 
 
 " By the bye, Aspeden," said Lord Quintown, " who is that 
 good-looking fellow always flirting with Lady Flora Ardenne 
 an attache of yours, is he not ? " 
 
 " Oh ! Linden, I suppose you mean. A very sensible, clever 
 young fellow, who has a great genius for business, and plays 
 the flute admirably. I must have him for my secretary, my 
 dear lord, mind that." 
 
 "With such a recommendation, Lord Aspeden," said the 
 minister, with a bow, " the state would be a great loser did it 
 not elect your attach^, who plays so admirably on the flute, to 
 the office of your secretary. Let us join the dancers." 
 
 "I shall go and talk with Count B ," quoth Mr. St. 
 
 George. 
 
 " And I shall make my court to his beautiful wife," said the 
 minister, sauntering into the ballroom, to which his fine person 
 and graceful manner were much better adapted than was his 
 genius to the cabinet, or his eloquence to the senate. 
 
 The morning had long dawned, and Clarence, for whose 
 mind pleasure was more fatiguing than business, lingered near
 
 142 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 the door, to catch one last look of Lady Flora before he retired. 
 He saw her leaning en the arm of Borodaile, and hastening to 
 join the dancers, with her usual light step and laughing air ; 
 for Clarence's short conference with her had, in spite of his 
 subsequent flirtations, rendered her. happier than she had ever 
 felt before. Again a change passed over Clarence's counte- 
 nance a change which I find it difficult to express without 
 borrowing from those celebrated German dramatists who could 
 portray in such exact colors " a look of mingled joy, sorrow, 
 hope, passion, rapture, and despair," for the look was not that 
 of jealousy alone, although it certainly partook of its nature, 
 but a little also of interest, and a little of sorrow ; and when 
 he turned away, and slowly descended the stairs, his eyes were 
 full of tears, and his thoughts far far away ; whither ? 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 " Quae fert adolescentia 
 Ea ne me celet consuefeci filium." * TERENT. 
 
 THE next morning Clarence was lounging over his break- 
 fast, and glancing listlessly now at the pages of the newspa- 
 pers, now at the various engagements for the week, which lay 
 confusedly upon his table, when he received a note from Tal- 
 bot, requesting to see him as soon as possible. 
 
 " Had it not been for that man," said Clarence to himself, 
 " what should I have been now ? But, at least, I have not dis- 
 graced his friendship. I have already ascended the roughest, 
 because the lowest, steps on the hill where Fortune builds her 
 temple. I have already won for the name I have chosen some 
 'golden opinions,' to gild its obscurity. One year more may 
 confirm my destiny, and ripen hope into success : then then. 
 I may perhaps throw off a disguise that, while it befriended, 
 has not degraded me, and avow myself to her! Yet how 
 much better to dignify the name I have assumed, than to owe 
 respect only to that which I have not been deemed worthy to 
 inherit. Well, well, these are bitter thoughts ; let them turn 
 to others. How beautiful Flora looked last night ? and he 
 he but enough of this : I must dress, and then to Talbot." 
 
 Muttering these wayward fancies, Clarence rose, completed 
 his toilet, sent for his horses, and repaired to a village about 
 seven miles from London, where Talbot, having yielded to 
 
 * " The things which youth proposes I accustomed my son, that he should never conceal 
 from me.' 1
 
 THfi DISOWNED. 143 
 
 Clarence's fears and solicitations, and left his former insecure 
 tenement, now resided under the cuard and care of an espe- 
 cial and private watchman. 
 
 It was a pretty, quiet villa, surrounded by a plantation and 
 pleasure-ground of some extent for a suburban residence, in 
 which the old philosopher (for though, in some respects, still 
 frail and prejudiced, Talbot deserved that name) held his 
 home. The ancient servant, on whom four years had passed 
 lightly and favoringly, opened the door to Clarence, with his 
 usual smile of greeting, and familiar, yet respectful, salutation, 
 and ushered our hero into a room furnished with the usual 
 fastidious and rather feminine luxury which characterized Tal- 
 bot's tastes. Sitting with his back turned to the light, in a 
 large easy-chair, Clarence found the wreck of the once gallant, 
 gay Lothario. 
 
 There was not much alteration in his countenance since we 
 last saw him ; the lines, it is true, were a little more decided, 
 and the cheeks a little more sunken, but the dark eye beamed 
 with all its wonted vivacity, and the delicate contour of the 
 mouth preserved all its physiognomical characteristics of the in- 
 ward man. He rose with somewhat more difficulty than he 
 was formerly wont to do, and his limbs had lost much of their 
 symmetrical proportions ; yet the kind clasp of his hand was as 
 firm and warm as when it had pressed that of the boyish attach^ 
 four years since; and the voice which expressed -his saluta- 
 tion yet breathed its unconquered suavity and distinctness of 
 modulation. After the customary greetings and inquiries were 
 given and returned, the young man drew his chair near to Tal- 
 bot's and said : 
 
 " You sent for me, dear sir ; have you anything more impor- 
 tant than usual to impart to me ! or and I hope this is the 
 case have you at last thought of any commission, however 
 trifling, in the execution of which I can be of use ?" 
 
 " Yes, Clarence, I wish your judgment to select me some 
 strawberries you know that I am a great epicure in fruit and 
 get me the new work Dr. Johnson has just published. There, 
 are you contented ? And now, tell me all about your horse, does 
 he step well ? Has he the true English head and shoulder? 
 Are his legs fine, yet strong? Is he full of spirit and devoid 
 of vice ?" 
 
 " He is all this, sir, thanks to you for him." 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Talbot 
 
 ' Old as I am, for riding feats unfit, 
 The shape of horses I remember yet.'
 
 144 ** DISOWNED. 
 
 And now let us hear how you HkeRanelagh ! and above all 
 how you liked the ball last night ? " 
 
 And the vivacious old man listened with the profoundest ap- 
 pearance of interest to all the particulars of Clarence's ani- 
 mated detail. His vanity, which made him wish to be loved, 
 had long . since taught him the surest method of becoming 
 so; and with him, every visitor, old, young, the man of books, 
 or the disciple of the world, was sure to find the readiest and 
 even eagerest sympathy in every amusement or occupation. 
 But for Clarence, this interest lay deeper than in the sur- 
 face of courtly breeding. Gratitude had first bound to him 
 his adopted son, then a tie. yet unexplained, and lastly, but 
 not least, the pride of protection. He was vain of the person- 
 al and mental attractions of \\\*> protege, and eager for the suc- 
 cess of one whose honors would reflect credit on himself. 
 
 But there was one part of Clarence's account of the last 
 night to which the philosopher paid a still deeper attention, 
 and on which he was more minute in his advice ; what this 
 was, I cannot, as yet, reveal to the Reader. 
 
 The conversation then turned on light and general matters. 
 The scandals, the literature, the politics, the on dits of the day; 
 and lastly upon women ; thence Talbot dropped into his office 
 of Mentor. 
 
 " A celebrated cardinal said, very wisely, that few ever did 
 anything among men until women were no longer an object 
 to them. That is the reason, by the bye, why I never succeeded 
 with the former, and why people seldom acquire any reputation 
 except for a hat, or a horse, till they marry. Look round at 
 the various occupations of life. How few bachelors are emi- 
 nent in any of them ! So you see, Clarence, you will have 
 my leave to marry Lady Flora as soon as you please." 
 
 Clarence colored, and rose to depart. Talbot followed him 
 to the door, and then said, in a careless way, " By the bye. I 
 had almost forgotten to tell you that, as you have now many 
 new expenses, you will find the yearly sum you have hitherto 
 received doubled. To give you this information is the chief 
 reason why I sent for you this morning. God bless you, my 
 dear boy." 
 
 And Talbot shut the door, despite his politeness, in the face 
 and thanks of his adopted son.
 
 TttE DISOWNED. 145 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 " There is a great difference between seeking to raise a laugh from every- 
 thing, and seeking in everything what may justly be laughed at. " LORD 
 SHAFFESBURY. 
 
 BEHOLD our hero, now in the zenith of distinguished dissi- 
 pations ! Courteous, attentive, and animated, the women did 
 not esteem him the less for admiring them rather than himself ; 
 while by the gravity of his demeanor to men the eloquent, 
 yet unpretending flow of his conversation, whenever topics of 
 intellectual interest were discussed the plain and solid sense 
 which he threw into his remarks, and the avidity with which he 
 courted the society of all distinguished for literary or political 
 eminence, he was silently, but surely, establishing himself in 
 esteem as well as popularity, and laying the certain foundation 
 of future honor and success. 
 
 Thus, although he had only been four months returned to 
 England, he was already known and courted in every circle, 
 and universally spoken of as among " the most rising young 
 gentlemen " whom fortune and the administration had marked 
 for their own. His history, during the four years in which we 
 have lost sight of him, is briefly told. 
 
 He soon won his way into the good graces of Lord Aspeden ; 
 became his private secretary, and occasionally his confidant. 
 Universally admired for his attraction of form and manner, 
 and, though aiming at reputation, not averse to pleasure, he 
 
 had that position which fashion confers at the Court of , 
 
 when Lady Westborough and her beautiful daughter, then 
 
 only seventeen, came to , in the progress of a continental 
 
 tour, about a year before her return to England. Clarence 
 and Lady Flora were naturally brought much together in the 
 restricted circle of a small court, and intimacy soon ripened 
 into attachment. 
 
 Lord Aspeden being recalled, Clarence accompanied him to 
 England ; and the ex-minister, really liking much one who was so 
 useful to him, had faithfully promised to procure him the office 
 and honor of secretary whenever his lordship should be reap- 
 pointed Minister. 
 
 Three intimate acquaintances had Clarence Linden. The 
 one was the Honorable Henry Trollolop, the second Mr. Cally- 
 thorpe, and the third Sir Christopher Findlater. We will 
 sketch them to you in an instant. Mr. Trollolop was a short,
 
 I4& THE DISOWNED. 
 
 stout gentleman, with a very thoughtful countenance. that Is 
 to say, he wore spectacles, and took snuff. Mr. Trollolop we 
 delight in pronouncing that soft, liquid name was eminently 
 distinguished by a love of metaphysics metaphysics were in a 
 great measure the order of the day ; but fate had endowed Mr. 
 Trollolop with a singular and felicitous confusion of ideas. Reid, 
 Berkeley, Cudworth, Hobbes, all lay jumbled together in most 
 edifying chaos at the bottom of Mr. Trollolop's capacious 
 mind ; and whenever he opened his mouth, the imprisoned 
 enemies came rushing and scrambling out, overturning and 
 contradicting each other, in a manner quite astonishing to the 
 ignorant spectator. Mr. Callythorpe was meagre, thin, sharp, 
 and yellow. Whether from having a great propensity for nail- 
 ing stray acquaintances, or being particularly heavy company, 
 or from any other cause better known to the wits of the period 
 than to us, he was occasionally termed by his friends the 
 " yellow-hammer." The peculiar characteristics of this gen- 
 tleman were his sincerity and friendship. These qualities led 
 him into saying things the most disagreeable, with the civilest 
 and coolest manner in the world always prefacing them with, 
 " You know, my dear so and so, / am your true friend." If 
 this proof of amity was now and then productive of altercation, 
 Mr. Callythorpe, who was a great patriot, had another and a 
 nobler plea : " Sir," he wouid say, putting his hand to his 
 heart " sir, I'm an Englishman I know not what it is to 
 feign." Of a very different stamp was Sir Christopher Find- 
 later. Little cared he for the subtleties of the human mind, 
 and not much more more for the disagreeable duties of " an 
 Englishman." Honest and jovial red in the cheeks empty 
 in the head born to twelve thousand a year educated in the 
 country, and heir to an earldom, Sir Christopher Findlater 
 piqued himself, notwithstanding his worldly ad vantages, usually 
 so destructive to the kindlier affections, on having the best 
 heart in the world, and this good heart, having a very bad 
 head to regulate and support it, was the perpetual cause of 
 error to the owner and evil to the public. 
 
 One evening, when Clarence was alone in his rooms, Mr. 
 Trollolop entered. 
 
 " My dear Linden," said the visitor, " how are you ? " 
 
 "I am, as I hope you are, very well," answered Clarence. 
 
 "The human mind," said Trollolop, taking off his great 
 coat 
 
 " Sir Christopher Findlater, and Mr. Callythorpe, sir," said 
 the valet.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 147 
 
 " Pshaw ! What has Sir Christopher Findlater to do with 
 the human mind ? " muttered Mr. Trollolop. 
 
 Sir Christopher entered with a swagger and a laugh. "Well, 
 old fellow, how do you do ? Deuced cold this evening." 
 
 " Though it is an evening in May," observed Clarence ; 
 "but then, this cursed climate." 
 
 "Climate ! " interrupted Mr. Callythorpe, " it is the best cli- 
 mate in the world : I'm an Englishman, and I never abuse my 
 country. 
 
 ' England, with all thy faults, I love thee still ! ' " 
 
 " As to climate," said Trollolop, "there is no climate, neither 
 here nor elsewhere : the climate is in your mind, the chair is 
 in your mind, and the table too, though I dare say you are stu- 
 pid enough to think the two latter are in the room ; the human 
 mind, my dear Findlater " 
 
 "Don't mind me, Trollolop," cried the baronet, "I can't 
 bear your clever heads ; give me a good heart that's worth 
 all the heads in the world, d n me if it is not ! Eh, Lin- 
 den ! " 
 
 " Your good heart," cried Trollolop, in a passion (for all 
 your self-called philosophers are a little choleric) " your good 
 heart is all cant and nonsense there is no heart at all we are 
 all mind." 
 
 " I'll be hanged if I'm all mind," said the baronet. 
 
 "At least," quoth Linden gravely, "no one ever accused you. 
 of it before." 
 
 " We are all mind," pursued the reasoner ; " we are all mind, 
 un mouhn a raisonnement. Our ideas are derived from two 
 sources, sensation or memory. That neither our thoughts, nor 
 passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without 
 the mind, everybody will allow;* therefore, you see, the 
 human mind is in short, there is nothing in the world but the 
 human mind ! " 
 
 " Nothing could be better demonstrated," said Clarence. 
 
 " I don't believe it," quoth the baronet. 
 
 "But you do believe it, .and you must believe it," cried 
 Trollolop; "for 'the Supreme Being has implanted within us 
 the principle of credulity.' and therefore you do believe it." 
 
 "But I don't," cried Sir Christopher. 
 
 " You are mistaken," replied the metaphysician calmly ; 
 " because I must speak truth." 
 
 " Why must you, pray ? " said the baronet. 
 
 * Perkeley ; Sect. iii. " Principles of Human Knowledge."
 
 148 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 "Because," answered Trollolop, taking snuff, "there is a 
 principle of veracity implanted in our nature." 
 
 "I wish I were a metaphysician," said Clarence, with a sigh. 
 
 " I am glad to hear you say so, for you know, my dear Lin- 
 den," said Callythorpe, "that I am your true friend, and I 
 must therefore tell you that you are shamefully ignorant. You 
 are not offended ?" 
 
 " Not at all ! " said Clarence, trying to smile. 
 
 "And you, my dear Findlater" (turning to the baronet), 
 " you know that I wish you well you know that I never flatter, 
 I'm your real friend, so you must not be angry ; but you really 
 are not considered a Solomon." 
 
 " Mr. Callythorpe ! " exclaimed the baronet, in a rage (the 
 best-hearted people can't always bear truth), " what do you 
 mean ! " 
 
 " You must not be angry, my good sir you must not, really. 
 I can't help telling you of your faults, for I am a true Briton, 
 sir, a true Briton, and leave lying to slaves and Frenchmen." 
 
 "You are in an error," said Trollolop; "Frenchmen don't 
 lie, at least not naturally, for in the human mind, as I before 
 said, the Divine Author has implanted a principle of veracity 
 which " 
 
 " My dear sir," interrupted Callythorpe, very affectionately, 
 "you remind me of what people say of you" 
 
 " Memory may be reduced to sensation, since it is only a 
 weaker sensation," quoth Trollolop ; but proceed." 
 
 "You know, Trollolop," said Callythorpe, in a singularly 
 endearing intonation of voice, " you know that I never flatter : 
 flattery is unbecoming a true friend nay, more, it is unbecom- 
 ing a native of our happy isles, and people do say of you that 
 you know nothing whatsoever, no, not an iota, of all the nonsen- 
 sical, worthless philosophy of which you are always talking. 
 Lord St. George said the other day, that you were very con- 
 ceited* ' No, not conceited,' replied Dr. , ' only ignorant,' 
 
 so if I were you, Trollolop, I would cut metaphysics you're 
 not offended?" 
 
 "By no means," cried Trollolop, foaming at the mouth. 
 
 "For my part," said the good-hearted Sir Christopher, whose 
 wrath had now subsided, rubbing his hands "for my part, I 
 see no good in any of those things : I never read never and 
 I don't see how I'm a bit the worse for it. A good man, Lin- 
 den, in my opinion, only wants to do his duty, and that is very 
 easily done." 
 
 " A good man ! and what is good ? " cried the metaphysi-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 149 
 
 cian triumphantly. "Is it implanted within us? Hobbes, 
 according to Reid, who is our last, and consequently best, 
 philosopher, endeavors to demonstrate that there is no differ- 
 ence between right and wrong." 
 
 "I have no idea of what you mean," cried Sir Christopher. 
 
 " Idea ! " exclaimed the pious philosopher. " Sir, give me 
 leave to tell you that no solid proof has ever been advanced of 
 the existence of ideas; they are a mere fiction and hypothesis. 
 Nay, sir, 'hence arises that skepticism which disgraces our phi- 
 losophy of the mind.' Ideas ! Findlater, you are a skeptic and 
 an idealist." 
 
 "I?" cried the affrighted baronet ;" upon my honor I am 
 no such a thing. Everybody knows that I am a Christian, 
 and " 
 
 "Ah ! " interrupted Callythorpe, with a solemn look, "every- 
 body knows that you are not one of those horrid persons 
 those atrocious deists, and atheists, and skeptics, from whom 
 the church and freedom of old England have suffered such 
 danger. I am a true Briton of the good old school ; and I con- 
 fess, Mr. Trollolop, that I do not like to hear any opinions but 
 the right ones." 
 
 "Right ones being only those which Mr. Callythorpe pro- 
 fesses," said Clarence. 
 
 " Exactly so ! " rejoined Mr. Callythorpe. 
 
 " The human mind," commenced Mr. Trollolop, stirring the 
 fire ; when Clarence, who began to be somewhat tired of this 
 conversation, rose. "You will excuse me," said he, " but I am 
 particularly engaged, and it is time to dress. Harrison will get 
 you tea, or whatever else you are inclined for." 
 
 "The human mind," renewed Trollolop, not heeding the 
 interruption ; and Clarence forthwith left the room. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 "You blame Marciusfor being proud." Coriolanut. 
 " Here is another fellow, a marvellous pretty hand at fashioning a compli- 
 ment." The Tanner of Tyburn. 
 
 THERE was a brilliant ball at Lady T 's, a personage who, 
 
 every one knows, did, in the year 17 , give the best balls, and 
 have the best-dressed people at them, in London. It was about 
 half-past twelve, when Clarence, released from his three friends, 
 prrived at the countess's. When he entered, the first thing
 
 150 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 which struck him was Lord Borodaile in close conversation 
 with Lady Flora. 
 
 Clarence paused for a few moments, and then, sauntering 
 towards them, caught Flora's eye colored, and advanced. 
 Now, if there was a haughty man in Europe, it was Lord Bor- 
 odaile. He was not proud of his birth, nor fortune, but he 
 was proud of himself ; and, next to that pride, he was proud of 
 being a gentleman. He had an exceeding horror of all com- 
 mon people ; a Claverhouse-sort of supreme contempt to " pud- 
 dle blood "; his lip seemed to wear scorn as a garment ; a lofty 
 and stern self-admiration, rather than self-love, sat upon his 
 forehead as on a throne. He had, as it were, an awe of him- 
 self ; his thoughts were so many mirrors of Viscount Borodaile, 
 dressed en dieu. His mind was a little Versailles, in which self 
 sate like Louis XIV., and saw nothing but pictures of its self, 
 sometimes as Jupiter, and sometimes as Apollo. What marvel, 
 then, that Lord Borodaile was a very unpleasant companion : 
 for every human being he had " something of contempt." His 
 eye was always eloquent in disdaining : to the plebeian it said, 
 "You are not a gentleman"; to the prince, "You are not 
 Lord Borodaile." 
 
 Yet, with all this, he had his good points. He was brave as 
 a lion ; strictly honorable ; and though very ignorant, and very 
 self-sufficient, had that sort of dogged good sense which one 
 very often finds in men of stern hearts, who, if they have many 
 prejudices, have little feeling, to overcome. 
 
 Very stiffly, and very haughtily, did Lord Borodaile draw up, 
 when Clarence approached, and addressed Lady Flora ; much 
 more stiffly, and much more haughtily, did he return, though 
 with old-fashioned precision of courtesy, Clarence's bow, when 
 Lady Westborough introduced them to each other. Not that 
 this hauteur was intended as a particular affront ; it was only 
 the agreeability of his lordship's general manner. 
 
 "Are you engaged?" said Clarence to Flora. 
 
 " I am, at present, to Lord Borodaile." 
 
 "After him, may I hope?" 
 
 Lady Flora nodded assent, and disappeared with Lord Boro- 
 daile. 
 
 His Royal Highness the Duke of cameup to Lady West- 
 borough ; and Clarence, with a smiling countenance and an 
 absent heart, plunged into the crowd. There he met Lord 
 Aspeden, in conversation with the Earl of Holdenworth, one of 
 the administration. 
 
 "Ah, Linden!" said the diplomatist, "let me introduce you
 
 to Lord Holdenworth a clever young man, my dear lord, and 
 plays the flute beautifully." With this eulogium, Lord Aspe- 
 den glided away ; and Lord Holdenworth, after some conver- 
 sation with Linden, honored him by an invitation to dinner the 
 next day. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 * Tis true his nature may with faults abound ; 
 But who will cavil when the heart is sound ? " 
 
 STEPHEN MONTAGUE. 
 
 " Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt." * HOR. 
 
 THE next day Sir Christopher Findlater called on Clarence. 
 "Let us lounge into the park," said he. 
 
 " With pleasure," replied Clarence ; and into the park they 
 lounged. 
 
 By the way they met a crowd, who were hurrying a man to 
 prison. The good-hearted Sir Christopher stopped : " Who is 
 that poor fellow ? " said he. 
 
 "It is the celebrated" (in England all criminals are cele- 
 brated. Thurtell was a hero, Thistlewood a patriot, and Faunt- 
 leroy was discovered to be exactly like Bonaparte!) " it is the 
 celebrated robber, John Jefferies, who broke into Mrs. Wilson's 
 house, and cut the throats of herself and her husband, wounded 
 the maid-servant, and split the child's skull with the poker." 
 
 Clarence pressed forward: "I have seen that man before," 
 thought he. He looked again, and recognized the face of the 
 robber who had escaped from Talbot's house, on the eventful 
 night which had made Clarence's fortune. Jt was a strongly 
 marked and rather handsome countenance, which would not 
 be easily forgotten ; and a single circumstance of excitement 
 will stamp features on the memory as deeply as the common- 
 place intercourse of years. 
 
 " John Jeffries!" exclaimed the baronet, " let uscomeaway.'' 
 
 "Linden," continued Sir Christopher, "that fellow was my 
 servant once. He robbed me to some considerable extent. I 
 caught him. He appealed to my heart, and you know, my dear 
 fellow, that was irresistible, so I let him off. Who could have 
 thought he would have turned out so?" And the baronet pro- 
 ceeded to to eulogize his own good nature, by which it is just 
 necessary to remark that one miscreant had been saved for a few 
 years from transportation, in order to rob and murder ad libi- 
 
 * The foolish while avoiding vice run into the opposite extreme*.
 
 152 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 turn, and having fulfilled the office of a common pest, to suffer 
 on the gallows at last. What a fine thing it is to have a good 
 heart! 
 
 Both our gentlemen now sunk into a reverie, from which 
 they were awakened, at the entrance of the park, by a young 
 man in rags, who, with a piteous tone, supplicated charity. 
 Clarence, who, to his honor be it spoken, spent an allotted and 
 considerable part of his income in judicious and laborious be- 
 nevolence, had read a little of political morals, then beginning 
 to be understood, and walked on. The good-hearted baronet 
 put his hand in his pocket, and gave the beggar half a guinea, 
 by which a young, strong man, who had only just commenced 
 the trade, was confirmed in his imposition for the rest of his 
 life ; and, instead of the useful support, became the pernicious 
 incumbrance, of society. 
 
 Sir Christopher had now recovered his spirits. "What's 
 like a good action?" said he to Clarence, with a swelling 
 breast. 
 
 The park was crowded to excess ; our loungers were joined 
 by Lord St. George. His lordship was a staunch Tory. He 
 could not endure Wilkes, liberty, or general education. He 
 launched out against the enlightenment of domestics.* 
 
 "What has made you so bitter ?" said Sir Christopher. 
 
 " My valet," cried Lord St. George, "he has invented a new 
 toasting fork, is going to take out a patent, make his fortune, 
 and leave me ; that's what I call ingratitude, Sir Christopher; 
 for I ordered his wages to be raised five pounds but last year." 
 
 "It was very ungrateful," said the ironical Clarence. 
 
 "Very !" reiterated the good-hearted Sir Christopher. 
 
 " You cannot recommend me a valet, Findlater," renewed his 
 lordship, "a good, honest, sensible fellow, who can neither read 
 nor write ? " 
 
 " N-o-o that is to say, yes ! I can ; my old servant Col- 
 lard, is out of place, and is as ignorant as as " 
 
 "I or you are ?" said Lord St. George, with a laugh. 
 
 "Precisely," replied the baronet. 
 
 " Well, then, I take your recommendation : send him to me 
 to-morrow at twelve." 
 
 " I will," said Sir Christopher. 
 
 "My dear Findlater," cried Clarence, when Lord St. George 
 
 * The ancestors of our present footmen, if we may believe Sir William Temple, seem tr> 
 have been to the full as intellectual as their descendants. " I have had," observes the philo- 
 sophic statesman, " several servants far gone in divinity, others in poetry ; have known in 
 the families of some friends, a keeper deep in the Rosicrucian mysteries, and a laundress 
 firm in those of Epicurus."
 
 DlSOWNEb. . j^ 
 
 was gone, " did you not tell me, some time ago, that Collard 
 was a great rascal, and very intimate with Jefferies? and now 
 you recommend him to Lord St. George ! " 
 
 "Hush, hush, hush !" said the baronet; "he was a great 
 rogue to be sure ; but poor fellow, he came to me yesterday 
 with tears in his eyes, and said he should starve if I would not 
 give him a character ; so what could I do?" 
 
 "At least, tell Lord St. George the truth," observed Clarence. 
 
 " But then Lord St. George would not take him ! " rejoined 
 the good-hearted Sir Christopher, with forcible naivete. " No, 
 no, Linden, we must not be so hard-hearted ; we must forgive 
 and forget " ; and so saying, the baronet threw out his chest, 
 with the conscious exultation of a man who has uttered a noble 
 sentiment. The moral of this little history is that Lord St. 
 George, having been pillaged " through thick and thin," as the 
 proverb has it, for two years, at last missed a gold watch, and 
 Monsieur Collard finished his career as his exemplary tutor, 
 Mr. John Jefferies, had done before him. Ah, what a fine 
 thing it is to have a good heart ! 
 
 But to return, just as our wanderers had arrived at the far- 
 ther end of the park, Lady Westborough and her daughter 
 passed them. Clarence, excusing himself to his friends, hastened 
 towards them, and was soon occupied in saying the prettiest 
 things in the world to the prettiest person, at least in his eyes; 
 while Sir Christopher, having done as much mischief as a good 
 heart well can do in a walk of an hour, returned home to write 
 a long letter to his mother, against "learning, and all such non- 
 sense, which only served to blunt the affections and harden the 
 heart." 
 
 "Admirable young man !" cried the mother, with tears in 
 her eyes. "A good heart is better than all the heads in the 
 world." 
 
 Amen 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 " Make way, Sir Geoffrey Peveril, or you will compel me to do that I may 
 be sorry for ! " 
 
 " You shall make no way here but at your peril," said Sir Geoffrey ; 
 is my ground." Peveril of the Peak. 
 
 ONE night on returning home from a party at Lady West- 
 borough's in Hanover Square, Clarence observed a man before 
 him walking with an uneven and agitated step. His right hand 
 was clenched, and he frequently raised it as with a sudden im- 
 pulse, and struck fiercely as if at some imagined enemy.
 
 154 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 The stranger slackened his pace. Clarence passed him, and, 
 turning round to satisfy the idle curiosity which the man's ec- 
 centric gestures had provoked, his eye met a dark, lowering, 
 iron countenance, which, despite the lapse of four years, he rec- 
 ognized on the moment it was Wolfe, the republican. 
 
 Clarence moved, involuntarily, with a quicker step ; but in 
 a few minutes, Wolfe, who was vehemently talking to himself, 
 once more passed him : the direction he took was also Clar- 
 ence's way homeward, and he therefore followed the republican, 
 though at some slight distance, and on the opposite side of the 
 way. A gentleman on foot, apparently returning from a party, 
 met Wolfe, and, with an air half haughty, half unconscious, 
 took the wall; though, according to old-fashioned rules of street 
 courtesy, he was on the wrong side for asserting the claim. 
 The stern republican started, drew himself up to his full height, 
 and sturdily and doggedly placed himself directly in the way of 
 the unjust claimant. Clarence was now nearly opposite to the 
 two, and saw all that was going on. 
 
 With a motion, a little rude- and very contemptuous, the pass- 
 enger attempted to put Wolfe aside, and win his path. Little 
 did he know of the unyielding nature he had to do with ; the 
 next instant the republican, with a strong hand, forced him 
 from the pavement into the very kennel, and silently and cold- 
 ly continued his way. 
 
 The wrath of the discomfited passenger was vehemently 
 kindled. 
 
 " Insolent dog ! " cried he, in a loud and arrogant tone, " your 
 baseness is your protection." Wolfe turned rapidly, and made 
 but two strides before he was once more by the side of his de- 
 feated opponent. 
 
 "What did you say?" he asked, in his low, deep, hoarse 
 voice. 
 
 Clarence stopped. " There will be mischief done here," 
 thought he, as he called to mind the stern temper of the repub- 
 lican. 
 
 " Merely," said the other, struggling with his rage, " that it 
 is not for men of my rank to avenge the insults offered us by 
 those of yours ! " 
 
 "Your rank," said Wolfe, bitterly retorting the contempt of 
 the stranger, in a tone of the loftiest disdain ; "your rank, poor 
 changeling ! And what are you that you should lord it over 
 me ? Are your limbs stronger? your muscles firmer? your pro- 
 portions juster? your mind acuter? your conscience clearer ? 
 Fool fool go home, and measure yourself with lackeys ! "
 
 ItiE DISOWNED. .155 
 
 The republican ceased, and pushing the stranger aside, turned 
 slowly away. But this last insult enraged the passenger beyond 
 all prudence. Before Wolfe had proceeded two paces, he 
 muttered a desperate but brief oath, and struck the reformer 
 with a strength so much beyond what his figure (which was 
 small and slight) appeared to possess, that the powerful and 
 gaunt frame of Wolfe recoiled backward several steps, and, had 
 it not been for the iron railing of the neighboring area, would 
 have fallen to the ground. 
 
 Clarence pressed forward ; the face of the rash aggressor 
 was turned towards him ; the features were Lord Borodaile's. 
 He had scarcely time to make this discovery, before Wolfe had 
 recovered himself. With a wild and savage cry, rather than 
 exclamation, he threw himself upon his antagonist, twined his 
 sinewy arms around the frame of the struggling, but powerless, 
 nobleman, raised him in the air, with the easy strength of a 
 man lifting a child, held him aloft for one moment, with a 
 bitter and scornful laugh of wrathful derision, and then dashed 
 him to the ground, and, planting his foot upon Borodaile's 
 breast said : 
 
 " So shall it be with all of you : there shall be but one in- 
 stant between your last offence and your first but final debase- 
 ment. Lie there ! it is your proper place ! By the only law 
 which you yourself acknowledge, the law which gives the right 
 divine to the strongest ; if you stir limb or muscle, I will crush 
 the breath from your body." 
 
 But Clarence was now by the side of Wolfe, a new and more 
 powerful opponent. 
 
 " Look you," said he : " you have received an insult, and you 
 have done justice yourself. I condemn the offence, and 
 quarrel not with you for the punishment ; but that punishment 
 is now past : remove your foot, or " 
 
 "What?" shouted Wolfe fiercely, his lurid and vindictive 
 eye flashing with the released fire of long-pent and cherished 
 passions. 
 
 "Or," answered Clarence calmly, " I will hinder you from 
 committing murder." 
 
 At that instant the watchman's voice was heard, and the 
 night's guardian himself was seen hastening from the far end 
 of the street towards the place of contest. Whether this cir- 
 cumstance, or Clarence's answer, somewhat changed the current 
 of the republican's thoughts, or whether his anger, suddenly 
 raised, was now as suddenly subsiding, it is not easy to decide ; 
 but he slowly and deliberately moved his foot from the breast
 
 156 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 of his baffled foe, and, bending down, seemed endeavoring to as- 
 certain the mischief he had done. Lord Borodaile was perfectly 
 insensible. 
 
 " You have killed him ! " cried Clarence, in a voice of horror, 
 "but you shall not escape" ; and he placed a desperate and 
 nervous hand on the republican. 
 
 "Stand off," said Wolfe, "my blood is up ! I would not do 
 more violence to-night than I have done. Stand off ! the man 
 moves ; see ! " 
 
 And Lord Borodaile, uttering a long sigh, and attempting to 
 rise, Clarence released his hold of the republican, and bent 
 down to assist the fallen nobleman. Meanwhile, Wolfe, mut- 
 tering to himself, turned from the spot, and strode haughtily away. 
 
 The watchman now came up, and, with his aid, Clarence 
 raised Lord Borodaile. Bruised, stunned, half insensible as he 
 was, that personage lost none of his characteristic stateliness ; 
 he shook off the watchman's arm, as if there was contamination 
 in the touch ; and his countenance, still menacing and defying 
 in its expression, turned abruptly towards Clarence, as if he yet 
 expected to meet, and struggle with, a foe. 
 
 " How are you, my lord ? " said Linden ; " not severely hurt, 
 I trust ? " 
 
 " Well, quite well," cried Borodaile. " Mr. Linden, I 
 think? I thank you cordially for your assistance; but the 
 dog the rascal where is he ? " 
 
 " Gone," said Clarence. 
 
 "Gone! Where where?" cried Borodaile; "that living 
 man should insult me, and yet escape ! " 
 
 " Which way did the fellow go ? " said the watchman, antici- 
 pative of half-a-crown. " I will run after him in a trice, your 
 honor / warrant I nab him." 
 
 " No no " said Borodaile haughtily ; " I leave my quar- 
 rels to no man ; if I could not master him myself, no one else 
 shall do it for me. Mr. Linden, excuse me, but I am perfectly 
 recovered, and can walk very well without your polite assis- 
 tance. Mr. Watchman, I am obliged to you : there is a guinea 
 to reward your trouble." 
 
 With these words, intended as a farewell, the proud patrician, 
 smothering his pain, bowed with extreme courtesy to Clar- 
 ence again thanked him, and walked on unaided, and alone. 
 
 " He is a game blood," said the watchman, pocketing the 
 guinea. 
 
 " He is worthy his name," thought Clarence ; " though he 
 was in the wrong, my heart yearns to him."
 
 THE DISOWNED. '157 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 *' Things wear a vizard which I think to like not." Tanner of Tyburn, 
 
 CLARENCE, from that night, appeared to have formed a sud- 
 den attachment to Lord Borodaile. He took every oppor- 
 tunity of cultivating his intimacy, and invariably treated him 
 with a degree of consideration which his knowledge of the 
 world told him was well calculated to gain the good will of his 
 haughty and arrogant acquaintance ; but all this was ineffectual 
 in conquering Borodaile's coldness and reserve. To have been 
 once seen in a humiliating and degrading situation is quite 
 sufficient to make a proud man hate the spectator, and, with 
 the confusion of all prejudiced minds, to transfer the sore 
 remembrance of the event to the association of the witness. 
 Lord Borodaile, though always ceremoniously civil, was im- 
 movably distant ; and avoided, as well as he was able, Clar- 
 ence's insinuating approaches and address. To add to his 
 indisposition to increase his acquaintance with Linden, a friend 
 of his, a captain in the Guards, once asked him who that Mr. 
 Linden was ? and, on his lordship's replying that he did not 
 know, Mr. Percy Bobus, the son of a wine-merchant, though 
 the nephew of a duke, rejoined, " Nobody does know." 
 
 "Insolent intruder!" thought Lord Borodaile: " A man 
 whom nobody knows to make such advances to me /" 
 
 A still greater cause of dislike to Clarence arose from 
 jealousy. Ever since the first night of his acquaintance with 
 Lady Flora, Lord Borodaile had paid her unceasing attention. 
 In good earnest, he was greatly struck by her beauty, and had 
 for the last year meditated the necessity of presenting the world 
 with a Lady Borodaile. Now, though his lordship did look 
 upon himself in as favorable alight as a man well can do, yet he 
 could not but own that Clarence was very handsome had a 
 devilish gentlemanlike air talked with a better grace than the 
 generality of young men, and danced to perfection, 
 detest that fellow ! " said Lord Borodaile, involuntarily and 
 aloud, as these unwilling truths forced themselves upon his 
 mind. 
 
 "Whom do you detest?" asked Mr. Percy Bobus, who was 
 lying on the sofa in Lord Borodaile's drawing-room, and ad- 
 miring a pair of red-heeled shoes which decorated his feet. 
 
 "That puppy, Linden !" said Lord Borodaile, adjusting his 
 cravat. 
 
 "He is a deuced puppy, certainly !" rejoined Mr. Percy
 
 I5& THE DISOWNED. 
 
 Bobus, turning round to contemplate more exactly the shap6 
 of his right shoe. " I can't bear conceit, Borodaile." 
 
 " Nor I I abhor it it is so d d disgusting ! " replied Lord 
 Borodaile, leaning his chin upon his two hands, and look- 
 ing fully into the glass. " Do you use MacNeile's divine 
 pomatum ? " 
 
 " No, it's too hard ; I get mine from Paris : shall I send you 
 some?" 
 
 " Do," said Lord Borodaile. 
 
 " Mr. Linden, my lord," said the servant, throwing open 
 the door ; and Clarence entered. 
 
 " I am very fortunate," said he, with that smile which so few 
 ever resisted, "to find you at home, Lord Borodaile; but as 
 the day was wet, I thought I should have some chance of that 
 pleasure ; I therefore wrapped myself up in my roquelaure, 
 and here I am ! " 
 
 Now, nothing could be more diplomatic than the compli- 
 ment of choosing a wet day for a visit, and exposing one's self 
 to "the pitiless shower," for the greater probability of finding 
 the person visited at home. Not so thought Lord Borodaile ; 
 he drew himself up, bowed very solemnly, and said with cold 
 gravity : 
 
 " You are very obliging, Mr. Linden." 
 
 Clarence colored, and bit his lip as he seated himself. Mr. 
 Percy Bobus, with true insular breeding, took up the newspaper. 
 
 " I think I saw you at Lady C.'s last night," said Clarence ; 
 "did you stay there long?" 
 
 " No, indeed," answered Borodaile ; " I hate her parties." 
 
 " One does meet such odd people there," observed Mr. Percy 
 Bobus ; "creatures one never sees anywhere else." 
 
 "I hear," said Clarence, who never abused any one, even the 
 givers of stupid parties, if he could help it, and therefore 
 thought it best to change the conversation "I hear, Lord 
 Borodatle, that some hunters of yours are to be sold. I pur- 
 pose being a bidder for Thunderbolt." 
 
 "I have a horse to sell you, Mr. Linden," cried Mr. Percy 
 Bobus, springing from the sofa into civility; "a superb 
 creature." 
 
 "Thank you," said Clarence, laughing; "but I can only 
 afford to buy one, and I have taken a great fancy to Thunder- 
 bolt." 
 
 Lord Borodaile, whose manners were very antiquated in 
 their affability, bowed. Mr. Bobus sank back into his sofa, 
 and resumed the paper.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 159 
 
 A pause ensued. Clarence was chilled in spite of himself. 
 Lord Borodaile played with a paper-cutter. 
 
 "Have you been to Lady Westborough's lately?" said Clar- 
 ence, breaking silence. 
 
 " I was there last night," replied Lord Borodaile. 
 
 "Indeed!" cried Clarence. "I wonder I did not see you 
 there, for I dined with them." 
 
 Lord Borodaile's hair curled itself. "He dined there, and 
 I only asked in the evening," thought he ; but his sarcastic 
 temper suggested a very different reply 
 
 "Ah," said he, elevating his eyebrows, "Lady Westborough 
 told me she had had some people to dinner, whom she had 
 been obliged to ask. Bobus, is that the 'Public Advertiser'? 
 See whether that d d fellow Junius has been writing any 
 more of his venomous letters." 
 
 Clarence was not a man apt to take offence, but he felt his 
 bile rise. "It will not do to show it," thought he ; so he made 
 some further remark in a jesting vein ; and, after a very ill- 
 sustained conversation of some minutes longer, rose, appar- 
 ently in the best humor possible, and departed, with a solemn 
 intention never again to enter the house. Thence he went to 
 Lady Westborough's. 
 
 The marchioness was in her boudoir ; Clarence was, as 
 usual, admitted, for Lady Westborough loved amusement 
 above all things in the world, and Clarence had the art of 
 affording it better than any young man of her acquaintance. 
 On entering, he saw Lady Flora hastily retreating through an 
 opposite door. She turned her face towards him for one mo- 
 ment that moment was sufficient to freeze his blood : the 
 large tears were rolling down her cheeks, which were as white 
 as death, and the expression of those features, usually so 
 laughing and joyous, was that t>f utter and ineffable despair. 
 
 Lady Westborough was as lively, as bland, and as agreeable 
 as ever ; but Clarence thought he detected something re- 
 strained and embarrassed lurking beneath all the graces of her 
 exterior manner ; and the single glance he had caught of the 
 pale and altered face of Lady Flora was not calculated to re- 
 assure his mind or animate his spirits. His visit was short ; 
 when he left the room, he lingered for a few moments in the 
 ante-charnber, in the hope of again seeing Lady Flora. While 
 thus loitering, his ear caught the sound of Lady Westborough's 
 voice : " When Mr. Linden calls again, you have my orders 
 never to admit him into this room ; he will be shown into the 
 drawing-room,"
 
 I60 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 With a hasty step and a burning cheek Clarence quitted the 
 house, and hurried, first to his solitary apartments, and thence, 
 impatient of loneliness, to the peaceful retreat of his bene- 
 factor. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 " A maiden's thoughts do check my trembling hand." DRAYTON. 
 
 THERE is something very delightful in turning from the 
 unquietness and agitation, the fever, the ambition, the harsh 
 and worldly realities of man's character to the gentle and deep 
 recesses of woman's more secret heart. Within her musings is 
 a realm of haunted and fairy thought, to which the things of 
 this turbid and troubled life have no entrance. What to her 
 are the changes of state, the rivalries and contentions which 
 form the staple of our existence ? For her there is an intense 
 and fond philosophy, before whose eye substances flit and fade 
 like shadows, and shadows grow glowingly into truth. Her 
 soul's creations are not as the moving and mortal images seen 
 in the common day ; they are things, like spirits steeped in the 
 dim moonlight, heard when all else are still, and busy when 
 earth's laborers are at rest ! They are 
 
 " Such stuff 
 
 As dreams are made of, and their little life 
 Is rounded by a sleep." 
 
 Hers is the real and uncentred poetry of being, which pervades 
 and surrounds her as with an air, which peoples her visions 
 and animates her love, which shrinks from earth into itself, 
 and finds marvel and meditation in all that it beholds within, 
 and which spreads even over the heaven in whose faith she so 
 ardently believes, the mystery and the tenderness of romance. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 FROM LADY FLORA ARDENNE TO MISS ELEANOR TREVANION. 
 
 " You say that I have not written to you so punctually of 
 late as I used to do before I came to London, and you impute 
 my negligence to the gaieties and pleasures by which I am sur- 
 rounded. Eh bien ! my dear Eleanor, could you have thought 
 of a better excuse for me ? You know how fond we ay, 
 dearest, you as well as I used to be of dancing, and how 
 earnestly we were wont to anticipate those children's balls at 
 my uncle's, which were the only ones we were ever permitted
 
 THE DISOWNED. j6i 
 
 to attend. I found a stick the other day, on which I had cut 
 seven notches, significant of seven days more to the next ball 
 we reckoned time by balls then, and danced chronologically. 
 Well, my dear Eleanor, here I am now, brought out, tolerably 
 well-behaved, only not dignified enough, according to mamma 
 as fond of laughing, talking, and dancing as ever; and yet, dc 
 you know, a ball, though still very delightful, is far from being 
 the most important event in creation ; its anticipation does not 
 keep me awake of a night ; and, what is more to the purpose, 
 its recollection does not make me lock up my writing-desk, 
 burn my portefeuille, and forget you, all of which you seem to 
 imagine it has been able to effect. 
 
 "No, dearest Eleanor, you are mistaken ; for were she twice 
 as giddy, and ten times as volatile as she is, your own Flora 
 could never, never forget you, nor the happy hours we have 
 spent together, nor the pretty goldfinches we had in common, 
 nor the little Scotch duets we used to sing together, nor our 
 longings to change them into Italian, nor our disappointment 
 when we did so, nor our laughter at Signior Shrikalini, nor our 
 tears when poor darling Bijou died. And do you remember, 
 dearest, the charming green lawn where we used to play to- 
 gether, and plan tricks for your governess? She was very, very 
 cross ; though, I think, we were a little to blame, too. How- 
 ever, I was much the worst ! And pray, Eleanor, don't you 
 remember how we used to like being called pretty, and told of 
 the conquests we should make! Do you like all that now ? For 
 my part, I am tired of it, at least from the generality of one's 
 flatterers. 
 
 " Ah ! Eleanor, or ' heigho ! ' as the young ladies in novels 
 
 write, do you remember how jealous I was of you at , and 
 
 how spiteful I was, and how you were an angel, and bore with 
 me, and kissed me, and told me that that I had nothing to 
 fear ? Well, Clar , I mean Mr. Linden, is now in town, and 
 
 so popular, and so admired ! I wish we were at again, for 
 
 there we saw him every day, and now we don't meet more than 
 three times a week : and though I like hearing him praised 
 above all things, yet I feel very uncomfortable when that praise 
 comes from very, very pretty women. 1 wish we were at 
 again ! Mamma, who is looking more beautiful than ever, is 
 very kind ! she says nothing, to be sure, but she must see how 
 that is to say she must know that that I I mean that 
 Clarence is very attentive to me, and that I blush and look ex- 
 ceedingly silly whenever he is ; and therefore I suppose that 
 whenever Clarence thinks fit to ask me, I shall not be und
 
 162 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 the necessity of getting up at six o'clock, and travelling to 
 Gretna Green, through that odious North-road, up the High- 
 gate-hill, and over Finchley-common. 
 
 "'But when will he ask you ?' My dearest Eleanor, that is 
 more than I can say. To tell you the truth, there is something 
 about Linden which I cannot thoroughly understand. They say 
 he is a nephew and heir to the Mr. Talbot whom you may have 
 heard papa talk of ; but if so, why the hints, the insinuations, of 
 not being what he seems, which Clarence perpetually throws 
 out, and which only excite my interest without gratifying my 
 curiosity? 'It is not,' he has said, more than once, 'as an 
 obscure adventurer that I will claim your love': and if I 
 venture, which is very seldom (for I am a little afraid of him), 
 to question his meaning, he either sinks into utter silence, for 
 which, if I had loved according to book, and not so naturally, I 
 should be very angry with him, or twist his words into another 
 signification, such as that he would not claim me till he had 
 become something higher and nobler than he is now. Alas, 
 my dear Eleanor, it takes a long time to make an ambassador 
 out of an attach^. 
 
 " See now if you reproached me justly with scanty corre- 
 spondences. If I write a line more, I must begin a new sheet, 
 and that will be beyond the power of a frank a thing which 
 would, I know, break the heart of your dear, good, generous, 
 but a little too prudent aunt, and irrevocably ruin me in her 
 esteem. So God bless you, dearest Eleanor, and believe me 
 most affectionately yours, FLORA ARDENNE." 
 
 LETTER II. 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 "Pray, dearest Eleanor, does that good aunt of yours now, 
 don't frown, I am not going to speak disrespectfully of her 
 ever take a liking to young gentlemen whom you detest, and 
 insist upon the fallacy of your opinion, and the unerring rec- 
 titude of hers? If so, you can pity and comprehend my grief. 
 Mamma has formed quite an attachment to a very disagreeable 
 person ! He is Lord Borodaile, the eldest, and, I believe, the 
 only son of Lord Ulswater. Perhaps you may have met him 
 abroad, for he has been a great traveller ; his family is among 
 the most ancient in England, and his father's estate covers 
 half a county. All this mamma tells me, with the most earnest 
 air in the world, whenever I declaim upon his impertinence or 
 disagreeability (is there such a word ? there ought to be).
 
 THE DISOWNED. l6: 
 
 \J 
 
 'Weil,' said I to-day, 'what's that to me ?' ' It may be a great 
 deal to you,' replied mamma significantly, and the blood rushed 
 from my face to my heart. She could not, Eleanor, she could 
 not mean, after all her kindness to Clarence, and in spite of 
 all her penetration into my heart oh, no, no she could not. 
 Ho\v terribly suspicious this love makes one ! 
 
 "But if 1 disliked Lord Borodaile at first, I have hated -him 
 of late ; for, somehow or other, he is always in the way. If I 
 see Clarence hastening through the crowd to ask me to dance, 
 at that very instant up steps Lord Borodaile with his cold, 
 changeless face, and his haughty, old-fashioned bow, and his 
 abominable dark complexion and mamma smiles and he 
 hopes he finds me disengaged and I am hurried off and poor 
 Clarence looks so disappointed and so wretched ! You have no 
 idea how ill-tempered this makes me. I could not help asking 
 Lord Borodaile, yesterday, if he was never going abroad again, 
 and the hateful creature played with his cravat, and answered 
 'Never ! ' I was in hopes that my sullenness would drive his 
 lordship away ; tout au contraire, ' Nothing,' said he to me the 
 other day, when he was in full pout, ' Nothing is so plebeian 
 as good-humor ! ' 
 
 " I wish, then, Eleanor, that he could see your governess; 
 she must be majesty in his eyes ! " 
 
 " Ah, dearest, how we belie ourselves. At this moment, 
 when you might think, from the idle, rattling, silly flow of my 
 letter, that my heart was as light and as free as when we used 
 to play on the green lawn, and under the sunny trees, in the 
 merry days of our childhood, the tears are running down my 
 cheeks ; see where they have fallen on the page, and my head 
 throbs as if my thoughts were too dull and heavy for it to con- 
 tain. It is past one ! I am alone, and in my own room. 
 
 Mamma is gone to a rout at H House ; but I knew I 
 
 should not meet Clarence there, and so said I was ill, and re- 
 mained at home. I have done so often of late, whenever I 
 have learned from him that he was not going to the same place 
 as mamma. Indeed, I love much better to sit alone and think 
 over his words and looks : and I have drawn, after repeated 
 attempts, a profile likeness of him ; and oh, Eleanor, I cannot 
 tell you how dear it is to me ; and yet there is not a line, not a 
 look of his countenance which I have not learned by heart, 
 without such useless aids to my memory. But I am ashamed 
 of telling you all this, and my eyes ache so, that I can write no 
 more. 
 
 " Ever, as ever, dearest Eleanor, your affectionate friend."
 
 164 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 LETTER III. 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 " Eleanor, I am undone ! My mother has been so cruel ; 
 but she cannot, she cannot intend it, or she knows very little 
 of my heart. With some, ties may be as easily broken as 
 formed ; with others they are twined around life itself. 
 
 " Clarence dined with us yesterday and was unusually ani- 
 mated and agreeable. He was engaged on business with Lord 
 Aspeden afterwards, and left us early. We had a few people 
 in the evening ; Lord Borodaile among the rest ; and my 
 mother spoke of Clarence, and his relationship to, and expecta- 
 tions from, Mr. Talbot. Lord Borodaile sneered: 'You are mis- 
 taken,' said he, sarcastically ; ' Mr. Linden may feel it conven- 
 ient to give out that he is related to so old a family as the Tal- 
 bots ; and since Heaven only knows who or what he is, he may 
 as well claim alliance with one person as another ; but he is 
 certainly not the nephew of Mr. Talbot of Searsdale Park, for 
 that gentleman had no sisters and but one brother, who left 
 an only daughter; that daughter had also but one child, cer- 
 tainly no relation to Mr. Linden. I can vouch for the truth 
 of this statement ; for the Talbots are related to, or at least 
 nearly connected with, myself ; and I thank Heaven that I 
 have a pedigree, even in its collateral branches,worth learning by 
 heart.' And then Lord Borodaile I little though, when I 
 railed against him, what serious cause I should have to hate 
 him turned to me, and harassed me with his tedious atten- 
 tions the whole of the evening. 
 
 " This morning mamma sent for me into her boudoir. ' I 
 have observed,' said she, with the greatest indifference, ' that 
 Mr. Linden has, of late, been much too particular in manner 
 towards you your foolish and undue familiarity with every 
 one has perhaps given him encouragement. ' After the gross 
 imposition which Lord Borodaile exposed to us last night, I 
 cannot but consider the young man as a mere adventurer, and 
 must not only insist upon your total termination to civilities 
 which we must henceforth consider presumption, but I myself 
 shall consider it incumbent upon me greatly to limit the ad- 
 vances he has thought proper to make towards my acquaint- 
 ance.' 
 
 " You may guess how thunderstruck I was by this speech. 
 I could not answer ; my tongue literally clove to my mouth, 
 and I was only relieved by a sudden and violent burst of tears. 
 Mamma looked exceedingly displeased, and was just going to
 
 THE DISOWNED. 165 
 
 Speak, when the servant threw open the door and announced 
 Mr. Linden. I rose hastily, and had only just time to escape, 
 as he entered ; but when 1 heard that dear, dear voice, I could 
 not resist turning for one moment. He saw me and was 
 struck mute, for the agony of my soul was stamped visibly on 
 my countenance. That moment was over with a violent 
 effort I tore myself away. 
 
 " Eleanor, I can write no more. God bless you ! and me 
 too for I am very, very unhappy. F. A." 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 "What a charming character is a kind old man." STEPHEN MON- 
 TAGUE. 
 
 " CHEER up, my dear boy," said Talbot kindly, " we must 
 never despair. What though Lady Westborough has forbidden 
 you the boudoir, a boudoir is a very different thing from a 
 daughter, and you have no right to suppose that the veto ex- 
 tends to both. But now that we are on this subject, do let me 
 reason with you seriously. Have you not already tasted all 
 the pleasures, and been sufficiently annoyed by some of the 
 pains, of acting the 'Incognito'? Be ruled by me ; resume 
 your proper name ; it is at least one which the proudest might 
 acknowledge ; and its discovery will remove the greatest obsta- 
 cle to the success you so ardently desire." 
 
 Clarence, who was laboring under strong excitement, paused 
 for some moments, as if to collect himself, before he replied : 
 " I have been thrust from my father's home I have been 
 made the victim of another's crime I have been denied the 
 rights and name of son ; perhaps (and I say this bitterly) 
 justly denied them, despite my own innocence. What would 
 you have me do ? Resume a name never conceded to me 
 perhaps not righteously mine thrust myself upon the unwill- 
 ing and shrinking hands which disowned and rejected me 
 blazon my virtues by pretensions which I myself have prom- 
 ised to forego, and foist myself on the notice of strangers by 
 the very claims which my nearest relations dispute ? Never 
 never never ! With the simple name I have assumed the 
 friend I myself have won you, my generous benefactor, my 
 real father, who never forsook, nor insulted, me for my mis- 
 fortunes with these, I have gained some steps in the ladder ; 
 with these, and those gifts of nature, a stout heart and a will*
 
 j66 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 ing hand, of which none can rob me, I will either ascend the 
 rest, even to the summit, or fall to the dust, unknown, but no/ 
 contemned ; unlamented, but not despised." 
 
 " Well, well," said Talbot, brushing away a tear which he 
 could not deny to the feeling, even while he disputed the judg- 
 ment, of the young adventurer "well, this is all very fine and 
 very foolish ; but you shall never want friend or father while - ; 
 I live, or when I have ceased to live ; but come sit down, ' 
 share my dinner, which is not very good, and my dessert, which 
 is : help me to entertain two or three guests who are coming 
 to me in the evening, to talk on literature, sup, and sleep ; and 
 to-morrow you shall return home, and see Lady Flora in the 
 drawing-room, if you cannot in the boudoir." 
 
 And Clarence was easily persuaded to accept the invitation. 
 
 Talbot was not one of those men who are forced to exert 
 themselves to be entertaining. He had the pleasant and easy 
 way of imparting his great general and curious information, 
 that a man, partly humorist, partly philosopher, who values 
 himself on being a man of letters, and is in spite of himself a 
 man of the world, always ought to possess. Clarence was 
 soon beguiled from the remembrance of his mortifications, 
 and, by little and little, entirely yielded to the airy and happy 
 flow of Talbot's conversation. 
 
 In the evening three or four men of literary eminence (as 
 many as Talbot's small Tusculum would accommodate with 
 beds) arrived, and in a conversation, free alike from the jargon 
 of pedants and the insipidities of fashion, the night fled away 
 swiftly and happily, even to the lover. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 l! We are here (in the country) among the vast and noble scenes of nature ; 
 \ve are there (in the town) among the pitiful shifts of policy. We walk here 
 in the light and open ways of the divine bounty we grope there in the dark 
 and confused labyrinths of human malice ; our senses arc here feasted with 
 all the clear and genuine taste of their objects, wh.ch are all sophisticated 
 there, and for the most part overwhelmed with their contraries : here 
 pleasure, methinks, looks like a beautiful, cr>ns'ait, a;;d modest wife : it is 
 there an impudent, fickle, and painted harlot." Cowi.EY. 
 
 DRAW up the curtain ! The scene is the Opera. 
 
 The pit is crowded ; the connoisseurs in the front row are 
 in a very ill-humor. It must be confessed that extreme heat is 
 a little trying to the temper of a critic. 
 
 The Opera then was not what it is now, nor even what it had
 
 THE DISOWNED. 167 
 
 been in a former time. It is somewhat amusing to find Gold- 
 smith questioning, in one of his essays, whether the Opera 
 could ever become popular in England ? But on the night on 
 which the reader is summoned to that " theatre of sweet 
 sounds," a celebrated singer from the continent made his first 
 appearance in London, and all the world thronged to "that 
 odious Opera-house," to hear or to say they had heard the 
 famous Sopranicllo. 
 
 With a nervous step, Clarence proceeded to Lady West- 
 borough's box ; and it was many minutes that he lingered 
 by the door before he summoned courage to obtain ad- 
 mission. 
 
 He entered ; the box was crowded ; but Lady Flora was not 
 there. Lord Borodaile was sitting next to Lady Westborough. 
 As Clarence entered, Lord Borodaile raised his eyebrows, and 
 Lady Westborough her glass. However disposed a great 
 person may be to drop a lesser one, no one of real birth or 
 breeding ever cuts another. Lady Westborough, therefore, 
 though much colder, was no less civil than usual ; and Lord 
 Borodaile bowed lower than ever to Mr. Linden, as he punctil- 
 iously called him. But Clarence's quick eye discovered 
 instantly that he was no welcome intruder, and that his day 
 with the beautiful marchioness was over. His visit, conse- 
 quently, was short and embarrassed. When he left the box, he 
 heard Lord Borodaile's short, slow, sneering laugh, followed 
 by Lady Westborough's " hush" of reproof. 
 
 His blood boiled. He hurried along the passage, with his 
 eyes fixed upon the ground, and his hand clenched. 
 
 "What ho ! Linden, my good fellow ; why, you look as if all 
 the ferocity of the great Figg were in your veins," cried a 
 good-humored voice. Clarence started, and saw the young 
 and high-spirited Duke of Haverfield. 
 
 "Are you going behind the scenes? "said his grace. "I 
 have just come thence ; and you had much better drop 
 into La Meronville's box with me. You sup with her to-night, 
 do you not ?" 
 
 "No, indeed!" replied Clarence ; "I scarcely know her, 
 except by sight." 
 
 " Well, and what think you of her? " 
 
 " That she is the prettiest Frenchwoman I ever saw." 
 
 "Commend me to secret sympathies! " cried the duke. " She 
 has asked me three times who you were, and told me three 
 times that you were the handsomest man in London, and had 
 quite a foreign air ; the latter recommendation bein^ of course
 
 l68 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 far greater than the former. So, after this, you cannot refuse 
 to accompany me to her box, and make her acquaintance." 
 
 "Nay," answered Clarence, " I shall be too happy to profit 
 by the taste of so discerning a person: but it is cruel in you, 
 duke, not to feign a little jealousy a little reluctance to intro- 
 duce so formidable a rival." 
 
 "Oh, as to me," said the duke, " I only like her for her men- 
 tal, not her personal attractions. She is very agreeable, and a 
 little witty ; sufficient attractions for one in her situation." 
 
 ' But do tell me a little of her history," said Clarence ; "for. 
 in spite of her renown, I only know her as La Belle Meronville. 
 Is she not living en ami with some one of our acquaintance?" 
 
 " To be sure," replied the duke, " with Lord Borodaile. She 
 is prodigiously extravagant ; and Borodaile affects to be pro- 
 digiously fond ; but as there is only a certain fund of affection 
 in the human heart, and all in Lord Borodaile's is centered in 
 Lord Borodaile, that cannot really be the case." 
 
 " Is he jealous of her ? " said Clarence. 
 
 "Not in the least! nor, indeed, does she give him any cause. 
 She is very gay, very talkative, gives excellent suppers, and always 
 has her box at the Opera crowded with admirers ; but that is 
 all. She encourages many, and favors but one. Happy Boro- 
 daile ! My lot is less fortunate ! You know, I suppose, that 
 Julia has deserted me ? " 
 
 " You astonish me and for what ? " 
 
 "Oh, she told me, with a vehement burst of tears, that she 
 was convinced I did not love her, and that a hundred pounds 
 a month was not sufficient to maintain a milliner's apprentice. 
 I answered the first assertion by an assurance that I adored 
 her ; but I preserved a total silence with regard to the latter: 
 and so I found Trevanion tete-b-tete with her the next day." 
 
 " What did you ? " said Clarence. 
 
 " Sent my valet to Trevanion with an old coat of mine, my 
 compliments, and my hopes that, as Mr. Trevanion was so fond 
 of my cast-off conveniences, he would honor me by accepting 
 the accompanying trifle." 
 
 " He challanged you, without doubt ? " 
 
 " Challenged me ! No : he tells all his friends that I am 
 the wittiest man in Europe." 
 
 " A fool can speak the truth, you see," said Clarence, laughing. 
 
 "Thank you, Linden; you shall have my good word with 
 La Meronville for that ; mats allons" 
 
 Mademoiselle de la Meronville, as she pointedly entitled her- 
 self, was one of those charming adventuresses, who, making the
 
 THE DISOWNED. 169 
 
 most of a good education and a prepossessing person, a delicate 
 turn for letter-writing, and a lively vein of conversation, come 
 to England for a year or two, as Spaniards were wont to go to 
 Mexico, and who return to their native country with a pro* 
 found contempt for the barbarians whom they have so egre- 
 giously despoiled. Mademoiselle de la Meronville was small, 
 beautifully formed, had the prettiest hands and feet in the 
 world, and laughed musically. By-the-by, how difficult it is to 
 laugh, or even to smile, at once, naturally and gracefully. It 
 is one of Steele's finest touches of character, where he says of 
 Will Honeycomb, " He can smile when one speaks to him, and 
 laughs easily." 
 
 In a word, the pretty Frenchwoman was precisely formed to 
 turn the head of a man like Lord Borodaile, who loved to be 
 courted and who required to be amused. Mademoiselle de la 
 Meronville received Clarence with a great deal of grace, and a 
 little reserve, the first chiefly natural, the last wholly artificial. 
 
 "Well," said the duke (in French), " you have not told me 
 who are to be of your party this evening Borodaile, I suppose, 
 of course ? " 
 
 " No, he cannot come to-night." 
 
 " Ah, quel malheur! then the hock will not be iced enough 
 Borodaile's looks are the best wine-coolers in the world." 
 
 " Fie ! " cried La Meronville, glancing towards Clarence : "I 
 cannot endure your malevolence ; wit makes you very bitter." 
 
 "And that is exactly the reason why la belle Meronville loves 
 me so: nothing is so sweet to one person as bitterness upon 
 another ; it is human nature and French nature (which is a 
 very different thing) into the bargain." 
 
 " Bah! my lord duke, you judge of others by yourself." 
 
 "To be sure I do," cried the duke ; "and that is the best 
 way of forming a right judgment. Ah ! what a foot that little 
 figurante has you don't admire her, Linden ?" 
 
 " No, duke ; my admiration is like the bird in the cage- 
 chained here, and cannot fly away ! " answered Clarence, with 
 a smile at the frippery of his compliment. 
 
 "Ah, Monsieur," cried the pretty Frenchwoman, leaning 
 back, " you have been at Paris, I see one does not learn those 
 graces of language in England. I have been five months in 
 your country brought over the prettiest dresses imaginable, 
 and have only received three compliments, and (pity me!) two out 
 of the three were upon my pronunciation of ' How do you do ? " 
 
 " Well," said Clarence, " I should have imagined that in Eng- 
 land, above all other countries, your vanity would have been
 
 170 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 gratified, for you know we pique ourselves On our sincerity, 
 and say all we think." 
 
 " Yes! then you always think very unpleasantly ; what an al- 
 ternative ! which is the best, to speak ill, or to think ill of one ?" 
 
 "Pour r amour de Dieu!" cried 4 the duke, ''don't ask such 
 puzzling questions ; you are always getting into those moral 
 subtleties, which I suppose you learn from Borodaile. He is 
 a wonderful metaphysician, I hear I can answer for his chem- 
 ical powers ; the moment he enters a room the very walls grow 
 damp : as for me, I dissolve ; I should flow into a foun- 
 tain, like Arethusa, if happily his lordship did not freeze one 
 again into substance as fast as he dampens one into thaw." 
 
 " Fi done!" cried La Meronville. " I should be very angry, 
 had you not taught me to be very indifferent " 
 
 " To him ! " said the duke drily. " I am glad to hear it. 
 He is not worth une grande passion, believe me but tell me, 
 ma belle, who else sups with you ? " 
 
 " D'abord, Monsieur Linden, I trust," answered Meronville, 
 with a look of invitation, to which Clarence bowed and smiled 
 his assent, "Milord D , and Mons. Trevanion, Mademoi- 
 selle Caumartin, and Le Prince Pietro del Ordino." 
 
 " Nothing can be better arranged," said the duke. " But see, 
 they are just going to drop the curtain. Let me call your car- 
 riage." 
 
 "You are too good, milord," replied La Meronville, with a 
 bow, which said, "of course"; and the duke, who would not 
 have stirred three paces for the first princess of the blood, hur- 
 ried out of the box (despite of Clarence's offer to undertake 
 the commission) to inquire after the carriage of the most no- 
 torious adventuress of the day. 
 
 Clarence was alone in the box with the beautiful French- 
 woman. To say truth, Linden was far too much in love with 
 Lady Flora, and too occupied, as to his other thoughts, with 
 the projects of ambition to be easily led into any disreputable 
 or criminal liaison j he therefore conversed with his usual ease, 
 though with rather more than his usual gallantry, without feeling 
 the least touched by the charms of La Meronville, or the least 
 desirous of supplanting Lord Borodaile in her favor. 
 
 The duke reappeared, and announced the carriage. As, with 
 La Meronville leaning on his arm, Clarence hurried out, he ac- 
 cidentally looked up, and saw on the head of the stairs Lady 
 Westborough with her party (Lord Borodaile among the rest) 
 in waiting for her carriage. For almost the first time in his 
 life, Clarence felt ashamed of himself; his cheek burned like
 
 THE DISOWNED. jfj 
 
 fire, and he involuntarily let go the fair hand which was lean- 
 ing upon his arm. However, the weaker our cause the better 
 face we should put upon it, and Clarence, recovering his pres- 
 ence of mind, and vainly hoping he had not been perceived, 
 buried his face as well as he was able in the fur collar of his 
 cloak, and hurried on. 
 
 "You saw Lord Borodaile?" said the duke to La Meronville, 
 as he handed her into her carriage. 
 
 "Yes, I accidentally looked back after we had passed him, 
 and then I saw him." 
 
 " Looked back?" said the duke ; I wonder he did not turn 
 you into a pillar of salt." 
 
 " Fi done!" cried La Belle Meronville, tapping his grace 
 playfully on the arm, in order to do which she was forced to lean 
 a little harder upon Clarence's, which she had not yet relin- 
 quished " Fi done ! Francois, chez moi! " 
 
 " My carriage is just behind," said the duke. " You will go 
 with me to La Meronville's, of course." 
 
 " Really, my dear duke," said Clarence, " I wish I could ex- 
 cuse myself from this party. I have another engagement." 
 
 "Excuse yourself? and leave me to the mercy of Mademoi- 
 selle Caumartin, who has the face of an ostrich, and talks me 
 out of breath ! Never, my dear Linden, never ! Besides, I 
 want you to see how well I shall behave to Trevanion. Here 
 is the carriage. Entrez, mon cher" 
 
 And Clarence, weakly and foolishly (but he was very young 
 and very unhappy, and so, longing for an escape from his own 
 thoughts), entered the carriage, and drove to the supper party, 
 in order to prevent the Duke of Haverfield being talked out of 
 breath by Mademoiselle Caumartin, who had the face of an 
 ostrich. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 " Yet truth is keenly sought for, and the wind, 
 Charged with rich words, pour'd out in thought's defence ; 
 Whether the church inspire that eloquence, 
 Or a Platonic piety, confined 
 To the sole temple of the inward mind ; 
 And one there is who builds immortal lays, 
 Though doom':! to tread in solitary ways ; 
 Darkness before, and danger's voice behind I 
 Yet not alone " WORDSWORTH. 
 
 LONDON thou Niobe, who sittest in stone, amidst thy stricken 
 and fated children ; nurse of the desolate, who hidest in thy
 
 IJ2 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 bosom the shame, the sorrows, the sins of many sons ; in whose 
 arms the fallen and the outcast shroud their distresses, and 
 shelter from the proud man's contumely ; Epitome and Focus 
 of the disparities and maddening contrasts of this wrong world, 
 that assemblest together in one great heap the woes, the joys, 
 the elevations, the debasements of the various tribes of man; 
 mightiest of levellers, confounding in thy whirlpool all ranks, 
 all minds, the graven labors of knowledge, the straws of the 
 maniac, purple and rags, the regalities and the loathsomeness 
 of earth palace and lazar-house combined ! Grave of the liv- 
 ing, where, mingled and massed together, we couch, but rest 
 not "for in that sleep of ///if what dreams do come" each 
 vexed with a separate vision "shadows" which "grieve the 
 heart," unreal in their substance, but faithful in their warnings, 
 flitting from the eye, but graving unfleeting memories on the 
 mind, which reproduce new dreams over and over, until the 
 phantasm ceases, and the pall of a heavier torpor falls upon the 
 brain, and all is still, and dark, and hushed ! " From the stir 
 of thy great Babel," and the fixed tinsel glare in which sits 
 Pleasure like a star, " which shines, but warms not with its 
 powerless rays," we turn to thy deeper and more secret haunts. 
 Thy wilderness is all before us where to choose our place of 
 rest ; and, to our eyes, thy hidden recesses are revealed. 
 
 The clock of St. Paul's had tolled the second hour of 
 morning. Within a small and humble apartment in the very 
 heart of the city, there sat a writer, whose lucubrations, then 
 obscure and unknown, were destined, years afterwards, to ex- 
 cite the vague admiration of the crowd, and the deeper homage 
 of the wise. They were of that nature which is slow in win- 
 ning its way to popular esteem ; the result of the hived and 
 hoarded knowledge of years the produce of deep thought and. 
 sublime aspirations, influencing, in its bearings, the interests of 
 the many, yet only capable of analysis by the judgment of the 
 few. But the stream broke forth at last from the cavern to the 
 daylight, although the source was never traced ; or, to change 
 the image albeit none know the hand which executed, and the 
 head which designed the monument of a mighty intellect has 
 been at length dug up, as it were, from the envious earth, the 
 brighter for its past obscurity, and the more certain of immor- 
 tality from the temporary neglect it has sustained. 
 
 The room was, as we before said, very small and meanly fur- 
 nished ; yet were there a few articles of costliness and luxury 
 scattered about, which told that the tastes of its owner had not 
 been quite humbled to the level of his fortunes, One side of
 
 THE DISOWNED. 173 
 
 the narrow chamber was covered with shelves, which supported 
 books, in various languages ; and, though chiefly on scientific 
 subjects, not utterly confined to them. Among the doctrines 
 of the philosopher, and the golden rules of the moralist, were 
 also seen the pleasant dreams of poets, the legends of Spenser, 
 the refining moralities of Pope, the lofty errors of Lucretius, 
 and the sublime relics of our "dead kings of melody." * And 
 over the hearth was a picture, taken in more prosperous days, 
 of one who had been, and was yet, to the tenant of that abode, 
 better than fretted roofs, and glittering banquets, the objects of 
 ambition, or even the immortality of fame. It was the face of 
 one very young and beautiful, and the deep, tender eyes looked 
 down, as with a watchful fondness, upon the lucubrator and his 
 labors. While beneath the window, which was left unclosed, 
 for it was scarcely June, were simple, yet not inelegant, vases, 
 filled with flowers : 
 
 " Those lovely leaves, where we 
 May read how soon things have 
 Their end, though ne'er so brave." f 
 
 The writer was alone, and had just paused from his employ- 
 ment : he was leaning his face upon one hand, in thoughtful 
 and earnest mood, and the air which came chill, but gentle, 
 from the window, slightly stirred the locks from the broad and 
 marked brow, over which they fell in thin but graceful waves. 
 Partly owing perhaps to the waning light of the single lamp, 
 and the lateness of the hour, his cheek seemed very pale, and 
 the Complete, though contemplative, rest of the features par- 
 took greatly of the quiet of habitual sadness, and a little of the 
 languor of shaken health : yet the expression, despite the proud 
 cast of the brow and profile, was rather benevolent than stern 
 or dark in its pensiveness, and the lines spoke more of the wear 
 and harrow of deep thought, than the inroads of ill-regulated 
 passion. 
 
 There was a slight tap at the door, the latch was raised, and 
 the original of the picture I have described entered the apart- 
 ment. 
 
 Time had not been idle with her since that portrait had been 
 taken : the round, elastic figure had lost much of its youth and 
 freshness ; the step, though light, was languid, and in the centre 
 of the fair, smooth cheek, which was a little sunken, burned 
 one deep, bright spot fatal sign to those who have watched 
 the progress of the most deadly and deceitful of our national 
 
 * Shakespeare and Milton. t Herrick.
 
 174 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 maladies ; yet still the form and countenance were eminently 
 interesting and lovely; and though the bloom was gone for 
 ever, the beauty, which not even death could wholly have de- 
 spoiled, remained to triumph over debility, misfortune, and 
 disease. 
 
 She approached the student, and laid her hand upon his 
 shoulder 
 
 " Dearest ! " said he tenderly yet reproachfully, " yet up, 
 and the hour so late, and yourself so weak ? Fie, I must learn 
 to scold you." 
 
 " And how," answered the intruder, " how could I sleep or 
 rest while you are consuming your very life in those thankless 
 labors ?" 
 
 " By which," interrupted the writer, with a faint smile, " we 
 glean our scanty subsistence." 
 
 " Yes," said the wife (for she held that relation to the 
 student), and the tears stood in her eyes, " I know well that 
 every morsel of bread, every drop of water, is wrung from your 
 very heart's blood, and I I am the cause of all ; but surely 
 you exert yourself too much, more than can be requisite. These 
 night damps, this sickly and chilling air, heavy with the rank 
 vapors of the coming morning, are not suited to thoughts and 
 toils which are alone sufficient to sear your mind and exhaust 
 your strength. Come, my own love, to bed : and yet, first, 
 come and look upon our child, how sound she sleeps ! I have 
 leant over her for the last hour, and tried to fancy it was you 
 whom I watched, for she has learned already your smile, and 
 has it even when she sleeps." 
 
 " She has cause to smile," said the husband, bitterly. 
 
 " She has, for she is yours ! and even in poverty and humble 
 hopes, that is an inheritance which may well teach her pride 
 and joy. Come, love, the air is keen, and the damp rises to 
 your forehead yet stay, till I have kissed it away." 
 
 " Mine own love," said the student, as he rose and wound his 
 arm around the slender waist of his wife, "wrap your shawl 
 closer over your bosom, and let us look for one instant upon 
 the night. I cannot sleep till I have slaked the fever of my 
 blood : the air has nothing of coldness in its breath to 
 me." 
 
 And they walked to the window, and looked forth. All was 
 hushed and still, in the narrow street ; the cold gray clouds 
 were hurrying fast along the sky, and the stars, weak and wan- 
 ing in their light, gleamed forth at rare intervals upon the mute 
 city, like the expiring watch-lamps of the dead.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 175 
 
 They leaned out, and spoke not ; but when they looked 
 above upon the melancholy heavens, they drew nearer to each 
 other, as if it were their natural instinct to do so, whenever the 
 world without seemed discouraging and sad. 
 
 At length the student broke the silence ; but his thoughts, 
 which w-ere wandering and disjointed, were breathed less to her 
 than vaguely and unconsciously to himself. " Morn breaks 
 another and another ! day upon day ! while we drag on our 
 load like the blind beast which knows not when the burden 
 shall be cast off, and the hour of rest be come." 
 
 The woman pressed his hand to her bosom, but made no 
 rejoinder she knew his mood and the student continued: 
 
 " And so life frets itself away ! Four years have passed over 
 our seclusion four years ! a great segment in the little circle 
 of our mortality ; and of those years what day has pleasure won 
 from labor, or what night has sleep snatched wholly from the 
 lamp ? Weaker than the miser, the insatiable and restless mind 
 traverses from east to west ; and from the nooks, and corners, 
 and crevices of earth collects, fragment by fragment, grain by 
 grain, atom by atom, the riches which it gathers to its coffers 
 for what ? to starve amidst the plenty ! The fantasies of the 
 imagination bring a ready and substantial return : not so the 
 treasures of thought. Better that I had renounced the soul's 
 labor for that of its hardier frame better that I had ' sweated 
 in the eye of Phoebus,' than 'eat my heart with .crosses and with 
 cares,' seeking truth and wanting bread adding to the in- 
 digence of poverty its humiliation ; wroth with the arrogance 
 of men, who weigh in the shallow scales of their meagre knowl- 
 edge the product of lavish thought, and of the hard hours for 
 which health, and sleep, and spirit have been exchanged ; 
 sharing the lot of those who would enchant the old serpent of 
 evil, which refuses the voice of the charmer; struggling against 
 the prejudice and bigoted delusion of the bandaged and 
 fettered herd to whom, in our fond hopes and aspirations, we 
 trusted to give light and freedom ; seeing the slavish judgments 
 we would have redeemed from error clashing their chains at us 
 in ire ; made criminal by our very benevolence the martyrs 
 whose zeal is rewarded with persecution, whose prophecies are 
 crowned with contempt ! Better, oh, better that I had not 
 listened to the vanity of a heated brain better that I had 
 made my home with the lark and the wild bee, among the fields 
 and the quiet hills, where life, if obscurer, is less debased, and 
 hope, if less eagerly indulged, is less bitterly disappointed. 
 The frame, it is true, might have been bowed to a harsher
 
 176 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 labor, but the heart would at least have had its rest from 
 anxiety, and the mind its relaxation from thought." 
 
 The wife's tears fell upon the hand she clasped. The stu- 
 dent turned, and his heart smote him for the selfishness of his 
 complaints. He drew her closer and closer to his bosom ; and, 
 gazing fondly upon those eyes which years of indigence and care 
 might have robbed of their young lustre, but not of their undy- 
 ing tenderness, he kissed away her tears, and addressed her in a 
 voice which never failed to charm her grief into forgetfulness. 
 
 " Dearest and kindest," he said, " was I not to blame for 
 accusing those privations or regrets which have only made us 
 love each other the more ! Trust me, mine own treasure, that 
 it is only in the peevishness of an inconstant and fretful humor, 
 that I have murmured against my fortune. For in the midst 
 of all, I look upon you, my angel, my comforter, my young 
 dream of love which God, in his mercy, breathed into waking 
 life I look upon you, and am blest and grateful. Nor in my 
 juster moments do I accuse even the nature of these studies, 
 though they bring us so scanty a reward. Have I not hours of 
 secret and overflowing delight, the triumphs of gratified 
 research flashes of sudden light, which reward the darkness 
 of thought, and light up my solitude as a revel ? These feel- 
 ings of rapture, which nought but Science can afford, amply 
 repay her disciples for worse evils and severer hardships than 
 it has been my destiny to endure. Look along the sky, how 
 the vapors struggle with the still yet feeble stars: even so have 
 the mists of error been pierced, though not scattered, by the 
 dim but holy lights of past wisdom, and now the morning is at 
 hand, and in that hope we journey on, doubtful, but not utterly 
 in darkness. Nor is this all my hope ; there is a loftier and 
 more steady comfort than that which mere philosophy can be- 
 stow. If the certainty of future fame bore Milton rejoicing 
 through his blindness, or cheered Galileo in his dungeon, what 
 stronger and holier support shall not be given to him who has 
 loved mankind as his brothers, and devoted his labors to their 
 cause ? who has not sought, but relinquished, his own re- 
 nown ? who has braved the present censures of men for their 
 future benefit, and trampled upon glory in the energy of benev- 
 olence ? Will there not be for him something more powerful 
 than fame to comfort his sufferings and to sustain his hopes ? 
 If the wish of mere posthumous honor be a feeling rather vain 
 than exalted, the love of our race affords us a more rational 
 and noble desire of remembrance. Come what will, that love, 
 if it animates our toils and directs our studies, shall, when we
 
 'fHE DISOWNEB. fj-j. 
 
 are dust, make our relics of value, our efforts of avail, and con- 
 secrate the desire of fame, which were else a passion selfish and 
 impure, by connecting it with the welfare of ages, and the eter- 
 nal interests of the world and its Creator ! Come, we will to 
 bed." 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 
 " A man may be formed by nature for an admirable citizen, and yet, from 
 the purest motives, be a dangerous one to the State in which the accident of 
 birth has placed him." STEPHEN MONTAGUE. 
 
 THE night again closed, and the student once more resumed 
 his labors. The spirit of his hope and comforter of his toils 
 sat by him, ever and anon lifting her fond eyes from her work 
 to gaze upon his countenance, to sigh, and to return sadly and 
 quietly to her employment. 
 
 A heavy step ascended the stairs, the door opened, and the 
 tall figure of Wolfe, the republican, presented itself. The 
 female rose, pushed a chair towards him with a smile and grace 
 suited to better fortunes, and, retiring from the table, reseated 
 herself silent and apart. 
 
 " It is a fine night," said the student, when the mutual greet- 
 ings were over. "Whence come you ? " 
 
 "From contemplating human misery and worse than human 
 degradation," replied Wolfe, slowly seating himself. 
 
 "Those words specify no place they apply universally," 
 said the student, with a sigh. 
 
 " Ay, Glendower, for misgovernment is universal," rejoined 
 Wolfe. 
 
 Glendower made no answer. 
 
 "Oh!" said Wolfe, in the low, suppressed tone of intense 
 passion which was customary to him, "it maddens me to look 
 upon the willingness with which men hug their trappings of 
 slavery, bears, proud of the rags which deck, and the monkeys 
 which ride them. But it frets me yet niore when some lordling' 
 sweeps along, lifting his dull eyes above the fools whose only 
 crime and debasement are what ? their subjection to ////// .' 
 Such an one I encountered a few nights since ; and he^ will 
 remember the meeting longer than I shall. I taught that 'god 
 to tremble.' " 
 
 The female rose, glanced towards her husband, and silently 
 
 withdrew. 
 
 Wolfe paused for a few moments, looked curiously and prymgly
 
 178 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 round, and then rising, went forth into the passage to see that 
 no loiterer or listener was near returned, and, drawing his 
 chair close to Glendower, fixed his dark eye upon him and 
 said : 
 
 "You are poor, and your spirit rises against your lot ; you 
 are just, and your heart swells against the general oppression 
 you behold ; can you not dare to remedy your ills and those of 
 mankind ?" 
 
 *' I can dare," said Glendower calmly, though haughtily, " all 
 things but crime." 
 
 " And which is crime ? the rising against, or the submission 
 to, evil government? Which is crime, I ask you?" 
 
 " That which is the most imprudent," answered Glendower. 
 " We may sport in ordinary cases with our own safeties, but only 
 in rare cases with the safety of others." 
 
 Wolfe rose, and paced the narrow room impatiently to and 
 fro. He paused by the window, and threw it open. "Come 
 here," he cried "come, and look out." 
 
 Glendower did so all was still and quiet. 
 
 " Why did you call me ? " said he ; " I see nothing." 
 
 " Nothing ! " exclaimed Wolfe ; " look again look on yon 
 sordid and squalid huts look at yon court, that from this 
 wretched street leads to abodes to which these are as palaces : 
 look at yon victims of vice and famine, plying beneath the mid- 
 night skies their filthy and infectious trade. Wherever you turn 
 your eyes, what see you ? Misery, loathsomeness, sin ! Are 
 you a man, and call you these nothing ! And now lean forth 
 still more see afar off, by yonder lamp, the mansion of illgot- 
 ten and griping wealth. He who owns those buildings, what did 
 he that he should riot while we starve ? He wrung from the 
 negro's tears and bloody sweat the luxuries of a pampered and 
 vitiated taste : he pandered to the excesses of the rich : he 
 heaped their tables with the product of a nation's groans. Lo ! 
 his reward ! He is rich prosperous honored ! He sits in 
 the legislative assembly ; he declaims against immorality ; he 
 contends for the safety of property, and the equilibrium of 
 ranks. Transport yourself from this spot for an instant 
 imagine that you survey the gorgeous homes of aristocracy and 
 power the palaces of the west. What see you there ? The 
 few sucking, draining, exhausting the blood, the treasure, the 
 very existence of the many. Are we, who are of the many, 
 wise to suffer it?" 
 
 " Are we of the many ? " said Glendower. 
 
 " We could be," said Wolfe hastily.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 179 
 
 " I doubt it," replied Glendow.er. 
 
 "Listen," said the republican, laying his hand upon Glen- 
 dower's shoulder, " listen to me. There are in this country 
 men whose spirits not years of delayed hope, wearisome perse- 
 cution, and, bitterer than all, misrepresentation from some and 
 contempt from others, have yet quelled and tamed. We watch 
 our opportunity ; the growing distress of the country, the 
 increasing severity and misrule of the administration will soon 
 afford it us. Your talents, your benevolence, render you 
 worthy to join us. Do so, and " 
 
 " Hush ! " interrupted the student ; " you know not what you 
 say : you weigh not the folly, the madness of your design ! I 
 am a man more fallen, more sunken, more disappointed than 
 you. I, too, have had at my heart the burning and lonely hope 
 which, through years of misfortune and want, has comforted 
 me with the thought of serving and enlightening mankind I, 
 too, have devoted to the fulfilment of that hope, days and 
 nights, in which the brain grew dizzy, and the heart heavy and 
 clogged with the intensity of my pursuits. Were the dungeon 
 and the scaffold my reward, Heaven knows that I would not 
 flinch eye nor hand, or abate a jot of heart and hope in the 
 thankless prosecution of my toils. Know me, then, as one of 
 fortunes more desperate than your own ; of an ambition more 
 unquenchable ; of a philanthropy no less ardent ; and I will 
 add, of a courage no less firm : and behold the utter hopeless- 
 ness of your projects with others, when to me they only appear 
 the visions of an enthusiast." 
 
 Wolfe sunk down in the chair. 
 
 " Is it even so ? " said he, slowly and musingly. " Are my 
 hopes but delusions ? Has my life been but one idle, though 
 convulsive dream ? is the goddess of our religion banished 
 from this great and populous earth, to the seared and barren 
 hearts of a few solitary worshippers, whom all else despise as 
 madmen or persecute as idolaters ? And if so, shall we adore 
 her the less ? No ! though we perish in her cause, it is around 
 her altar that our corpses shall be found ! " 
 
 " My friend," said Glendower kindly, for he was touched 
 by the sincerity, though opposed to the opinions, of the repub- 
 lican, " the night is yet early : we will sit down to discuss our 
 several doctrines calmly, and in the spirit of truth and investi- 
 gation." 
 
 " Away ! " cried Wolfe, rising and slouching his hat over his 
 bent and lowering brows ; " away ! I will not listen to you I 
 dread your reasonings I would not have a particle of my faith
 
 l8o THE DISOWNED. 
 
 shaken. If I err, I have erred from my birth : erred with 
 Brutus and Tell, Hampden and Milton, and all whom the 
 thousand tribes and parties of earth consecrate with their 
 common gratitude and eternal reverence. In that error I will 
 die ! If our party can struggle not with hosts, there may yet 
 arise some minister with the ambition of Caesar, if not his 
 genius of whom a single dagger can rid the earth ! " 
 
 " And if not ? " said Glendower. 
 
 " I have the same dagger for myself," replied Wolfe, as he 
 closed the door. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 " Bolingbroke has said that ' Man is his own sharper and his own bubble '; 
 and certainly he who is acutest in duping others is ever the most ingenious 
 in outwitting himself. The criminal is always a sophist ; and finds in his 
 own reason a special pleader to twist laws human and divine into a sanction 
 of his crime. The rogue is so much in the habit of cheating, that he 
 packs the cards even when playing at Patience with himself." STEPHEN 
 MONTAGUE. 
 
 THE only two acquaintances in this populous city whom 
 Glendower possessed, who were aware that in a former time 
 he had known a better fortune, were Wolfe, and a person of 
 far higher worldly estimation, of the name of Crauford. 
 With the former the student had become acquainted by the 
 favor of chance, which had for a short time made them lodgers 
 in the same house. Of the particulars of Glendower's earliest 
 history, Wolfe was utterly ignorant ; but the addresses upon 
 some old letters, which he had accidentally seen, had informed 
 him that Glendower had formerly borne another name ; and it 
 was easy to glean from the student's conversation that something 
 of greater distinction and prosperity than he now enjoyed was 
 coupled with the appellation he had renounced. Proud, melan- 
 choly, austere brooding upon thoughts whose very loftiness 
 received somewhat of additional grandeur from the gloom 
 which encircled it Glendower found, in the ruined hopes and 
 the solitary lot of the republican, that congeniality which 
 neither Wolfe's habits, nor the excess of his political fervor, 
 might have afforded to a nature which philosophy had rendered 
 moderate and early circumstances refined. Crauford was far 
 better acquainted than Wolfe with the reverses Glendower had 
 undergone. Many years ago, he had known, and indeed 
 travelled with, him upon the continent ; since then, they had 
 not met until about six months prior to the time in which
 
 THE DISOWNED. iSl 
 
 Glendower is presented to the reader. It was in an obscure 
 street of the city, that Crauford had then encountered Glen- 
 dower, whose haunts were so little frequented by the higher 
 orders of society that Crauford was the first, and the only one, 
 of his former acquaintance with whom for years he had been 
 brought into contact. That person recognized him at once, 
 accosted him, followed him home, and three days afterwards 
 surprised him with a visit. Of manners which, in their dis- 
 simulation, extended far beyond the ordinary ease and breeding 
 of the world, Crauford readily appeared not to notice the 
 altered circumstances of his old acquaintance ; and, by a tone 
 of conversation artfully respectful, he endeavored to remove 
 from Glendo\ver's mind that soreness which his knowledge 
 of human nature told him that his visit was calculated to 
 create. 
 
 There is a certain species of pride which contradicts the ordi- 
 nary symptoms of the feeling, and appears most elevated when 
 it would be reasonable to expect it should be most depressed. 
 Of this sort was Glendower's. When he received the guest 
 who had known him in his former prosperity, some natural sen- 
 timent of emotion called, it is true, to his pale cheek a momen- 
 tary flush, as he looked round his humble apartment, and the 
 evident signs of poverty it contained ; but his address was calm 
 and self-possessed, and whatever mortification he might have 
 felt, no intonation of his voice, no tell-tale embarrassment of 
 manner, revealed it. Encouraged by this air, even while he 
 was secretly vexed by it, and perfectly unable to do justice to 
 the dignity of mind which gave something of majesty, rather 
 than humiliation, to misfortune, Crauford resolved to repeat his 
 visit, and by intervals, gradually lessening, renewed it, till ac- 
 quaintance seemed, though little tinctured, at least on Glen- 
 dower's side, by friendship, to assume the semblance of intimacy. 
 It was true, however, that he had something to struggle against 
 in Glendower's manner, which certainly grew colder in propor- 
 tion to the repetition of the visits; and, at length, Glendower 
 said, with an ease and quiet which abashed, for a moment, an ef- 
 frontery both of mind and manner, which was almost parallel, 
 " Believe me, Mr. Crauford, I feel fully sensible of your attentions; 
 but as circumstances at present are such as to render an inter- 
 course between us little congenial to the habits and sentiments 
 of either, you will probably understand and forgive my motives 
 in wishing no longer to receive civilities which, however I may 
 feel them, I am unable to return." 
 
 Crauford colored, and hesitated, before he replied : " Forgive
 
 l82 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 me then," said he, "for my fault. I did venture to hope that 
 no circumstances would break off an acquaintance to me so 
 valuable. Forgive me if I did imagine that an intercourse be- 
 tween mind and mind could be equally carried on, whether the 
 mere body were lodged in a palace or a hovel "; and then sud- 
 denly changing his tone into that of affectionate warmth, Crau- 
 ford continued : " My dear Glendower, my dear friend, I would 
 say, if I durst, is not your pride rather to blame here? Believe 
 me, in my turn, I fully comprehend and bow to it ; but it wounds 
 me beyond expression. Were you in your proper station, a sta- 
 tion much higher than my own, I would come to you at once, 
 and proffer my friendship as it is, I cannot ; but your pride 
 wrongs me, Glendower indeed it does." 
 
 And Crauford turned away, apparently in the bitterness of 
 wounded feeling. 
 
 Glendower was touched : and his nature, as kind as it was 
 proud, immediately smote him for conduct certainly ungracious, 
 and perhaps ungrateful. He held out his hand to Crauford ; 
 with the most respectful warmth, that personage seized and 
 pressed it : and from that time Crauford's visits appeared to 
 receive a license which, if not perfectly welcome, was at least 
 never again questioned^ 
 
 "I shall have this man now," muttered Crauford, between 
 his ground teeth, as he left the house, and took his way to his 
 counting-house. There, cool, bland, fawning, and weaving in 
 his close and dark mind various speculations of guilt and craft, 
 he sat among his bills and gold, like the very gnome and per- 
 sonification of that Mammon of gain to which he was the most 
 supple, though concealed, adherent. 
 
 Richard Crauford was of a new but not unimportant family. 
 His father had entered into commerce, and left a flourishing 
 firm, and a name of great respectability in his profession, to his 
 son. That son was a man whom many and opposite qualities 
 rendered a character of very singular and uncommon stamp. 
 Fond of the laborious acquisition of money, he was equally 
 attached to the ostentatious pageantries of expense. Profound- 
 ly skilled in the calculating business of his profession, he was 
 devoted equally to the luxuries of pleasure ; but the pleasure 
 was suited well to the mind which pursued it. The divine in- 
 toxication of that love where the delicacies and purities of af- 
 fection consecrate the humanity of passion, was to him a thing 
 of which not even his youngest imagination had ever dreamed. 
 The social concomitants of the wine cup (which have for the 
 lenient an excuse, for the austere a temptation) the generous
 
 tHE DISOWNED. 183 
 
 expanding of the heart the increased yearning to kindly af- 
 fectionthe lavish spirit throwing off its exuberance in the 
 thousand lights and emanations of wit these, which have ren- 
 dered the molten grape, despite of its excesses, not unworthy 
 of the praise of immortal hymns, and taken harshness from the 
 judgment of those averse to its enjoyment these never pre- 
 sented an inducement to the stony temperament and dormant 
 heart of Richard Crauford. 
 
 He looked upon the essences of things internal as the com- 
 mon eye upon outward nature, and loved the many shapes of 
 evil as the latter does the varieties of earth, not for their graces, 
 but their utility. His loves, coarse and low, fed their rank fires 
 from an unmingled and gross depravity. His devotion to wine 
 was either solitary and unseen for he loved safety better than 
 mirth or in company with those whose station flattered his 
 vanity, not whose fellowship ripened his crude and nipped af- 
 fections. Even the recklessness of vice in him had the char- 
 acter of prudence ; and, in the most rapid and turbulent stream 
 of his excesses, one might detect the rocky and unmoved heart 
 of the calculator at the bottom. 
 
 Cool, sagacious, profound in dissimulation, and not only ob- 
 servant of, but deducing sage consequences from, those human 
 inconsistencies and frailities by which it was his aim to profit, 
 he cloaked his deeper vices with a masterly hypocrisy and for 
 those too dear to forego and too difficult to conceal, he obtained 
 pardon by the intercession of virtues it cost him nothing to 
 assume. Regular in his attendance at worship professing 
 rigidness of faith, beyond the tenets of the orthodox church 
 subscribing to the public charities, where the common eye 
 knoweth what the private hand giveth methodically constant 
 to the forms of business primitively scrupulous in the pro- 
 prieties of speech hospitable, at least to his superiors and, 
 being naturally smooth, both of temper and address, popular 
 with his inferiors it was no marvel that one part of the world 
 forgave, to a man rich and young, the irregularities of dissipa- 
 tionthat another forgot real immorality in favor of affected 
 religion or that the remainder allowed the most unexception- 
 able excellence of words to atone for the unobtrusive errors of 
 a conduct which did not prejudice them. 
 
 " It is true," said his friends, " that he loves women too much; 
 but he is young he will marry and amend." 
 
 Mr. Crauford did marry and, strange as it may seem, for love 
 at least for that brute-like love of which alone he was capable. 
 After a few years of ill-usage on his side, and endurance of his
 
 184 THE DISOWNED, 
 
 wife's, they parted. Tired of her person, and profiting by her 
 gentleness of temper, he sent her to an obscure corner of the 
 country, to starve upon the miserable pittance which was all 
 he allowed her from his superfluities. Even then such is the 
 effect of the showy proprieties of form and word Mr. Crauford 
 sank not in the estimation of the world. 
 
 "It was easy to see," said the spectators of his domestic drama, 
 " that a man in temper so mild in his business so honorable 
 so civil of speech so attentive to the stocks and the sermon 
 could not have been the party to blame. One never knew the 
 rights of matrimonial disagreements, nor could sufficiently 
 estimate the provoking disparities of temper. Certainly Mrs. 
 Crauford never did look in good humor, and had not the open 
 countenance of her husband ; and certainly the very excesses 
 of Mr. Crauford betokened a generous warmth of heart, which the 
 sullennessof his conjugal partner might easily chill and revolt." 
 
 And thus, unquestioned and unblamed, Mr. Crauford walked 
 onward in his beaten way ; and secretly laughing at the tolera- 
 tion of the crowd, continued, at his luxurious villa, the orgies 
 of a passionless, yet brutal, sensuality. 
 
 So far might the character of Richard Crauford find parallels 
 in hypocrisy and its success. Dive we now deeper into his 
 soul. Possessed of talents which, though of a secondary rank, 
 were in that rank consummate, Mr. Crauford could not be a 
 villain by intuition, or the irregular bias of his nature ; he was 
 a villain upon a grander scale : he was a villain upon system. 
 Having little learning and less knowledge, out of his profession, 
 his reflection expended itself upon apparently obvious deduc- 
 tions from the great and mysterious book of life. He saw vice 
 prosperous in externals, and from this sight his conclusion was 
 drawn. "Vice," said 'he, " is not an obstacle to success; and 
 if so, it is at least a pleasanter road to it than your narrow and 
 thorny ways of virtue." But there are certain vices which re- 
 quire the mask of virtue, and Crauford thought it easier to 
 wear the mask than to school his soul to the reality. So to the 
 villain he added the hypocrite. He found the success equalled 
 his hopes, for he had both craft and genius ; nor was he, natu- 
 rally, without the minor amiabilities which, to the ignorance of 
 the herd, seem more valuable than coin of a more important 
 amount. Blinded as we are by prejudice, we not only mistakt 
 \>\A prefer decencies to moralities ; and, like the inhabitants o! 
 Cos, when offered the choice of two statues of the same god 
 dess, we choose, not that which is the most beautiful, but tha%' 
 which is the most dressed.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 185 
 
 Accustomed easily to dupe mankind, Crauford soon grew to 
 despise them ; and from justifying roguery by his own interest, 
 he now justified it by the folly of others ; and as no wretch is 
 so unredeemed as to be without excuse to himself, Crauford 
 actually persuaded his reason that he was vicious upon prin- 
 ciple, and a rascal on a system of morality. But why the desire 
 of this man, so consummately worldly and heartless, for an in- 
 timacy with the impoverished and powerless student ? This 
 question is easily answered. In the first place, during Crau- 
 ford's acquaintance with Glendower abroad, the latter had 
 often, though innocently, galled the vanity and self-pride of 
 the parvenu affecting the aristocrat, and in poverty the parvenu 
 was anxious to retaliate. But this desire would probably have 
 passed away after he had satisfied his curiosity, or gloated his 
 spite, by one or two insights into Glendower's home for 
 Crauford, though at times a malicious, was not a vindictive, 
 man had it not been for a much more powerful object which 
 afterwards occurred to him. In an extensive scheme of fraud, 
 which for many years this man had carried on, and which for 
 secresy and boldness was almost unequalled, it had of late be- 
 come necessary to his safety to have a partner, or rather tool. 
 A man of education, talent, and courage was indispensable, 
 and Crauford had resolved that Glendower should be that man. 
 With the supreme confidence in his own powers which long 
 success had given him with a sovereign contempt for, or 
 rather disbelief in, human integrity and with a thorough con- 
 viction that the bribe to him was the bribe with all, and that 
 none could on any account be poor if they had the offer to be 
 rich, Crauford did not bestow a moment's consideration upon 
 the difficulty of his task, or conceive that in the nature and 
 mind of Glendower there could exist any obstacle to his 
 design. 
 
 Men addicted to calculation are accustomed to suppose those 
 employed in the same mental pursuit arrive, or ought to arrive, 
 at the same final conclusion. Now looking upon Glendower 
 as a philosopher, Crauford looked upon him as a man who, 
 however he might conceal his real opinions, secretly laughed, 
 like Crauford's self, not only at the established customs, but at 
 the established moralities of the world. Ill-acquainted with 
 books, the worthy Richard was, like all men similarly situated, 
 somewhat infected by the very prejudices he affected to despise ; 
 and he shared the vulgar disposition to doubt the hearts of 
 those who cultivate the head. Glendower himself had con- 
 firmed this opinion by lauding, though he did not entirety sub'
 
 lS6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 scribe to, those moralists who have made an enlightened self- 
 interest the proper measure of all human conduct ; and Crau- 
 ford, utterly unable to comprehend this system in its grand, 
 naturally interpreted it in a partial, sense. Espousing self-in- 
 terest as his own code, he deemed that in reality Glendower's 
 principles did not differ greatly from his ; and as there is no 
 pleasure to a hypocrite like that of finding a fit opportunity to 
 unburden some of his real sentiments, Crauford was occasion- 
 ally wont to hold some conference and argument with the 
 student, in which his opinions were not utterly cloaked in their 
 usual disguise ; but cautious even in his candor, he always 
 forbore stating such opinions as his own : he merely mentioned 
 them as those which a roan, beholding the villainies and follies 
 of his kind, might be tempted to form ; and thus Glendower, 
 though not greatly esteeming his acquaintance, looked upon 
 him as one ignorant in his opinions but not likely to err in his 
 conduct. 
 
 These conversations did, however, it is true, increase Crau- 
 ford's estimate of Glendower's integrity, but they by no means 
 diminished his confidence of subduing it. Honor, a deep 
 and pure sense of the divinity of good, the steady desire 
 of rectitude, and the supporting aid of a sincere religion 
 these he did not deny to his intended tool ; he rather rejoiced 
 that he possessed them. With the profound arrogance, the 
 sense of immeasurable superiority which men of no principle 
 invariably feel for those who have it, Crauford said to himself: 
 " Those very virtues will be my best dupes they cannot resist 
 the temptations I shall offer, but they can resist any offer to 
 betray me afterwards, for no man can resist hunger ; but your 
 fine feelings, your nice honor, your precise religion he ! he ! 
 he ! these can teach a man very well to resist a common in- 
 ducement : they cannot make him submit to be his own exe- 
 cutioner ; but they can prevent his turning king's evidence, and 
 being executioner to another. No, no it is not to your com- 
 mon rogue that I may dare trust my secret my secret, which 
 is my life ! It is precisely of such a fine, Athenian, moral 
 rogue as I shall make my proud friend, that I am in want. But 
 he has some silly scruples ; we must beat them away we must 
 not be too rash ; and above all, we must leave the best argument 
 to poverty. Want is your finest orator ; a starving wife a 
 famished brat he ! he ! these are your true tempters your 
 true fathers of crime, and fillers of gaols and gibbets. Let me 
 see ; he has no money I know, but what he gets from that 
 bookseller. What bookseller, by-the-by ? Ah, rare thought J
 
 THE DISOWNED. i 7 
 
 I'll find out, and cut off that supply. My lady wife's check 
 will look somewhat thinner next month, I fancy he ! he ! 
 But 'tis a pity, for she is a glorious creature ! Who knows 
 but I may serve two purposes ? However, one at present ! 
 business first, and pleasure afterwards and faith, the business 
 is damnably like that of life and death." 
 
 Muttering such thoughts as these, Crauford took his way one 
 evening to Glendower's house. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 " lago Virtue; a fig! 'tis in ourselves that we are thus and thus." 
 
 OTHELLO. 
 
 " So so, my little one, don't let me disturb you. Madam, 
 dare I venture to hope your acceptance of this fruit ? I chose 
 it myself, and I am somewhat of a judge. Oh ! Glendower, 
 here is the pamphlet you wished to see." 
 
 With this salutation, Crauford drew his chair to the table by 
 which Glendower sate, and entered into conversation with his 
 purposed victim. A comely and a pleasing countenance had 
 Richard Crauford ! the lonely light of the room fell upon a 
 face which, though forty years of guile had gone over it, was 
 as fair and unwrinkled as a boy's. Small, well-cut features 
 a blooming complexion eyes of lightest blue a forehead 
 high, though narrow, and a mouth from which the smile was 
 never absent : these, joined to a manner at once soft and con- 
 fident, and an elegant, though unaffected, study of dress, gave 
 to Crauford a personal appearance well suited to aid the effect 
 of his hypocritical and dissembling mind. 
 
 " Well, my friend," said he, " always at your books eh ! 
 Ah ! it is a happy taste ; would that I had cultivated it more ; 
 but we who are condemned to business have little leisure to 
 follow our own inclinations. It is only on Sundays that I have 
 time to read ; and then (to say truth, I am an old-fash- 
 ioned man, whom the gayer part of the world laughs at), and 
 then I am too occupied with the Book of Books to think of 
 any less important study." 
 
 Not deeming that a peculiar reply was required to this pious 
 speech, Glendower did not take that advantage of Crauford's 
 pause which it was evidently intended that he should. With a 
 glance towards the student's wife, our mercantile friend con- 
 tinued : " I did once once, in my young dreams, intend
 
 i#8 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 that whenever I married I would relinquish a profession for 
 which, after all, I am but little calculated. I pictured to my- 
 self a country retreat, well stored with books ; and having con- 
 centrated in one home all the attractions which could have 
 tempted my thoughts abroad, I had designed to surrender my- 
 self solely to those studies which, I lament to say, were but ill 
 attended to in my earlier education. But but," (here Mr. 
 Crauford sighed deeply, and averted his face) "fate willed it 
 otherwise ! " 
 
 Whatever reply of sympathetic admiration or condolence 
 Glendower might have made, was interrupted by one of those 
 sudden and overpowering attacks of faintness which had of 
 late seized the delicate and declining health of his wife. He 
 rose, and leant over her with a fondness and alarm which 
 curled the lip of his visitor. 
 
 "Thus it is," said Crauford to himself, "with weak minds 
 under the influence of habit. The love of lust becomes the 
 love of custom, and the last is as strong as the first." 
 
 When she had recovered, she rose, and (with her child) re- 
 tired to rest, the only restorative she ever found effectual for 
 her complaint. Glendower went with her, and, after having 
 seen her eyes, which swam with tears of gratitude at his love, 
 close in the seeming slumber she affected in order to release 
 him from his watch, he returned to Crauford. He found that 
 gentleman leaning against the chimney-piece with folded arms, 
 and apparently immersed in thought. A very good opportun- 
 ity had Giendower's absence afforded to a man whose boast it 
 was never to lose one. Looking over the papers on the table, 
 he had seen and possessed himself of the address of the book- 
 seller the student dealt with. " So much for business now 
 for philanthropy," said Mr. Crauford, in his favorite antithet- 
 ical phrase, throwing himself in his attitude against the chim- 
 ney-piece. 
 
 As Glendower entered, Crauford started from his reverie, 
 and with a melancholy air and pensive voice, said : 
 
 "Alas, my friend, when I look upon this humble apartment, 
 the weak health of your unequalled wife your obscurity your 
 misfortunes; when I look upon these, and contrast them with 
 your mind, your talents, all that you were born and fitted for, 
 I cannot but feel tempted to believe with those who imagine 
 the pursuit of virtue a chimera, and who justify their own 
 worldly policy by the example of all their kind." 
 
 "Virtue," said Glendower, "would indeed be a chimera, did 
 it require support from those whom you have cited."
 
 TttE DISOWNED. l8g 
 
 "True most true," answered Crauford, somewhat discon- 
 certed in reality, though not in appearance; "and yet, strange 
 as it may seem, I have known some of those persons very good, 
 admirably good men. They were extremely moral and relig- 
 ous ; they only played the great game for worldly advantages 
 upon the same terms as the other players ; nay, they never 
 made a move in it without most fervently and sincerely pray- 
 ing for divine assistance." 
 
 " I readily believe you," said Glendower, who always, if 
 possible, avoided a controversy " the easiest person to deceive 
 is one's own self." 
 
 "Admirably said," answered Crauford, who thought it, nev- 
 ertheless, one of the most foolish observations he had ever 
 heard : "admirably said ! and yet my heart does grieve bit- 
 terly for the trials and distresses it surveys. One must make 
 excuses for poor human frailty ; and one is often placed in 
 such circumstances as to render it scarcely possible, without 
 the grace of God " (here Crauford lifted up his eyes) " not to 
 be urged, as it were, into the reasonings and actions of the 
 world." 
 
 Not exactly comprehending this observation, and not very 
 closely attending to it, Glendower merely bowed, as in assent, 
 and Crauford continued : 
 
 " I remember a remarkable instance of this truth. One of 
 my partner's clerks had, through misfortune or imprudence, 
 fallen into the greatest distress. His wife, his children (he 
 had a numerous family) were on the literal and absolute verge 
 of starvation. Another clerk, taking advantage of these cir- 
 cumstances, communicated to the distressed man a plan for 
 defrauding his employer. The poor fellow yielded to the temp- 
 tation, and was at last discovered. I spoke to him myself, for 
 I was interested in his fate, and had always esteemed him. 
 ' What, 1 said I, ' was your motive for this fraud ? ' ' My duty ! ' 
 answered the man fervently ; ' My duty ! Was I to suffer my 
 wife, my children to starve before my face, when I could save 
 them at a little personal risk ? No my duty forbade it ! ' 
 and in truth, Glendower, there was something very plausibk in 
 this manner of putting the question." 
 
 "You might, in answering it," said Glendower, " have put 
 the point in a manner equally plausible, and more true ; was he 
 to commit a great crime against the millions connected by 
 social order, for the sake of serving a single family and that 
 his own.' 
 
 " Quite right," answered Crauford ; " that was just the point
 
 ic)6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 of view in which I did put it ; but the man, who was something 
 of a reasoner, replied, ' Public law is instituted for public hap- 
 piness. Now if mine and my children's happiness is infinitely 
 and immeasurably more served by this comparatively petty 
 fraud than my employer's is advanced by my abstaining from, 
 or injured by my committing, it, why, the origin of law itself 
 allows me to do it.' What say you to that, Glendower ? It is 
 something in your Utilitarian, or, as you term it, Epicurean* 
 principle; is it not?" and Crauford, shading his eyes, as if 
 from the light, watched narrowly Glendower's countenance, 
 while he concealed his own. 
 
 " Poor fool !" said Glendower; "the man was ignorant of 
 the first lesson in his moral primer. Did he not know that no 
 rule is to be applied to a peculiar instance, but extended to its 
 most general bearings ? Is it necessary even to observe that 
 the particular consequence of fraud in this man might, it is 
 true, be but the ridding his employer of superfluities, scarcely 
 missed, for the relief of most urgent want in two or three indi- 
 viduals ; but the general consequences of fraud and treachery 
 would be the disorganization of all society? Do not think, 
 therefore, that this man was a disciple of my, or of any, system 
 of morality." 
 
 " It is very just, very," said Mr. Crauford, with a benevolent 
 sigh ; " but you will own that want seldom allows great nicety 
 in moral distinctions, and that, when those whom you love 
 most in the world are starving, you may be pitied, if not for- 
 given, for losing sight of the after laws of nature, and recurring 
 to her first ordinance, self-preservation." 
 
 " We should be harsh, indeed," answered Glendower, "if we 
 did not pity ; or, even while the law condemned, if the indi- 
 vidual did not forgive." 
 
 " So I said, so I said," cried Crauford ; "and in interceding 
 for the poor fellow, whose pardon I am happy to say I pro- 
 cured, I could not help declaring that, if I were placed in the 
 same circumstances, I am not sure that my crime would not 
 have been the same." 
 
 "No man could {QQ\ sure !" said Glendower dejectedly. 
 
 Delighted and surprised at this confession, Crauford con- 
 tinued : "I believe I fear not; thank God, our virtue can 
 never be so tried : but even you, Glendower, even you, philos- 
 opher, moralist as you are just, good, wise, religious even 
 
 * See the article on Mr. Moore's Epicurean in the " Westminster Review." Though 
 the strictures on that work are harsh and unjust, yet the part relating to the real philu.su. 
 phy of Epicurus is one of the most masterly things in criticism.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 191 
 
 you might be tempted, if you saw your 'angel wife dying for 
 want of the aid, the very sustenance, necessary to existence, 
 and your innocent and beautiful daughter stretch her little 
 hands to you, and cry in the accents of famine for bread." 
 
 The student made no reply fora few moments, but averted 
 his countenance, and then in a slov/ tone said, " Let us drop 
 this subject; none know their strength until they are tried; 
 self-confidence should accompany virtue, but not precede it." 
 
 A momentary flash broke from the usually calm, cold eye of 
 Richard Crauford. " He is mine," thought he ; "the very name 
 of want abases his pride ; what will the reality do ? O human 
 nature, how I know and mock thee ! " 
 
 " You are right," said Crauford, aloud ; " let us talk of the 
 pamphlet.". 
 
 And after a short conversation upon indifferent subjects, the 
 visitor departed. 
 
 Early the next morning was Mr. Crauford seen on foot, tak- 
 ing his way to the bookseller, whose address he had learnt. 
 The bookseller was known as a man of a strongly evangelical 
 bias. " We must insinuate a lie or two," said Crauford inly, 
 " about Glendower's principles. He I he ! it will be a fine 
 stroke of genius to make the upright tradesman suffer Glen- 
 dower to starve, out of' a principle of religion. But who would 
 have thought my prey had been so easily snared ? why, if I 
 had proposed the matter last night, I verily think he would have 
 agreed to it." 
 
 Amusing himself with these thoughts, Crauford arrived at 
 the bookseller's. There he found Fate had saved him from 
 one crime at least. The whole house was in confusion the 
 bookseller had that morning died of an apoplectic fit. 
 
 " Good God ! how shocking ! " said Crauford to the foreman; 
 "but he was a most worthy man, and Providence could no 
 longer spare him. The ways of Heaven are inscrutable ! 
 Oblige me with three copies of that precious tract termed the 
 'Divine Call.' I should like to be allowed to attend the 
 funeral of so excellent a man. Good-morning, sir. Alas ! 
 alas ! " and shaking his head piteously, Mr. Crauford left the 
 shop. 
 
 " Hurra ! " said he, almost audibly, when he was once more 
 in the street, " hurra ! my victim is made, my game is won 
 death or the devil fights for me. But, hold there are other 
 booksellers in this monstrous city ! ay, but not above two or 
 three in our philosopher's way. I must forestall him there 
 so, so that is soon settled. 'Now, then, I must leave him a
 
 IQ2 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 little while undisturbed, to his fate. Perhaps my next visit may 
 be to him in jail ; your debtor's side of the Fleet is almost as 
 good a pleader as an empty stomach he ! he ! he ! but the 
 stroke must be made soon, for time presses, and this d d 
 business spreads so fast that if I don't have a speedy help; it 
 will be too much for my hands, griping as they are. However, 
 if it holds on a year longer, I will change my seat in the lower 
 House for one in the upper ; twenty thousand pounds to the 
 minister may make a merchant a very pretty peer. O brave 
 Richard Crauford, wise Richard Crauford, fortunate Richard 
 Crauford, noble Richard Crauford ! Why, if thou art ever 
 hanged, it will be by a jury of peers. Gad, the rope would then 
 have a dignity in it, instead of disgrace. But stay, here comes 
 
 the Dean of ; not orthodox, it is said rigid Calvinist ! 
 
 out with the ' Divine Call ! ' " 
 
 When Mr. Richard Crauford repaired next to Glendower, 
 what was his astonishment and dismay at hearing he had left 
 his home, none knew whither, nor could give the inquirer the 
 slightest clue. 
 
 " How long has he left ? " said Crauford to the landlady. 
 
 "Five days, sir." 
 
 " And will he not return to settle any little debts he may 
 have incurred?" said Crauford. 
 
 " Oh, no, sir he paid them all before he went. Poor 
 gentleman for though he was poor, he was the finest and most 
 thorough gentleman I ever saw ! my heart bled for him. 
 They parted with all their valuables to discharge their debts : 
 the books, and instruments, and busts all went ; and what I 
 saw, though he spoke so indifferently about it, hurt him the 
 most he sold even the lady's picture. 'Mrs. Croftson,' said 
 
 he, " Mr. , the painter, will send for that picture the day 
 
 after I leave you. See that he has it, and that the greatest care 
 is taken of it in delivery." 
 
 " And you cannot even guess where he has gone to ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; -a single porter was sufficient to convey his re- 
 maining goods, and he took him from some distant part of the 
 town." 
 
 " Ten thousand devils ! " muttered Crauford, as he turned 
 away, " I should have foreseen this ! He is lost now. Of 
 course he will again change his name ; and in the d d holes 
 and corners of this gigantic puzzle of houses, how shall I ever 
 find him out ? and time presses too ? Well, well, well ! there 
 is a fine prize for being cleverer, or, as fools would say, more 
 rascally than others ; but there is a world of trouble in winning
 
 THE DISOWNED. 193 
 
 it. But come I will go home, lock myself up, and get drunk ! 
 I am as melancholy as a cat in love, and about as stupid : and, 
 faith, one must get spirits in order to hit on a new invention! 
 But if there be consistency in fortune, or success in per- 
 severance, or wit in Richard Crauford, that man shall yet be 
 my victim and preserver ! " 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 " Revenge is now the cud 
 That I do chew. I'll challenge him." 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 WE return to " the world of fashion," as the admirers of the 
 
 polite novel of would say. The noon-day sun broke hot and 
 
 sultry through half-closed curtains of roseate silk, playing in 
 broken beams upon rare and fragrant exotics, which cast the 
 perfumes of southern summers over a chamber, moderate, 
 indeed, as to its dimensions, but decorated with a splendor 
 rather gaudy than graceful, and indicating much more a passion 
 for luxury than a refinement of taste. 
 
 At a small writing-table sat the beautiful La Meronville. 
 She had just finished a note, written (how Jean Jacques would 
 have been enchanted !) upon paper touleur de rose, with a 
 mother-of-pearl pen, formed as one of Cupid's darts, dipped 
 into an inkstand of the same material, which was shaped as a 
 quiver, and placed at the back of a little Love, exquisitely 
 wrought. She was folding this billet when a page, fantastically 
 dressed, entered, and, announcing Lord Borodaile, was imme- 
 diately followed by that nobleman. Eagerly and almost blush- 
 ingly did La Meronville thrust the note into her bosom, and 
 hasten to greet and to embrace her adorer. Lord Borodaile 
 flung himself on one of the sofas with a listless and discontented 
 air. The experienced Frenchwoman saw that there was a cloud 
 on his brow : 
 
 " My dear friend," said she, in her own tongue, " you seem 
 vexed has anything annoyed you ? " 
 
 " No, Cecile, no. By-the-by, who supped with you last 
 night?" 
 
 "Oh ! the Duke of Haverfield your friend." 
 
 " My friend !" interrupted Borodaile haughtily " he's no 
 friend of mine a vulgar, talkative fellow my friend, in' 
 deed!"
 
 194 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " Well, I beg your pardon : then there was Mademoiselle 
 Caumartin, and the prince Pietro del Orbino, and Mr. Tre- 
 vanion, and Mr. Lin Lin Linten, or Linden." 
 
 " And, pray, will you allow me to ask how you became 
 acquainted with Mr. Lin Lin Linten, or Linden?" 
 
 " Assuredly through the Duke of Haverfield." 
 
 " Humph Cecile, my love, that young man is not fit to be 
 the acquaintance of my friend allow me to strike him from 
 your list." 
 
 " Certainly, certainly ! " said La Meronville hastily : and 
 stooping as if to pick up a fallen glove, though, in reality, to 
 hide her face from Lord Borodaile's searching eye, the letter 
 she had written fell from her bosom. Lord Borodaile's glance 
 detected the superscription, and before La Meronville could 
 regain the note, he had possessed himself of it. 
 
 "A Monsieur, Monsieur Linden !" said he coldly, reading 
 the address ; " and, pray, how long have you corresponded with 
 that gentleman ? " 
 
 Now La Meronville's situation at that moment was by no 
 means agreeable. She saw at one glance that no falsehood or 
 artifice could avail her ; for Lord Borodaile might deem him- 
 self fully justified in reading the note, which would contradict 
 any glossing statement she might make. She saw this. She 
 was a woman of independence cared not a straw for Lord 
 Borodaile at present, though she had had a caprice for him 
 knew that she might choose her bon ami out of all London, and 
 replied : 
 
 " That is the first letter I ever wrote to him ; but I own 
 that it will not be the last." 
 
 Lord Borodaile turned pale. 
 
 "And will you suffer me to read it?" said he; for even in 
 these cases he was punctiliously honorable. 
 
 La Meronville hesitated. She did not know him. "If I do 
 not consent," thought she, " he will do it without the consent: 
 better submit with a good grace." "Certainly!" she answered, 
 with an air of indifference. 
 
 Borodaile opened and read the note ; it was as follows : 
 
 " You have inspired me with a feeling for you which astonishes 
 myself. Ah, why should that love be the strongest which is the 
 swiftest in its growth ? I used to love Lord Borodaile I now 
 only esteem him the love has flown to you. If I judge rightly 
 from your words and your eyes, this avowal will not be unwel- 
 come to you. Come and assure me, in person, of a persuasion 
 50 dear to my heart, L. M,"
 
 THE DISOWNED. 195 
 
 "A very pretty effusion !" said Lord Borodaile sarcastically, 
 and only showing his inward rage by the increasing paleness of 
 his complexion, and a slight compression of his lip. "I thank 
 you for your confidence in me. All I ask is, that you will not 
 send this note till to-morrow. Allow me to take my leave of 
 you first, and to find in Mr. Linden a successor rather than a 
 rival." 
 
 "Your request, my friend," said La Meronville, adjusting her 
 hair, " is but reasonable. I see that you understand these ar- 
 rangements ; and, for my part, I think that the end of love 
 should always be the beginning of friendship let it be so 
 with us ! " 
 
 " You do me too much honor," said Borodaile, bowing pro- 
 foundly. " Meanwhile I depend upon your promise, and bid 
 you, as a lover, farewell for ever." 
 
 With his usual slow step Lord Borodaile descended the 
 stairs, and walked towards the central quartier of the town. 
 His meditations were of no soothing nature. "To be seen by 
 that man in a ridiculous and degrading situation to be pestered 
 with his d d civility to be rivalled by him with Lady Flora 
 to be duped and outdone by him with my mistress! Ay, all 
 this have I been ; but vengeance shall come yet. As for La 
 Meronville, the loss is again ; and, thank Heaven, I did not be- 
 tray myself by venting my passion and making a scene. But it 
 was I who ought to have discarded her not the reverse and 
 death and confusion for that upstart, above all men ! And 
 she talked in her letter about his eyes and words. Insolent 
 coxcomb, to dare to have eyes and words for one who belonged 
 tome. Well, well, he shall smart for this. But letmeconsider 
 
 I must not play the jealous fool must not fight fora ; must 
 
 not show the world that a man, nobody knows who, could really 
 outwit and outdo me me Francis Borodaile ! No, no I must 
 throw the insult upon him must myself be the aggressor, and the 
 challenged ; then, too, I shall have the choice of weapons pistols 
 of course. Where shall I hit him, by-the-by ? I wish I shot as 
 well as I used to do at Naples. I was in full practice then. 
 Cursed place, where there was nothing else to do but to practice ! " 
 
 Immersed in these, or somewhat similar reflections, did Lord 
 Borodaile enter Pall Mall. 
 
 "Ah, Borodaile!" said Lord St. George, suddenly emerging 
 from a shop. " This is really fortunate you are going my way 
 exactly allow me to join you." 
 
 Now Lord Borodaile, to say nothing of his happening at that 
 time to be in a mood more than usually unsocial, could never at
 
 if)6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 any time bear the thought of being made an instrument of con- 
 venience, pleasure, or good fortune to another. He' therefore, 
 with a little resentment at Lord St. George's familiarity, coldly 
 replied, " I am sorry that I cannot avail myself of your offer. I 
 am sure my way is not the same as yours." 
 
 " Then," replied Lord St. George, who was a good-natured, 
 indolent man, who imagined everybody was as averse to walking 
 alone as he was "then I will make mine the same as yours." 
 
 Borodaile colored : though always uncivil, he did not like to 
 be excelled in good manners ; and therefore replied, that nothing 
 but extreme business at White's could have induced him to prefer 
 his own way to that of Lord St. George. 
 
 The good-natured peer took Lord Borodaile's arm. It was a 
 natural incident, but it vexed the punctilious viscount, that any 
 any man should take, not offer, the support. 
 
 "So, they say," observed Lord St. George, "that young 
 Linden is to marry Lady Flora Ardenne." 
 
 " Les on-dits font la gazette des fous" rejoined Borodaile with 
 a sneer. " I believe that Lady Flora is little likely to contract 
 such a mesalliance." 
 
 "Mesalliance!" replied Lord St. George. "I thought Linden 
 was of a very old family, which you know the Westboroughs are 
 not, and he has great expectations " 
 
 "Which are never to be realized," interrupted Borodaile, 
 laughing scornfully. 
 
 " Ah, indeed ! " said Lord St. George seriously. " Well, at all 
 events, he is a very agreeable, unaffected young man and, by- 
 the bye, Borodaile, you will meet him cfoz-moi to-day you know 
 you dine with me?" 
 
 "Meet Mr. Linden ! I shall be proud to have that honor," 
 said Borodaile, with sparkling eyes ; " will Lady Westborough 
 be also of the party ? " 
 
 " No, poor Lady St. George is very ill, and I have taken the 
 opportunity to ask only men." 
 
 " You have done wisely, my lord," said Borodaile, secum multa 
 revolvens ; "and I assure you I wanted no hint to remind me of 
 your invitation." 
 
 Here the Duke of Haverfield joined them. The duke never 
 bowed to any one of the male sex ; he therefore nodded to 
 Borodaile, who, with a very supercilious formality, took off his 
 hat in returning the salutation. The viscount had at least this 
 merit in his pride, that if it was reserved to thehumble, it was 
 contemptuous to the high : his inferiors he wished to remain 
 where they were ; his enuals he longed to lower.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 197 
 
 " So I dine with you, Lord St. George, to-day," said the duke ; 
 ''whom shall I meet?" 
 
 "Lord Borodaile, for one," answered St. George; "my 
 brother, Aspeden, Findlater, Orbino and Linden." 
 
 " Linden ! " cried the duke ; " I'm very glad to hear it, c'est un 
 homme fait exprfc pour moi. He is very clever, and not above 
 playing the fool ; has humor without setting up for a wit, and is 
 a good fellow without being a bad man. I like him excessively." 
 
 *' Lord St. George," said Borodaile, who seemed that day to 
 be the very martyr of the unconscious Clarence, "I wish you 
 good morning. I have only just remembered an engagement 
 which I ;//#.$/ keep before I goto White's." 
 
 And, with a bow to the duke, and a remonstrance from Lord St. 
 George, Borodaile effected his escape. His complexion was, in- 
 sensibly to himself, more raised than usual, his step more stately ; 
 his mind, for the first time for years, was fully excited and en- 
 grossed. Ah, what a delightful thing it is for an idle man, who 
 has been dying of ennui, to find an enemy. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 " You must challenge him ; 
 There's no avoiding one or both must drop." 
 
 BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. 
 
 " HA ha, ha bravo Linden ! " cried Lord St. George, from 
 the head of his splendid board, in approbation of some witticism 
 of Clarence's ; and ha, ha, ha! or he, he, he ! according to the 
 cachinnatory intonations of the guests, rung around. 
 
 " Your lordship seems unwell," said Lord Aspeden to Boro- 
 daile ; " allow me to take wine with you." 
 
 Lord Borodaile bowed his assent. 
 
 "Pray," said Mr. St. George to Clarence, "have you seen 
 my friend Talbot lately?" 
 
 "This very morning," replied Linden : "indeed, I generally 
 visit him three or four times a week he often asks after you." 
 
 "Indeed ! " said Mr. St. George, rather flattered; " he does 
 me much honor; but he is a distant .connection of mine, and 
 I suppose I must attribute his recollection of me to that cause. 
 He is a near relation of yours, too, I think is he not?" 
 
 " I am related to him," answered Clarence, coloring. 
 
 Lord Borodaile leant forward, and his lip curled. Though, 
 in some respects, a very unamiable man, he had, as we have
 
 198 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 said, his good points. He hated a lie as much as Achilles did ; 
 and he believed in his heart of hearts that Clarence had just 
 uttered one. 
 
 "Why," observed Lord Aspeden, "why, Lord Borodaile, the 
 Talbots, of Scarsdale, are branches of your genealogical tree ; 
 therefore your lordship must be related to Linden ; you are 
 ' two cherries on one stalk ! ' ' 
 
 " We are by no means related," said Lord Borodaile, with a 
 distinct and clear voice, intended expressly for Clarence ; 
 " that is an honor which I must beg leave most positively to 
 disclaim." 
 
 There was a dead silence the eyes of all who heard a remark 
 so intentionally rude were turned immediately towards Clarence. 
 His cheek burnt like fire ; he hesitated a moment, and then 
 said, in the same key, though with a little trembling in his 
 intonation 
 
 " Lord Borodaile cannot be more anxious to disclaim it than 
 I am." 
 
 " And yet," returned the viscount, stung to the soul, " they 
 who advance false pretensions ought at least to support them !" 
 
 " I do not understand you, my lord," said Clarence. 
 
 " Possibly not," answered Borodaile, carelessly : " there is a 
 maxim which says that people not accustomed to speak truth 
 cannot comprehend it in others." 
 
 Unlike the generality of modern heroes, who are always in a 
 passion off-hand, dashing fellows, in whom irascibility is a 
 virtue Clarence was peculiarly sweet-tempered by nature, and 
 had, by habit, acquired a command over all his passions to a 
 degree very uncommon in so young a man. He made no reply 
 to the inexcusable affront he had received. His lip quivered a 
 little, and the flush of his countenance was succeeded by an 
 extreme paleness this was all : he did not even leave the room 
 immediately, but waited till the silence was broken by some 
 well-bred member of the party ; and then, pleading an early 
 engagement as an excuse for his retiring so soon, he rose, and 
 departed. 
 
 There was throughout the room an universal feeling of sympa- 
 thy with the affront, and indignation against the offender ; for, 
 to say nothing of Clarence's popularity, and the extreme dis- 
 like in which Lord Borodaile was held, there could be no doubt 
 as to the wantonness of the outrage, or the moderation of the 
 aggrieved party. Lord Borodaile already felt the punishment 
 of his offence : his very pride, while it rendered him indif- 
 ferent to the spirit, had hitherto kept him scrupulous as to the
 
 THE DISOWNED. Igp 
 
 formalities, of social politeness ; and he could not but see the 
 grossness with which he had suffered himself to violate them, 
 and the light in which his conduct was regarded. However, 
 this internal discomfort only rendered him the more embittered 
 against Clarence, and the more confirmed in his revenge. 
 Resuming, by a strong effort, all the external indifference 
 habitual to his manner, he attempted to enter into a conversa- 
 tion with those of the party who were next to him ; but his 
 remarks produced answers brief and cold : even Lord Aspeden 
 forgot his diplomacy and his smile ; Lord St. George replied 
 to his observations by a monosyllable ; and the Duke of Haver- 
 field, for the first time in his life, asserted the prerogative which 
 his rank gave him of setting the example his grace did not 
 reply to Lord Borodaile at all. In truth, every one present 
 was seriously displeased. All civilized societies have a para- 
 mount interest in repressing the rude. Nevertheless, Lord 
 Borodaile bore the brunt of his unpopularity with a steadiness 
 and unembarrassed composure worthy of a better cause; and 
 finding, at last, a companion disposed to be loquacious in the 
 person of Sir Christopher Findlater (whose good heart, though 
 its first impulse resented more violently than that of any heart 
 present the discourtesy of the viscount, yet soon warmed to 
 the desagrdrnens of his situation, and hastened to adopt its favor- 
 ite maxim of forgive and forget), Lord Borodaile sat the meet- 
 ing out ; and if he did not leave the latest, he was, at least, 
 not the first to follow Clarence. " L'orgueil ou donne le courage, 
 ou il y suppUe"* 
 
 Meanwhile Linden had returned to his solitary home. He 
 hastened to his room locked the door flung himself on his 
 sofa, and burst into a violent and almost feminine paroxysm of 
 tears. This fit lasted for more than an hour ; and when Clarence 
 at length stilled the indignant swellings of his heart, and rose 
 from his supine position, he started, as his eye fell upon the 
 opposite mirror, so haggard and exhausted seemed the forced 
 and fearful calmness of his countenance. With a hurried step 
 with arms now folded on his bosom now wildly tossed from 
 him, and the hand so firmly clenched that the very bones 
 seemed working through the skin with a brow now fierce, now 
 only dejected and a complexion which one while burnt as 
 with the crimson flush of a fever, and at another was wan and 
 colorless, like his whose cheek a spectre has blanched Clarence 
 paced his apartment, the victim not only of shame the bitterest 
 of tortures to a young and high mind but of other contending 
 
 * Pride either gives courage or supplies the place of iu
 
 200 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 feelings, which alternately exasperated and palsied his wrath, 
 and gave to his resolves at one moment an almost savage 
 ferocity, and at the next an almost cowardly vacillation. 
 
 The clock had just struck the hour of twelve, when a knock 
 at the door announced a visitor. Steps were heard on the 
 stairs, and presently a tap at Clarence's room door. He 
 unlocked it, and the Duke of Haverfield entered. 
 
 "I am charmed to find you at home," cried the duke, with 
 his usual half kind, half careless address. " I was determined 
 to call upon you, and be the first to offer my services in this 
 unpleasant affair." 
 
 Clarence pressed the duke's hand, but made no answer. 
 
 " Nothing could be so unhandsome as Lord Borodaile's con- 
 duct," continued the duke. " I hope you both fence and shoot 
 well. I shall never forgive you, if you do not put an end to 
 that piece of rigidity." 
 
 Clarence continued to walk about the room in great agita- 
 tion ; the duke looked at him with some surprise. At last Lin- 
 den paused by the window, and said, half unconsciously " It 
 must be so I cannot avoid fighting ! " 
 
 " Avoid fighting ! " cried his grace, in undisguised astonish- 
 ment. " No indeed but that is the least part of the matter 
 you must kill as well as fight him." 
 
 "Kill him!" cried Clarence, wildly, "whom!" and then 
 sinking into a chair, he covered his face with his hands for a 
 few moments, and seemed to struggle with his emotions. 
 
 " Well," thought the duke," I never was more mistaken in my 
 life. I could have bet my black horse against Trevanion's Julia, 
 which is certainly the most worthless thing I know, that Linden 
 had been a brave fellow : but these English heroes always go 
 into fits at a duel : one manages such things, as Sterne says, 
 better in France." 
 
 Clarence now rose, calm and collected. He sat down 
 wrote a brief note to Borodaile, demanding the fullest apology, 
 or the earliest meeting put it into the duke's hands and said, 
 with a faint smile, " My dear duke, dare I ask you to be second 
 to a man who has been so grievously affronted, and whose gen- 
 ealogy has been so disputed ? " 
 
 "My dear Linden," said the duke warmly, "I have always 
 been grateful to my station in life for this advantage, the free- 
 dom with which it has enabled me to select my own acquaint- 
 ance, and to follow my own pursuits. I am now more grateful 
 to it than ever, because it has given me a better opportunity 
 than I should otherwise have had of serving one whom I have
 
 THE DISOWNED. 2OI 
 
 always esteemed. In entering into your quarrel, I shall at 
 least show the world that there are some men, not inferior in 
 pretensions to Lord Borodaile, who despise arrogance and 
 resent overbearance even to others. Your cause I consider the 
 common cause of society ; but I shall take it up, if you will 
 allow me, with the distinguishing zeal of a friend." 
 
 Clarence, who was much affected by the kindness of his 
 speech, replied in a similar vein ; and the duke, having read and 
 approved the letter, rose. "There is, in my opinion," said he, 
 " no time to be lost. I will go to Borodaile this very even- 
 ing adieu, man cher : you shall kill the Argus, and then carry 
 off the lo. I feel in a double passion with that ambulating 
 poker, who is only malleable when he is red-hot, when I think 
 how honorably scupulous you were with La Meronville last 
 night, notwithstanding all her advances ; but I go to bury 
 Caesar, not to scold him. Au revoir." 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 Conon. You're well met, Crates. 
 
 Crates. If we part so, Conon. Queen of Corinth. 
 
 IT was as might be expected from the character of the 
 aggressor. Lord Borodaile refused all apology, and agreed 
 with avidity to a speedy rendezvous. He chose pistols (choice, 
 then, was not merely nominal), and selected Mr. Percy Bobus 
 for his second, a gentleman who was much fonder of acting in 
 that capacity, than in the more honorable one of a principal. 
 The author of " Lacon " says, "that if all seconds were as 
 averse to duels as their principals, there would be very little 
 blood spilt in that way"; and it was certainly astonishing to 
 compare the zeal with which Mr. Bobus busied himself about 
 this "affair," with that testified by him on another occasion, 
 when he himself was more immediately concerned. 
 
 The morning came. Bobus breakfasted with his friend. 
 " Damn it, Borodaile," said he, as the latter was receiving the 
 ultimate polish of the hair-dresser, " I never saw you look bet- 
 ter in my life. It will be a great pity if that fellow shoots 
 you." 
 
 " Shoots me ! " said Lord Borodaile, very quietly me 
 no ! that is quite out of the question ; but joking apart^Bobus, 
 I will not kill the young man. Where shall I hit him ? " 
 
 " In the cap of the knee," said Mr. Percy, breaking an egg.
 
 202 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " Nay, that will lame him for life," said Lord Borodaile, put- 
 ting on his cravat with peculiar exactitude. 
 
 " Serve him right," said Mr. Bobus. " Hang him, I never got 
 up so early in my life it is quite impossible to eat at this 
 hour. Oh apropos, Borodaile, have you left any little memor- 
 anda for me to execute ? " 
 
 " Memoranda ! for what ?" said Borodaile, who had now just 
 finished his toilet. 
 
 "Oh ! " rejoined Mr. Percy Bobus, "in case of accident, you 
 know : the man may shoot well, though I never saw him in the 
 gallery." 
 
 " Pray," said Lord Borodaile, in a great, though suppressed 
 passion, "pray, Mr. Bobus, how often have I to tell you, that it 
 is not by Mr. Linden that my days are to terminate : you are 
 sure that Carabine saw to that trigger?" 
 
 " Certain," said Mr. Percy, with his mouth full, " certain 
 Bless me, here's the carriage, and breakfast not half done 
 yet." 
 
 "Come, come," cried Borodaile, impatiently, "we must 
 breakfast afterwards. Here, Roberts, see that we have fresh 
 chocolate, and some more cutlets, when we return." 
 
 " I would rather have them now," sighed Mr. Bobus, fore- 
 seeing the possibility of the return being single "Ibis! 
 rcdibis?" etc. 
 
 " Come, we have not a moment to lose," exclaimed Borodaile, 
 hastening down the stairs ; and Mr. Percy Bobus followed, with 
 a strange mixture of various regrets, partly for the breakfast 
 that was lost, and partly for the friend that might be. 
 
 When they arrived at the ground, Clarence and the duke were 
 already there : the latter, who was a dead shot, had fully per- 
 suaded himself that Clarence was equally adroit, and had, in his 
 providence for Borodaile, brought a surgeon. This was a cir- 
 cumstance of which the viscount, in the plenitude of his con- 
 fidence for himself and indifference for his opponent, had 
 never once dreamt. 
 
 The ground was measured the parties were about to take 
 the ground. All Linden's former agitation was vanished his 
 mien was firm, grave, and determined, but he showed none of 
 the careless and fierce hardihood which characterized his ad- 
 versary ; on the contrary, a close observer might have re- 
 marked something sad and dejected amidst all the tranquillity 
 and steadiness of his brow and air. 
 
 " For Heaven's sake," whispered the duke, as he withdrew 
 from the spot, " square your body a little more to your left,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 303 
 
 and remember your exact level. Borodaile is much shorter 
 than you." 
 
 There was a brief, dead pause the signal was given Boro- 
 daile fired his ball pierced Clarence's side ; the wounded 
 man staggered one step, but fell not. He raised his pistol ; the 
 duke bent eagerly forward ; an expression of disappointment 
 and surprise passed his lips ; Clarence had fired in the air. 
 The next moment Linden felt a deadly sickness come over 
 him he fell into the arms of the surgeon. Borodaile, touched 
 by a forbearance which he had so little right to expect, has- 
 tened to the spot. He leaned over his adversary in greater 
 remorse and pity than he would have readily confessed to him- 
 self. Clarence unclosed his eyes ; they dwelt for one moment 
 upon the subdued and earnest countenance of Borodaile. 
 
 " Thank God," he said faintly, " that you were not the vic- 
 tim," and with those words he fell back insensible. They car- 
 ried him to his lodgings. His wound was accurately examined. 
 Though not mortal, it was of a dangerous nature ; and the sur- 
 geons ended a very painful operation, by promising a very lin- 
 gering recovery. 
 
 What a charming satisfaction for being insulted ! 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 "Je me contente de ce qui peut s'ecrire, et je reve tout ce qui petit se 
 rever.* DE SEVIGNE. 
 
 ABOUT a week after his wound, and the second morning of 
 his return to sense and consciousness, when Clarence opened his 
 eyes, they fell upon a female form seated watchfully and anx- 
 iously by his bedside. He raised himself in mute surprise, and 
 the figure, startled by the motion, rose, drew the curtain, and 
 vanished. With great difficulty he rang his bell. His valet, 
 Harrison, on whose mind, though it was of no very exalted 
 order, the kindness and suavity of his master had made a great 
 impression, instantly appeared. 
 
 " Who was that lady ? " asked Linden. " How came she 
 here ? " 
 
 Harrison smiled " Oh, sir, pray please to lie down, and 
 make yourself easy : the lady knows you very well, and wotted 
 come here ; she insists upon staying in the house, so we made 
 up a bed in the drawing-room, and she has watched by you 
 
 * I content myself with writing what I am able, and I dream all I possibly can dream
 
 204 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 night and day. She speaks very little English to be sure, but 
 your honor knows, begging your pardon, how well I speak 
 French." 
 
 "French ! " said Clarence faintly " French ? In Heaven's 
 name, who is she ? " 
 
 " A Madame Madame La Melonveal, or some such name, 
 sir," said the valet. 
 
 Clarence fell back. At that moment his hand was pressed. 
 He turned and saw Talbot by his side. The kind old man had 
 not suffered La Meronville to be Linden's only nurse notwith- 
 standing his age and peculiarity of habits, he had fixed his 
 abode all the day in Clarence's house, and at night, instead of 
 returning to his own home, had taken up his lodgings at the 
 nearest hotel. 
 
 With a jealous and anxious eye to the real interest and re- 
 spectability of his adopted son, Talbot had exerted all his 
 address, and even all his power, to induce La Meronville, who 
 had made her settlement previous to Talbot's, to quit the 
 house, but in vain. With that obstinacy which a French- 
 woman, when she is sentimental, mistakes for nobility of heart, 
 the ci-devant amantc of Lord Borodaile insisted upon watching 
 and tending one of whose sufferings, she said and believed, she 
 was the unhappy, though innocent cause ; and whenever more 
 urgent means of removal were hinted at, La. Meronville flew to 
 the chamber of her beloved, apostrophized him in a strain 
 worthy of one of D'Arlincourt's heroines, and, in short, was so 
 unreasonably outrageous, that the doctors, trembling for the 
 safety of their patient, obtained from Talbot a forced and 
 reluctant acquiescence in the settlement she had obtained. 
 
 Ah ! what a terrible creature a Frenchwoman is, when, in- 
 stead of coquetting with a caprice, she insists upon conceiving a 
 grande passion. Little, however, did Clarence, despite his vex- 
 ation when he learnt of the bienveillance of La Meronville, 
 foresee the whole extent of the consequences it would entail 
 upon him ; still less did Talbot, who in his seclusion knew not 
 the celebrity of the handsome adventuress, calculate upon the 
 notoriety of her motions, or the ill effect her ostentatious 
 attachment would have upon Clarence's prosperity as a lover 
 to Lady Flora. In order to explain these consequences more 
 fully, let us, for the present, leave our hero to the care of the 
 surgeon, his friends, and his would-be mistress ; and while he 
 is more rapidly recovering than the doctors either hoped or 
 presaged, let us renew our acquaintance with a certain fair 
 correspondent
 
 THE DISOWNED. 205 
 
 LETTER FROM THE LADY FLORA ARDENNE, TO MISS ELEANOR 
 TREVANION. 
 
 " MY DEAREST ELEANOR : 
 
 " I have been very ill, or you would sooner have received an 
 answer to your kind too kind and consoling letter. Indeed, 
 I have only just left my bed : they say that I have been de- 
 lirious, and I believe it ; for you cannot conceive what terrible 
 dreams I have had. But these are all over now, and every one 
 is so kind to me my poor mother above all ! It is a pleasant 
 thing to be ill when we have those who love us to watch our 
 recovery. 
 
 " I have only been in bed a few days ; yet it seems to me as 
 if a long portion of my existence were past as if I had stepped 
 into a new era. You remember that my last letter attempted 
 to express my feelings at mamma's speech about Clarence, and 
 at my seeing him so suddenly. Now, dearest, I cannot but 
 look on that day, on these sensations, as on a distant dream. 
 Every one is so kind to me, mamma caresses and soothes me so 
 fondly, that I fancy I must have been under some illusion. I 
 am sure they could not seriously have meant to forbid his ad- 
 dresses. No, no : I feel that all will yet be well so well, that 
 even you, who are of so contented a temper, will own, that if 
 you were not Eleanor you would be Flora. 
 
 " I wonder whether Clarence knows that I have been ill. I 
 wish you knew him. Well, dearest, this letter a very unhand- 
 some return, I own, for yours must content you at present, 
 for they will not let me write more though, so far as I am con- 
 cerned, I am never so weak, in frame I mean, but what I could 
 scribble to you about him. Addio carissima. F. A. 
 
 " I have prevailed on mamma, who wished to sit by me and 
 amuse me, to go to the Opera to-night, the only amusement of 
 which she is particularly fond. Heaven forgive me for my 
 insincerity, but he always comes into our box, and I long to hear 
 some news of him." 
 
 LETTER II. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 
 "ELEANOR, dearest Eleanor, I am again very ill, but not as 
 I was before, ill from a foolish vexation of mind : no, I am 
 now calm, and even happy. It was from an increase of cold 
 only that I have suffered a relapse. You may believe thi 
 assure you, in spite of your well-meant but bitter jests upon my 
 infatuation, as you very rightly call it, for Mr. Linden. You
 
 206 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 ask me what news from the Opera ? Silly girl that I was, to lie 
 awake hour after hour, and refuse even to take my draught, 
 lest I should be surprised into sleep, till mamma returned. I 
 sent Jermyn down directly I heard her knock at the door (oh, 
 how anxiously I had listened for it !), to say that I was still 
 awake and longed to see her. So, of course, mamma came up, 
 and felt my pulse, and said it was very feverish, and wondered 
 the draught had not composed me with a great deal more to 
 the same purpose, which I bore as patiently as I could till it 
 was my turn to talk ; and then I admired her dress and her 
 coiffure, and asked if it was a full house, and whether \\\Qprima 
 donna was in voice, etc., etc. : till, at last, I won my way to the 
 inquiry of who were her visitors. ' Lord Borodaile," said she, 
 ' and the Duke of , and Mr. St. George, and Captain Les- 
 lie, and Mr. De Retz, and many others.' I felt so disappointed, 
 Eleanor, but did not dare ask whether he was not of the list ; 
 till at last, my mother, observing me narrowly, said ' And, by- 
 the-by, Mr. Linden looked in for a few minutes. I am glad, 
 my dearest Flora, that I spoke to you so decidedly about him 
 the other day.' 'Why, mamma?' said I, hiding my face under 
 the clothes. ' Because,' said she, in rather a raised voice, 'he 
 is quite unworthy of you ! but it is late now, and you should 
 go to sleep to-morrow I will tell you more." I would have 
 given worlds to press the question then, but could not venture. 
 Mamma kissed and left me. I tried to twist her words into a 
 hundred meanings, but in each I only thought that they were 
 dictated by some worldly information some new doubts as to 
 his birth or fortune ; and, though that supposition distressed 
 me greatly, yet it could not alter my love, or deprive me of 
 hope ; and so I cried, and guessed, and guessed, and cried, till 
 at last I cried myself to sleep. 
 
 "When I awoke, mamma was already up, and sitting beside 
 me : she talked to me for more than an hour upon ordinary 
 subjects, till, at last, perceiving how absent or rather impatient 
 I appeared, she dismissed Jermyn, and spoke to me thus : 
 
 4 You know, Flora, that I have always loved you, more per- 
 haps than 1 ought to have done, more certainly than I have 
 loved your brothers and sisters ; but you were my eldest child, 
 my first-born, and all the earliest associations of a mother are 
 blent and entwined with you. You may be sure, therefore, that 
 I have ever had only your happiness in view, and that it is only 
 with a regard to that end that I now speak to you.' 
 
 "I was a little frightened, Eleanor, by this opening, but I was 
 much more touched, so I took mamma's hand and kissed, and
 
 THE DISOWNED. 207 
 
 wept silently over it ; she continued : 'I observed Mr. Lin- 
 den's attention to you, at ; I knew nothing more of his 
 
 rank and birth then, than I do at present : but his situation in 
 the embassy, and his personal appearance, naturally induced 
 me to suppose him a gentleman of family, and, therefore, if not 
 a great, at least not an inferior match for you, so far as worldly 
 distinctions are concerned. Added to this, he was uncommonly 
 handsome, and had that general reputation for talent which is 
 often better than actual wealth or hereditary titles. I therefore 
 did not check, though I would not encourage, any attachment 
 you might form for him ; and nothing being declared or de- 
 cisive on either side when we left , I imagined that if your 
 
 flirtation with him did even amount to a momentary and girlish 
 phantasy, absence and change of scene would easily and rapidly 
 efface the impression. I believe that in a great measure it was 
 effaced, when Lord Aspeden returned to England, and with 
 him Mr. Linden. You again met the latter in society almost 
 as constantly as before ; a caprice nearly conquered was once 
 more renewed ; and in my anxiety that you should marry, not 
 for aggrandizement, but happiness, I own to my sorrow that I 
 rather favored than forbade his addresses. The young man 
 remember Flora appeared in society as the nephew and heir 
 of a gentleman of ancient family and considerable property ; 
 he was rising in diplomacy, popular in the world, and, so far as 
 we could see, of irreproachable character ; this must plead my 
 excuse for tolerating his visits, without instituting further in- 
 quiries respecting him, and allowing your attachment to pro- 
 ceed without ascertaining how far it had yet extended. I was 
 awakened to a sense of my indiscretion, by an inquiry, which 
 Mr. Linden's popularity rendered general, viz : if Mr. Talbot 
 was his uncle who was his father who his more immediate 
 relations? and at that time Lord Borodaile informed us of the 
 falsehood he had either asserted or allowed to be spread, in 
 claiming Mr. Talbot as his relation. This you will observe en- 
 tirely altered the situation of Mr. Linden with respect to you. 
 Not only his rank in life became uncertain, but suspicious. 
 Nor was this all : his very personal respectability was nolonger 
 unimpeachable. Was this dubious and intrusive person, without 
 a name, and with a sullied honor, to be your suitor ? No, Flora ; 
 and it was from this indignant conviction that I spoke to you 
 some days since. Forgive me, my child, if I was less cautious, 
 less confidential than I am now. I did not imagine the wound 
 was so deep, and thought that I should best cure you by seeming 
 unconscious of your danger. The case is now changed ; your
 
 20$ THIS DISOWNED. 
 
 illness has convinced me of my fault, and the extent of you? 
 unhappy attachment ; but will my own dear child pardon me 
 if I still continue, if I even confirm, my disapproval of her 
 choice ? Last night at the Opera Mr. Linden entered my box. 
 I own that I was cooler to him than usual. He soon left us, 
 and after the Opera I saw him with the Duke of Haverfield, 
 one of the most incorrigible roue's of the day, leading out a 
 woman of notoriously bad character, and of the most ostenta- 
 tious profligacy. He might have had some propriety, some 
 decency, some concealment at least, but he passed just before 
 me before the mother of the woman to whom his vows of 
 honorable attachment were due, and who at that very instant 
 was suffering from her infatuation for him. Now Flora, for 
 this man, an obscure and possibly a plebeian adventurer 
 whose only claim to notice has been founded on falsehood 
 whose only merit, a love of you, has been, if not utterly de- 
 stroyed, at least polluted and debased for this man, poor alike 
 in fortune, character, and honor, can you any longer profess 
 affection or esteem ! ' 
 
 " ' Never, never, never ! ' cried I, springing from the bed, 
 and throwing myself upon my mother's neck. ' Never ; I am 
 your own Flora once more. I will never suffer any one again 
 to make me forget you,' and then I sobbed so violently that 
 mamma was frightened, and made me lie down, and left me to 
 sleep. Several hours have passed since then, and I could not 
 sleep nor think, and I would not cry, for he is no longer wor- 
 thy of my tears ; so I have written to you. 
 
 "Oh how I despise and hate myself for having so utterly, in 
 my vanity and folly, forgotten my mother, that dear, kind, 
 constant friend, who never cost me a single tear, but for my 
 own ingratitude. Think, Eleanor, what an affront to me to 
 me, who, he so often said, had made all other women worthless 
 in his eyes. Do I hate him ? No, I cannot hate. Do I de- 
 spise ? No, I will not despise, but I will forget him, and keep 
 my contempt and hatred for myself. 
 
 "God bless you I am worn out. Write soon, or rather 
 come, if possible, to your affectionate but unworthy friend, 
 
 "F. A. 
 
 "Good Heavens ! Eleanor, he is wounded. He has fought 
 with Lord Borodaile. I have just heard it ; Jermyn told me. 
 Can it, can it be true ? What what have I said against him ? 
 Hate ! forget? No, no : I never loved him till now."
 
 THE DISOWNED. *0<) 
 
 LETTER III. 
 
 FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME. 
 (After an interval of several weeks.) 
 
 "TIME has flown, my Eleanor, since you left me, after your 
 short but kind visit, with a heavy but healing wing. I do not 
 think I shall ever again be the giddy girl I have been ; but my 
 head will change, not my heart ; that was never giddy, and 
 that shall still be as much yours as ever. You are wrong in 
 thinking I have not forgotten, at least renounced al laffection for, 
 Mr. Linden. I have, though with a long and bitter effort. 
 The woman for whom he fought went, you know, to his house, 
 immediately on hearing of his wound. She has continued 
 with him ever since. He had the audacity to write to me 
 once; my mother brought me the note, and said nothing. She 
 read my heart aright. I returned it unopened. He has even 
 called since his convalescence. Mamma was not at home to him. 
 I hear that he looks pale and altered. I hope not at least I 
 cannot resist praying for his recovery. I stay within entirely ; 
 the season is now over, and there are no parties : but I trem- 
 ble at the thought of meeting him even in the Park or the 
 Gardens. Papa talks of going into the country next week. I 
 cannot tell you how eagerly I look forward to it ; and 
 you will then come and see me will you not, dearest 
 Eleanor? 
 
 " Ah ! what happy days we will have yet ; we will read Ital- 
 ian together, as we used to do ; you shall teach me your songs, 
 and I will instruct you in mine ; we will keep birds as we did 
 let me see eight years ago. You will never talk to me of my 
 folly : let that be as if it had never been ; but I will wonder 
 with you about your future choice, and grow happy in antici- 
 pating your happiness. Oh, how selfish I was some weeks 
 ago then I could only overwhelm you with my egotisms ; 
 now, Eleanor, it is your turn, and you shall see how patiently 
 I will listen to yours. Never fear that you can be too prolix ; 
 the diffuser you are, the easier I shall forgive myself. 
 
 "Are you fond of poetry, Eleanor? I used to say so, but 1 
 never felt that I was till lately. I will show you my favorite 
 passages in my favorite poets when you come to see me. You 
 shall see if yours correspond with mine. I am so impatient to 
 leave this horrid town, where everything seems dull, yet fever- 
 ishinsipid, yet false. Shall we not be happy when we meet?
 
 2K> THE DISOWNED. 
 
 If your dear aunt will come with you, she shall see how I (that 
 is, my mind) am improved. 
 " Farewell. 
 
 "Ever your most affectionate, 
 
 "F. A." 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 " Brave Talbot, we will follow thee." Henry the Sixth. 
 
 " My letter insultingly returned myself refused admittance 
 not a single inquiry made during my illness indifference 
 joined to positive contempt. By Heaven, it is insupportable !" 
 
 " My dear Clarence," said Talbot, to his young friend, who, 
 fretful from pain, and writhing beneath his mortification, walked 
 to and fro his chamber with an impatient stride ; " my dear 
 Clarence, do sit down, and not irritate your wound by such 
 violent exercise. I am as much enraged as yourself at the 
 treatment you have received, and no less at a loss to account 
 for it. Your duel, however unfortunate the event, must have 
 done you credit, and obtained you a reputation both for gener- 
 osity and spirit ; so that it cannot be to that occurrence that you 
 are to attribute the change. Let us rather suppose that Lady 
 Flora's attachment to you has become evident to her father and 
 mother that they naturally think it would be very undesirable 
 to marry their daughter to a man whose family nobody knows, 
 and whose respectability he is forced into fighting in order to 
 support. Suffer me then to call on Lady Westborough, whom 
 I knew many years ago, and explain your origin, as well as 
 your relationship to me." 
 
 Linden paused irresolutely. 
 
 " Were I sure that Lady Flora was not utterly influenced 
 by her mother's worldly views, I would gladly consent to your 
 proposal but " 
 
 " Forgive me, Clarence," cried Talbot ; " but you really ar- 
 gue much more like a very young man than I ever heard you 
 do before even four years ago. To be sure Lady Flora is influ- 
 enced by her mother's views. Would you have her otherwise ? 
 Would you have her, in defiance of all propriety, modesty, 
 obedience to her parents, and right feeling for herself, encour- 
 age an attachment to a person not only unknown, but who does 
 not even condescend to throw off the incognito to the woman 
 he addresses ? Come, Clarence, give me my instructions, and 
 let me act as your ambassador to-morrow."
 
 THE DISOWNED. 211 
 
 Clarence was silent. 
 
 "I may consider it settled then," replied Talbot: "mean- 
 while you shall come home and stay with me : the pure air of 
 the country, even so near town, will do you more good than all 
 the doctors in London ; and, besides, you will thus be enabled 
 to escape from that persecuting Frenchwoman." 
 
 " In what manner ? " said Clarence. 
 
 " Why, when you are in my house, she cannot well take up 
 her abode with you ; and you shall, while I am forwarding 
 your suit with Lady Flora, write a very flattering, very grateful 
 letter of excuses to Madame la Meronville. But leave me 
 alone to draw it up for you ; meanwhile, let Harrison pack up 
 your clothes and medicines, and we will effect our escape while 
 Madame la Meronville yet sleeps." 
 
 Clarence rung the bell ; the orders were given, executed, and 
 in less than an hour he and his friend were on their road to 
 Talbot's villa. 
 
 As they drove slowly through the grounds to the house, Clar- 
 ence was sensibly struck with the quiet and stillness which 
 breathed around. On either side of the road the honeysuckle 
 and the rose cast their sweet scents to the summer wind, which, 
 though it was scarcely noon, stirred freshly among the trees, 
 and waved, as if it breathed a second youth over the wan cheek 
 of the convalescent. The old servant's ear had caught the 
 sound of wheels, and he came to the door, with an expression 
 of quiet delight on his dry countenance, to welcome in hismas- 
 ter. They had lived together for so many years, that they were 
 grown like one another. Indeed, the veteran valet prided him- 
 self on his happy adoption of his master's dress and manner. 
 A proud man, we ween, was that domestic, whenever he had 
 time and listeners for the indulgence of his honest loquacity ; 
 many an ancient tale of his master's former glories was then 
 poured from his unburthening remembrance. With what a 
 glow, with what a racy enjoyment did he expand upon the 
 triumphs of the past; how eloquently did he particularize the 
 exact grace with which young Mr. Talbot was wont to enter 
 the room, in which he instantly became the cynosure of ladies' 
 eyes; how faithfully did he minute the courtly dress, the 
 exquisite choice of color, the costly splendor of material, 
 which were the envy of gentles, and the despairing wonder 
 of their valets ; and then the zest with which the good old man 
 would cry " I dressed the boy ! " Even still, this modern 
 Scipio (Le Sage's Scipio, not Rome's) would not believe that his 
 master's sun was utterly set : he was only in a temporary retire-
 
 812 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 ment, and would, one day or other, reappear and reastonish 
 the London world. " I would give my right arm," Jasper was 
 wont to say, " to see master at court. How fond the king 
 would be of him. Ah ! well, well ; I wish he was not so mel- 
 ancholy like with his books, but would go out like other people ! " 
 
 Poor Jasper ! Time is, in general, a harsh wizard in his 
 transformations ; but the change which thou didst lament so 
 bitterly, was happier for thy master than all his former "palmy 
 state" of admiration and homage. "Nous avons recherche le 
 p/aisir," says Rousseau, in one of his own inimitable antitheses, 
 "ct/e bonheur a fui loin de nous."* But in the pursuit of 
 Pleasure we sometimes chance on Wisdom, and Wisdom leads 
 us to the right track, which, if it takes us not so far as Happi- 
 ness, is sure at least of the shelter of Content. 
 
 Talbot leant kindly upon Jasper's arm as he descended from 
 the carriage, and inquired into his servant's rheumatism with 
 the anxiety of a friend. The old housekeeper, waiting in the 
 hall, next received his attention ; and in entering the drawing- 
 room, with that consideration, even to animals, which his 
 worldly benevolence had taught him, he paused to notice and 
 caress a large gray cat which rubbed herself against his legs. 
 Doubtless there is some pleasure in making even a gray cat 
 happy ! 
 
 Clarence having patiently undergone all the shrugs, and 
 sighs, and exclamations of compassion at his reduced and wan 
 appearance, which are the especial prerogatives of ancient do- 
 mestics, followed the old man into the room. Papers and 
 books, though carefully dusted, were left scrupulously in the 
 places in which Talbot had last deposited them (incompara- 
 ble good fortune ! what would we not give for such chamber 
 hand-maidens !) fresh flowers were in the stands and vases ; 
 the large library chair was jealously set in its accustomed place, 
 and all wore, to Talbot's eyes, that cheerful yet sober look 
 of welcome and familiarity which makes a friend of out 
 house. 
 
 The old man was in high spirits : 
 
 " I know not how it is," said he, " but I feel younger than 
 ever ! You have often expressed a wish to see my family seat 
 at Scarsdale ; it is certainly a great distance hence ; but as you 
 will be my travelling companion, I think I will try and crawl 
 there before the summer is over ; or, what say you, Clarence, 
 shall I lend it to you and Lady Flora for the honeymoon ? 
 You blush ! A diplomatist blush ! Ah, how the world has 
 
 * \Ye have pursued pleasure, and happiness has fled far from our reach.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 changed since my time ! But come, Clarence, suppose you 
 write to La Meronville?" 
 
 " Not to-day, sir, if you please," said Linden, " I feel so very 
 weak." 
 
 "As you please, Clarence ; but some years hence you will 
 learn the value of the present. Youth is always a procrasti- 
 nator, and, consequently, always penitent." And thus Talbot 
 ran on into a strain of conversation, half serious, half gay, 
 which lasted till Clarence went upstairs to lie down and muse 
 on Lady Flora Ardenne. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 " La vie est un sommeil. Les vieillards sont ceux dont le sommeila et^ 
 plus long : ils ne commencent a se reveiller que quand il faut mourir." * 
 LA BRUYERE. 
 
 "You wonder why I have never turned author, with my con- 
 stant love of literature, and my former desire of fame," said 
 Talbot, as he and Clarence sate alone after dinner, " discussing 
 many things " : " the fact is, that I have often intended it, and as 
 often been frightened from my design. Those terrible feuds 
 those vehement disputes those recriminations of abuse, so 
 inseparable from literary life, appear to me too dreadful for a 
 man not utterly hardened or malevolent voluntarily to encounter. 
 Good heavens ! what acerbity sours the blood of an author ! 
 The manifestoes of opposing generals, advancing to pillage, to 
 burn, to destroy, contain not a tithe of the ferocity which 
 animates the pages of literary controversialists ! No term of 
 reproach is too severe, no vituperation too excessive ! the 
 blackest passions, the bitterest, the meanest malice, pour caustic 
 and poison upon every page ! It seems as if the greatest 
 talent, the most elaborate knowledge, only sprung from the 
 weakest and worst regulated mind, as exotics from dung. The 
 private records, the public works of men of letters, teem with 
 an immitigable fury ! Their histories might all be reduced 
 into these sentences they were born they quarrelled they 
 died ! " 
 
 " But," said Clarence, " it would matter little to the world i 
 these quarrels were confined merely to poets and men of 
 imaginative literature, in whom irritability is perhaps almost 
 
 * Life is a sleep the aged are those whose sleep has been the longest ; they begin to 
 
 awaken themselves just as they are obliged to die.
 
 214 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 necessarily allied to the keen and quick susceptibilities which 
 constitute their genius. These are more to be lamented and 
 wondered at among philosophers, theologians, and men of 
 science ; the coolness, the patience, the benevolence, which 
 ought to characterize their works, should at least moderate their 
 jealousy and soften their disputes." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Talbot, "but the vanity of discovery is no less 
 acute than that of creation : the self-love of a philospher is 
 no less self-love than that of a poet. Besides, those sects the 
 most sure of their opinions, whether in religion or science, are 
 always the most bigoted and persecuting. Moreover, nearly 
 all men deceive themselves in disputes, and imagine that they 
 are intolerant, not through private jealousy, but public benevo- 
 lence ; they never declaim against the injustice done to 
 themselves no, it is the terrible injury done to society which 
 grieves and inflames them. It is not the bitter expressions 
 against their dogmas which give them pain : by no means ; 
 it is the atrocious doctrines so prejudicial to the country, if 
 in politics so pernicious to the world, if in philosophy 
 which their duty, not their vanity, induces them to denounce 
 and anathematize." 
 
 " There seems," said Clarence, " to be a sort of reaction in 
 sophistry and hypocrisy ; there has, perhaps, never been a 
 deceiver who was not, by his own passions, himself the 
 deceived." 
 
 " Very true," said Talbot, " and it is a pity that historians 
 have not kept that fact in view ; we should then have had a 
 better notion of the Cromwells and Mahomets of the past than 
 we have now, nor judged those as utter impostors who were 
 probably half dupes. But to return to myself. I think you 
 will be already able to answer your own question, why did I 
 not turn author, now that we have given a momentary considera- 
 tion to the penalties consequent on such a profession. But in 
 truth, as I near the close of my life, I often regret that I had 
 not more courage, for there is in us all a certain restlessness in 
 the persuasion, whether true or false, of superior knowledge or 
 intellect, and this urges us on to the proof ; or, if we resist its 
 impulse, renders us discontented with our idleness, and dis- 
 appointed with the past. I have everything now in my 
 possession which it has been the desire of my later years to 
 enjoy : health, retirement, successful study, and the affection 
 of one in whose breast, when I am gone, my memory will not 
 utterly pass away. With these advantages, added to the gifts 
 of fortune, and an habitual elasticity of spirit, I confess that
 
 THE DISOWNED. 2 15 
 
 rny happiness is not free from a biting and frequent regret : I 
 would fain have been a better citizen ; I would fain have died 
 in the consciousness, not only that I had improved my mind to 
 the utmost, but that I had turned that improvement to the 
 benefit of my fellow-creatures. As it is, in living wholly for 
 myself, I feel that my philosophy has wanted generosity ; and 
 my indifference to glory has proceeded from a weakness, not, 
 as I once persuaded myself, from a virtue ; but the fruitless- 
 ness of my existence has been the consequence of the arduous 
 frivolities and the petty objects in which my early years were 
 consumed ; and my mind, in losing the enjoyments which it 
 formerly possessed, had no longer the vigor to create for itself 
 a new soil, from which labor it could only hope for more 
 valuable fruits. It is no contradiction to see those who eagerly 
 courted society in their youth shrink from it the most sensi- 
 tively in their age ; for they who possess certain advantages, 
 and are morbidly vain of them, will naturally be disposed to 
 seek that sphere for which those advantages are best calculated ; 
 and when youth and its concomitants depart, the vanity so long 
 fed still remains, and perpetually mortifies them by recalling 
 not so much the qualities they have lost, as the esteem which 
 those qualities conferred ; and by contrasting not so much their 
 own present alteration, as the change they experience in the 
 respect and consideration of others. What wonder, then, that 
 they eagerly fly from the world, which has only mortification 
 for their self-love, or that we find, in biography, how often the 
 most assiduous votaries of pleasure have become the most 
 rigid of recluses? For my part, I think that that love of soli- 
 tude which the ancients so eminently possessed, and which, to 
 this day, is considered by some as the sign of a great mind, 
 nearly always arises from a tenderness of vanity, easily 
 wounded in the commerce of the rough world ; and that it is 
 under the shadow of Disappointment that we must look for 
 the hermitage. Diderot did well, even at the risk of offending 
 Rousseau, to write against solitude. The more a moralist binds 
 man to man, and forbids us to divorce our interest from our 
 kind, the more effectually is the end of morality obtained. 
 They only are justifiable in seclusion who, like the Greek philos- 
 ophers, make that very seclusion the means of serving and 
 enlightening their race who from their retreats send forth 
 their oracles of wisdom, and render the desert which surrounds 
 them eloquent with the voice of truth. But remember, Clarence 
 (and let my life, useless in itself, have at least this moral), 
 that for him who in no wise cultivates his tnlent for the
 
 4l6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 benefit of others ; who is contented with being a good hermit 
 at the expense of being a bad citizen ; who looks from his 
 retreat upon a life wasted in the diffiriles nuga of the most 
 frivolous part of the world, nor redeems in the closet the time 
 he has spent in the saloon, remember, that for him seclusion 
 loses its dignity, philosophy its comfort, benevolence its hope, 
 and even religion its balm. Knowledge unemployed may 
 preserve us from vice but knowledge beneficently employed is 
 virtue. Perfect happiness, in our present state, is impossible ; 
 for Hobbes says justly, that our nature is inseparable from 
 desires, and that the very word desire (the craving for some- 
 thing not possessed) implies that our present felicity is not 
 complete. But there is one way of attaining what we may 
 term, if not utter, at least mortal happiness ; it is this a 
 sincere and unrelaxing activity for the happiness of others. In 
 that one maxim is concentrated whatever is noble in morality, 
 sublime in religion, or unanswerable in truth. In that pursuit 
 we have all scope for whatever is excellent in our hearts, and 
 none for the petty passions which our nature is heir to. Thus 
 engaged, whatever be our errors, there will be nobility, not 
 weakness, in our remorse ; whatever our failure, virtue, not 
 selfishness, in our regret ; and, in success, vanity itself will 
 become holy and triumph eternal. As astrologers were wont 
 to receive upon metals ' the benign aspect of the stars, so as to 
 detain and fix, as it were, the felicity of that hour which would 
 otherwise be volatile and fugitive,' * even so will that success 
 leave imprinted upon our memory a blessing which cannot 
 pass away preserve for ever upon our names, as on a signet, 
 the hallowed influence of the hour in which our great end was 
 effected, and treasure up 'the relics of heaven ' in the sanctuary 
 of a human fame." 
 
 As the old man ceased, there was a faint and hectic flush 
 over his face, an enthusiasm on his features, which age made 
 almost holy, and which Clarence had never observed there be- 
 fore. In truth, his young listener was deeply affected, and the 
 advice of his adopted parent was afterwards impressed with 
 more awful solemnity upon his remembrance. Already he had 
 acquired much worldly lore from Talbot's precepts and con- 
 versation. He had obtained even something better than world- 
 ly lore a kindly and indulgent disposition to his fellow creat- 
 ures : for he had seen that foibles were not inconsistent with 
 generous and great qualities, and that we judge wrongly of hu- 
 inan. nature when we ridicule its littleness. The very circum- 
 
 * Bacon.
 
 THE DISOWNED. $17 
 
 Stances which make the shallow misanthropical, incline the wise 
 to be benevolent. Fools discover that frailty is not incompati- 
 ble with great men, they wonder and despise ; but the discern- 
 ing find that greatness is not incompatible with frailty, and they 
 admire and indulge. 
 
 But a still greater benefit than this of toleration did Clarence 
 derive from the commune of that night. He became strength- 
 ened in his honorable ambition, and nerved to unrelaxing exer- 
 tion. The recollection of Talbot's last words, on that night, 
 occurred to him often and often, when sick at heart, and languid 
 with baffled hope ! it roused him from that gloom and des- 
 pondency which are always unfavorable to virtue, and in- 
 cited him once more to that labor in the vineyard which, whether 
 our hour be late or early, will, if earnest, obtain a blessing and 
 reward. 
 
 The hour was now waxing late, and Talbot, mindful of his 
 companion's health, rose to retire. As he pressed Clarence's 
 hand and bade him farewell for the night, Linden thought there 
 was something more than usually impressive in his manner and 
 affectionate in his words. Perhaps this was the natural result 
 of their conversation. 
 
 The next morning, Clarence was awakened by a noise. He 
 listened, and heard distinctly an alarmed cry proceeding from 
 the room in which Talbot slept, and which was opposite to his 
 own. He rose hastily and hurried to the chamber. The door 
 was open, the old servant was bending over the bed : Clarence 
 approached, and saw that he supported his master in his arms. 
 " Good God ! " he cried, " what is the matter ? " The faithful 
 old man lifted up his face to Clarence, and the big tears rolled 
 fast from eyes in which the sources of such emotion were well- 
 nigh dried up. 
 
 "He loved you well, sir! " he said, and could say no more. 
 He dropped the body gently, and, throwing himself on the 
 floor, sobbed aloud. With a foreboding and chilled heart, Clar- 
 ence bent forward; the face of his benefactor lay directly be- 
 fore him, and the hand of death was upon it. The soul had 
 passed to its account hours since, in the hush of night : passed 
 apparently, without a struggle or a pang, like the wind, which 
 animates the harp one moment, and the next is gone. 
 
 Linden seized his hand it was heavy and cold; his eye rested 
 upon the miniature of the unfortunate Lady Merton, which, since 
 the night of the attempted robbery, Talbot had worn constantly 
 round his neck. Strange and powerful was the contrast of the 
 pictured face, in which not a color had yet faded, and where the
 
 2l8 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 hues, and fulness, and prime of youth dwelt, unconscious of 
 the lapse of years, with the aged and shrunken countenance of 
 the deceased. 
 
 In that contrast was a sad and mighty moral ; it wrought, 
 as it were, a contract between youth and age, and conveyed a 
 rapid but full history of our passions and our life. 
 
 The servant looked up once more on the countenance ; he 
 pointed toward it and muttered " See see ! how awfully it 
 is changed ! " 
 
 " But there is a smile upon it ! " said Clarence, as he flung 
 himself beside the body and burst into tears. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 "Virtue is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are incensed or 
 crushed ; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity doth best 
 discover virtue." BACON. 
 
 IT is somewhat remarkable, that while Talbot was bequeath- 
 ing to Clarence, as the most valuable of legacies, the doctrines of 
 a philosophy he had acquired, perhaps too late to practice, 
 Glendower was carrying those very doctrines, so far as his 
 limited sphere would allow, into the rule and exercise of his 
 life. 
 
 Since the death of the bookseller, which we have before re- 
 corded, Glendower had been left utterly without resource. The 
 others to whom he applied were indisposed to avail themselves 
 of an unknown ability. The trade of book-making was not 
 then as it is now, and if it had been, it would not have sug- 
 gested itself to the high-spirited and unworldly student. Some 
 publishers offered, it is true, a reward tempting enough for an 
 immoral tale ; others spoke of the value of an attack upon the 
 Americans ; one suggested an ode to the minister, and another 
 hinted that a pension might possibly be granted to one who 
 would prove extortion not tyranny. But these insinuations 
 fell upon a dull ear, and the tribe of Barabbas were astonished 
 to find that an author could imagine interest and principle not 
 synonymous. 
 
 Struggling with want, which hourly grew more imperious 
 and urgent ; wasting his heart on studies which brought fever 
 to his pulse, and disappointment to his ambition ; gnawed to 
 the very soul by the mortifications which his poverty gave to 
 his pride ; and watching with tearless eyes, but a maddening
 
 DISOWNED. 210 
 
 brain, the slender form of his wife, now waxing weaker and 
 fainter, as the canker of disease fastened upon the core of her 
 young but blighted life, there was yet a high, though, alas ! not 
 constant consolation within him, whenever from the troubles 
 of this dim spot his thoughts could escape, like birds released 
 from their cage, and lose themselves in the lustre and freedorn 
 of their native heaven. 
 
 " If," thought he, as he looked upon his secret and treasured 
 work, " if the wind scatter, or the rock receive these seeds, 
 they were at least dispersed by a hand which asked no selfish 
 return, and a heart which would have lavished the harvest 
 of its labors upon those who know not the husbandman, and 
 trample his hopes into the dust." 
 
 But by degrees, this comfort of a noble and generous nature, 
 these whispers of a vanity rather to be termed holy than ex- 
 cusable, began to grow unfrequent and low. The cravings of 
 a more engrossing and heavy want than those of the mind 
 came eagerly and rapidly upon him ; the fair cheek of his in- 
 fant became pinched and hollow ; his wife conquered nature 
 itself by love, and starved herself in silence, and set bread be- 
 fore him with a smile, and bade him eat. 
 
 " But you you ? " he would ask inquiringly, and then pause. 
 
 " I have dined, dearest ; I want nothing; eat, love, eat." 
 
 But he ate not. The food robbed from her seemed to him 
 more deadly than poison ; and he would rise, and dash his 
 hand to his brow, and go forth alone, with nature unsatisfied 
 to look upon this luxurious world, and learn content. 
 
 It was after such a scene that, one day, he wandered forth 
 into the streets, desperate and confused in mind, and fainting 
 with hunger, and half insane with fiery and wrong thoughts, 
 which dashed over his barren and gloomy soul, and desolated, 
 but conquered not! It was evening: he stood (for he had 
 strode on so rapidly, at first, that his strength was now ex- 
 hausted and he was forced to pause), leaning against the railed 
 area of a house, in a lone and unfrequented street. No pas- 
 senger shared the dull and obscure thoroughfare. He stood, 
 literally, in scene as in heart, solitary amidst the great city, 
 and wherever he looked lo ! there were none ! 
 
 " Two days," said he, slowly and faintly, " two days, and 
 bread has only once passed my lips : and that was snatched 
 from her from those lips which I have fed with sweet and 
 holy kisses, and whence my sole comfort in this weary life has 
 been drawn. And she ay, she starves and my child, too. 
 They complain not they murmur not but they lift up their
 
 22O THE DISOWNED. 
 
 eyes to me and ask for Merciful God, thou didst make 
 man in benevolence ; thou dost survey this world with a pity- 
 ing and paternal eye save, comfort, cherish them, and crush 
 me if thou wilt ! " 
 
 At that moment a man darted suddenly from an obscure 
 alley, and passed Glendower at full speed ; presently came a 
 cry and a shout, and the rapid trampling of feet, and, in an- 
 other moment, an eager and breathless crowd rushed upon the 
 solitude of the street. 
 
 "Where is he?" cried a hundred voices to Glendower 
 "where which road did the robber take ?" but Glendower 
 could not answer ; his nerves were unstrung, and his dizzy 
 brain swam and reeled : and the faces which peered upon him. 
 and the voices which shrieked and yelled in his ear, were to 
 him as the forms and sounds of a ghastly and phantasmal 
 world. His head drooped upon his bosom he clung to the 
 area for support the crowd passed on they were in pursuit 
 of guilt they were thirsting after blood they were going to 
 fill the dungeon and feed the gibbet what to them was the 
 virtue they could have supported, or the famine they could 
 have relieved? But they knew not his distress, nor the extent 
 of his weakness, or some would have tarried and aided, for 
 there is, after all, as much kindness as cruelty in our nature ; 
 perhaps they thought it was only some intoxicated and maud- 
 lin idler or, perhaps, in the heat of their pursuit, they thought 
 not at all. 
 
 So they rolled on, and their voices died away, and their steps 
 were hushed, and Glendower, insensible and cold as the iron 
 he clung to, was once more alone. Slowly he revived ; he 
 opened his dim and glazing eyes, and saw the evening star 
 break from its chamber, and, though sullied by the thick and 
 foggy air, scatter its holy smiles upon the polluted city. 
 
 He looked quietly on the still night, and its first watcher 
 among the hosts of heaven, and felt something of balm sink 
 into his soul ; not, indeed, that vague and delicious calm which, 
 in his boyhood of poesy and romance, he had drunk in, by 
 green solitudes, from the mellow twilight, but a quiet, sad 
 and sober, circling gradually over his mind, and bringing it 
 back from its confused and disordered visions and darkness, 
 to the recollection and reality of his bitter life. 
 
 By degrees the scene he had so imperfectly witnessed, the 
 flight of the robber, and the eager pursuit of the mob, grew over 
 him : a dark and guilty thought burst upon his mind. 
 
 " I am a man like that criminal," said he fiercely. " I have
 
 THE DISOWNED. 32 1 
 
 nerves, sinews, muscles, flesh ; I feel hunger, thirst, pain, as 
 acutely ; why should I endure more than he can ? Perhaps he 
 had a wife a child and he saw them starving inch by inch, 
 and he felt that he ought to be their protector and so he 
 sinned. And I I can I not sin too for mine? can I not dare 
 what the wild beast and the vulture, and the fierce hearts of 
 my brethren dare for their mates and young? One gripe of 
 this hand one cry from this voice and my board might be 
 heaped with plenty, and my child fed, and s/ie smile as she 
 was wont to smile for one night at least." 
 
 And as these thoughts broke upon him, Glendower rose, and 
 with a step firm, even in weakness, he strode unconsciously 
 onward. 
 
 A figure appeared ; Glendower's heart beat thick. He 
 slouched his hat over his brows, and for one moment wrestled 
 with his pride and his stern virtue ; the virtue conquered, but 
 not the pride ; the virtue forbade him to be the robber the 
 pride submitted to be the suppliant. He sprang forward, ex- 
 tended his hands toward the stranger, and cried in a sharp 
 voice, the agony of which rung through the long, dull street 
 with a sudden and echoless sound, "Charity food ! " 
 
 The stranger paused one of the boldest of men in his own 
 line, he was as timid as a woman in any other ; mistaking the 
 meaning of the petitioner, and terrified by the vehemence of 
 his gesture, he said, in a trembling tone, as he hastily pulled 
 out his purse : 
 
 "There, there ! do not hurt me take it take all !" 
 
 Glendower knew the voice, as a sound not unfamiliar to him ; 
 his pride returned in full force. " None," thought he, " who 
 know me, shall know my full degradation also." And he 
 turned away ; but the stranger, mistaking the motion, extended 
 his hand to him, saying, "Take this, my friend you will have 
 no need of violence!" and as he advanced nearer to his sup- 
 posed assailant, he beheld, by the pale lamp-light, and instantly 
 recognized, his features : 
 
 "Ah !" cried he, in astonishment, but with internal rejoic- 
 ing "ah ! is it you who are thus reduced ! " 
 
 "You say right, Crauford," said Glendower sullenly, and 
 drawing himself up to his full height, "it is // but you are 
 mistaken, I am a beggar, not a ruffian ! " 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " answered Crauford ; " how fortunate that 
 we should meet ! Providence watches over us unceasingly ! I 
 have long sought you in vain. But" (and here the wayward 
 malignity, sometimes, though not always, the characteristic of
 
 423 THE DISOV/NfiC. 
 
 Crauford's nature, irresistibly broke out) " but that you, of 
 all men, should suffer so you, proud, susceptible, virtuous 
 beyond human virtue you, whose fibres are as acute as the 
 naked eye thatjv# should bear this, and wince not! " 
 
 "You do my humanity wrong!" said Glendower, with a 
 bitter and almost ghastly smile ; "I do worse than wince ! " 
 
 "Ay, is it so ! " said Crauford : " have you awakened at last? 
 Has your philosophy taken a more impassioned dye?" 
 
 " Mock me not ! " cried Glendower, and his eye, usually soft 
 in its deep thoughtfulness, glared wild and savage upon the 
 hypocrite, who stood trembling, yet half sneering, at the storm 
 he had raised " my passions are even now beyond my mas- 
 tery loose them not upon you ! " 
 
 " Nay," said Crauford gently, " I meant not to vex or wound 
 you. I have sought you several times since the last night we 
 met, but in vain ; you had left your lodgings, and none knew 
 whither. I would fain talk with you. I have a scheme to pro- 
 pose to you which will make you rich forever rich literally 
 rich ! not merely above poverty, but high in affluence ! " 
 
 Glendower looked incredulously at the speaker, who con- 
 tinued : 
 
 " The scheme has danger that you can dare ! " 
 
 Glendower was still silent ; but his set and stern counte- 
 nance was sufficient reply. " Some sacrifice of your pride," con- 
 tinued Crauford " that also you can bear ? " and the tempter 
 almost grinned with pleasure as he asked the question. 
 
 "He who is poor," said Glendower, speaking at last, "has 
 a right to pride. He who starves has it too ; but he who sees 
 those whom he loves famish, and cannot aid, has it not ! " 
 
 " Come home with me, then," said Crauford ; " you seem 
 faint and weak : nature craves food come and partake of 
 mine we will then talk over this scheme, and arrange its com- 
 pletion." 
 
 " I cannot," answered Glendower quietly. 
 
 "And why?" 
 
 " Because they starve at home ! " 
 
 " Heavens ! " said Crauford, affected for a moment into 
 sincerity " it is indeed fortunate that business should have 
 led me here ; but, meanwhile, you will not refuse this trifle 
 as a loan merely. By and by our scheme will make you so 
 rich, that I must be the borrower." 
 
 Glendower did hesitate for a moment he did swallow a 
 bitter rising of the heart ; but he thought of those at home, and 
 the struggle was over.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 223 
 
 " I thank you." said he ; " I thank you for their sake : the 
 time may come," and the proud gentleman stopped short, for 
 his desolate fortunes rose before him, and forbade all hope of 
 the future. 
 
 "Yes," cried Crauford, " the time may come when you will 
 repay me this money a hundred-fold. But where do you live ? 
 You are silent. Well you will not inform me I understand 
 you. Meet me, then, here, on this very spot, three nights 
 hence you will not fail ?" 
 
 " I will not," said Glendowef ; and pressing Crauford's hand 
 with a generous and grateful warmth, which might have soft- 
 ened a heart less obdurate, he turned away. 
 
 Folding his arms, while a bitter yet joyous expression crossed 
 his countenance, Crauford stood still, gazing upon the retreat- 
 ing form of the noble and unfortunate man whom he had 
 marked for destruction. 
 
 " Now," said he, " this virtue is a fine thing, a very fine 
 thing to talk so loftily about. A little craving of the gastric 
 juices, a little pinching of this vile body, as your philosophers 
 and saints call our better part, and lo ! virtue oozes out like 
 water through a leaky vessel, and the vessel sinks ! No, no ; 
 virtue is a weak game, and a poor game, and a losing game. 
 Why, there is that man, the very pink of integrity and recti- 
 tude, he is now only wanting temptation to fall and he will 
 fall, in a fine phrase, too, I'll be sworn ! And then, having 
 once fallen, there will be no medium he will become utterly 
 corrupt ; while 7, honest Dick Crauford, doing as other wise 
 men do, cheat a trick or two, in playing with fortune, without 
 being a whit the worse for it. Do I not subscribe to charities ; 
 am 1 not constant at church, ay, and meeting to boot ; kind to 
 my servants, obliging to my friends, loyal to my king? 'Gad, 
 if I were less loving to myself, I should have been far less use- 
 ful to my country ! And, now, now, let me see what has 
 brought me to these filthy suburbs ! Ah, Madam H 
 Woman, incomparable woman ! On, Richard Crauford, thou 
 hast made a good night's work of it hitherto ! business 
 seasons pleasure ! " and the villain upon, system moved away. 
 
 Glendower hastened to his home ; it was miserably changed, 
 even from the humble abode in which we last saw him. The 
 unfortunate pair had chosen their present residence from a mel- 
 ancholy refinement in luxury ; they had chosen it because 
 none else shared it with them, and their famine, and pride, and 
 struggles, and despair, were without witness or pity. 
 
 With a heavy step Glendower entered the chamber where
 
 224 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 his wife sat. When at a distance he had heard a faint moan, 
 but as he had approached, it ceased ; for she from whom it 
 came knew his step, and hushed her grief and pain, that they 
 might not add to his own. The peevishness, the querulous and 
 stinging irritations of want, came not to that affectionate and 
 kindly heart ; nor could all those biting and bitter evils of fate, 
 which turn the love that is born of luxury into rancour and 
 gall, scathe the beautiful and holy passion which had knit into 
 one those two unearthly natures. They rather clung the 
 closer to each other, as all things in heaven and earth spoke in 
 tempest or in gloom around them, and coined their sorrows 
 into endearment, and their looks into smiles, and strove, each 
 from the depth of despair, to pluck hope and comfort for the 
 other. 
 
 This, it is true, was more striking and constant in her than 
 in Glendower ! for in love, man, be he ever so generous, is 
 always outdone. Yet even when, in moments of extreme pas- 
 sion and conflict, the strife broke from his breast into words, 
 never once was his discontent vented upon her, nor his re- 
 proaches lavished on any but fortune or himself, nor his mur- 
 murs mingled with a single breath wounding to her tenderness, 
 or detracting from his love. 
 
 He threw open the door ; the wretched light cast its sickly 
 beams over the squalid walls, foul with green damps, and the 
 miserable yet clean bed, and the fireless hearth, and the empty 
 board, and the pale cheek of the wife, ns she rose and flung 
 her arms round his neck, and murmured out her joy and wel- 
 come. " There," said he, as he extricated himself from her, 
 and flung the money upon the table, " there, love, pine no 
 more, feed yourself and our daughter, and then let us sleep and 
 be happy. in our dreams." 
 
 A writer, one of the most gifted of the present day, has told 
 the narrator of this history, that no interest of a high nature 
 can be given to extreme poverty. I know not if this be true ; 
 yet, if I mistake not our human feelings, there is nothing so 
 exalted, or so divine, as a great and brave spirit working out its 
 end through every earthly obstacle and evil ; watching through 
 the utter darkness, and steadily defying the phantoms which 
 crowd around it ; wrestling with the mighty allurements and re- 
 jecting the fearful voices of that WANT which is the deadliest 
 and surest of human tempters ; nursing through all calamity the 
 love of species, and the warmer and closer affections of private 
 ties ; sacrificing no duty, resisting all sin ; and amidst every 
 horror and every humiliation, feeding the still and bright light
 
 THE DISOWNED. 325 
 
 of that genius which, like the lamp of the fabulist, though it 
 may waste itself for years amidst the depths of solitude and 
 the silence of the tomb, shall live and burn immortal and un- 
 dimmed, when all around it is rottenness and decay ! 
 
 And yet I confess thatit'is a painful and bitter task to record 
 the humiliations, the wearing, petty, stinging humiliations, of 
 Poverty ; to count the drops as they slowly fall, one by one, 
 upon the fretted and indignant heart; to particularize, with the 
 scrupulous and nice hand of indifference, the fractional and 
 divided movements in the dial-plate of Misery ; to behold the 
 refinement of birth, the masculine pride of blood, the dignities 
 of intellect, the wealth of knowledge, the delicacy and graces 
 of womanhood all that ennoble and soften the stony mass of 
 commonplaces which is our life, frittered into atoms, trampled 
 into the dust and mire of the meanest thoroughfares of dis- 
 tress ; life and soul, the energies and aims of man, ground 
 into one prostrating want, cramped into one levelling sympathy 
 with the dregs and refuse of his kind, blistered into a single 
 galling and festering sore : this is, I own, a painful and a bit- 
 ter task ; but it hath its redemption : a pride even in debase- 
 ment, a pleasure even in woe : and it is therefore that while I 
 have abridged, I have not shunned it. There are some whom 
 the lightning of fortune blasts, only to render holy. Amidst 
 all that humbles and scathes amidst all that shatters from 
 their life its verdure, smites to the dust the pomp and summit 
 of their pride, and in the very heart of existence wiiteth a sud- 
 den and " strange defeature," they stand erect, riven, not up- 
 rooted, a monument less of pity than of awe ! There are 
 some who pass through the Lazar-House of Misery with a step 
 more august than a Caesar's in his hall. The very things 
 which, seen alone, are despicable and vile, associated with 
 them become almost venerable and divine ; and one ray, how- 
 ever dim and feeble, of that intense holiness which, in the 
 INFANT GOD, shed majesty over the manger and the straw, not 
 denied to those who, in the depth of affliction, cherish His pa- 
 tient image, flings over the meanest localities of earth an 
 emanation from the glory of Heaven J
 
 226 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 * Letters from divers hands, which will absolve 
 Ourselves from long narration." Tanner of Tyburn. 
 
 ONE morning about a fortnight after Talbot's death, Clarence 
 was sitting alone, thoughtful and melancholy, when the three 
 following letters were put into his hand : 
 
 LETTER I. 
 FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD. 
 
 " LET me, my dear Linden, be the first to congratulate you 
 upon your accession, of fortune : five thousand a year, Scars- 
 dale, and eighty thousand pounds in the funds, are very pretty 
 foes to starvation ! Ah, my dear fellow, if you had but shot 
 that frosty Caucasus of humanity, that pillar of the state, made 
 not to bend, that but you know already whom I mean, and 
 so I will spare you more of my lamentable metaphors : had you 
 shot Lord Borodaile, your happiness would now be complete ! 
 Everybody talks of your luck. La Meronville tending on you 
 with her white hands, the prettiest hands in the world who 
 would not be wounded, even by Lord Borodaile, for such a 
 nurse ? And then Talbot's yet, I will not speak of that, for 
 you are very unlike the present generation ; and who knows 
 but you may have some gratitude, some affection, some natural 
 feeling in you. I had once ; but that was before I went to 
 France those Parisians, with their fine sentiments, and witty 
 philosophy, play the devil with one's good old-fashioned feel- 
 ings. So Lord Aspeden is to have an Italian ministry. By- 
 the-by, shall you go with him, or will you not rather stay at 
 home, and enjoy your new fortunes hunt race dine out 
 dance vote in the House of Commons, and, in short, do all 
 that an Englishman and a gentleman should do? Ornamento 
 e splendor del secol nostro. Write me a line whenever you have 
 nothing better to do. 
 
 " And believe me, 
 
 " Most truly yours, 
 
 " HAVERFIELD. 
 
 " Will you sell your black mare, or will you buy my brown 
 one ? Utrum horum mans accif>e> the only piece of Latin J 
 remember."
 
 THE DISOWNED. 227 
 
 LETTER FROM LORD ASPEDEN. 
 "My DEAR LINDEN: 
 
 " Suffer me to enter most fully into your feeling. 
 Death, my friend, is common to all: we must submit to its 
 dispensations. I heard accidentally of the great fortune left 
 you by Mr. Talbot (your father, I suppose I may venture to 
 call him). Indeed, though there is a silly prejudice against 
 illegitimacy, yet, as our immortal bard says : 
 
 ' Wherefore base ? 
 
 When thy dimensions are as well compact, 
 . Thy mind as generous and thy shape as true 
 As honest madam's issue ! ' 
 
 For my part, my dear Linden, I say, on your behalf, that it is 
 very likely that you are a natural son, for such are always the 
 luckiest and the best. 
 
 " You have probably heard of the honor his Majesty has con- 
 ferred on me, in appointing to my administration the city of . 
 
 As the choice of a secretary has been left to me, I need not 
 say how happy I shall be to keep my promise to you. Indeed, 
 
 as I told Lord yesterday morning, I do not know anywhere 
 
 a young man who has more talent, or who plays better on the 
 flute. 
 
 " Adieu, my dear young friend ; 
 
 "And believe me, 
 
 " Very truly yours, 
 
 "ASPEDEN." 
 
 LETTER FROM MADAME DE LA MERONVILLE. 
 (Translated.) 
 
 :i You have done me wrong great wrong. I loved you I 
 waited on you tended you nursed you gave all up for you ; 
 and you forsook me forsook me without a word. True, that 
 you have been engaged in a melancholy duty, but, at least, you 
 had time to write a line, to cast a thought, to one who had 
 shown for you the love that I have done. But we will pass 
 over all this ; I will not reproach you it is beneath me. The 
 vicious upbraid the virtuous forgive ! I have for several days 
 left your house. I should never have come to it, had you not 
 been wounded, and, as I fondly imagined, for my sake. Return 
 when you will, I shal 1 no longer be there to persecute and 
 torment you. 
 
 " Pardor this letter. I have said too much for myself a 
 hundred times too much to you ; but I shall not sin again. 
 This intrusion is my last. CECILE DE LA MERONVILLE."
 
 428 THE 
 
 These letters will, probably, suffice to clear up that part of 
 Clarence's history which had not hitherto been touched upon ; 
 they will show that Talbot's will ( after several legacies to his 
 old servants, his nearest connections, and two charitable insti- 
 tutions, which he had founded, and for some years supported ) 
 had bequeathed the bulk of his property to Clarence. The 
 words in which the bequest was made were kind and somewhat 
 remarkable. " To my relation and friend, commonly known 
 by the name of Clarence Linden, to whom I am bound alike by 
 blood and affection," etc. These expressions, joined to the 
 magnitude of the bequest, the apparently unaccountable attach- 
 ment of the old man to his heir, and the mystery which wrapt 
 the origin of the latter, all concurred to give rise to an opinion, 
 easily received, and soon universally accredited, that Clarence 
 was a natural son of the deceased ; and so strong in England 
 is the aristocratic aversion to an unknown lineage, that this 
 belief, unflattering as it was, procured for Linden a much higher 
 consideration, on the score of birth, than he might otherwise 
 have enjoyed. Furthermore will the above correspondence 
 testify the general Mat of Madam La Meronville's attach- 
 ment, and the construction naturally put upon it. Nor do we 
 see much left for us to explain, with regard to the Frenchwoman 
 herself, which cannot equally well be gleaned by any judicious 
 and intelligent reader from the epistle last honored by his 
 perusal. Clarence's sense of gallantry did, indeed, smite him 
 severely, for his negligence and ill-requital to one, who, what- 
 ever her faults or follies, had at least done nothing with which 
 he had a right to reproach her. It must, however, be considered, 
 in his defence, that the fatal event which had so lately occurred, 
 the relapse which Clarence had suffered in consequence, and 
 the melancholy confusion and bustle in which the last week or 
 ten days had been passed, were quite sufficient to banish her 
 from his remembrance. Still she was a woman, and had loved, 
 or seemed to love ; and Clarence, as he wrote to her a long, 
 kind, and almost brotherly letter, in return for her own, felt 
 that, in giving pain to another, one often suffers almost as 
 much for avoiding as for committing a sin. 
 
 We have said his letter was kind it was also frank, and yet 
 prudent. In in he said that he had long loved another which 
 love alone could have rendered him insensible to her attach- 
 ment : that he, nevertheless, should always recall her memory 
 with equal interest and admiration ; and then, with a tact of 
 flattery which the nature of the correspondence and the sex of 
 the person addressed rendered excusable, he endeavored, as
 
 THE DISOWNED. 629 
 
 far as he was able, to soothe and please the vanity which the 
 candor of his avowal was calculated to wound. 
 
 When he had finished this letter he despatched another to 
 Lord Aspeden, claiming a reprieve of some days before he an- 
 swered the proposal of the diplomatist. After these epistolary 
 efforts, he summoned his valet, and told him, apparently in a 
 careless tone, to find out if Lady Westborough was still in town. 
 Then throwing himself on the couch, he wrestled with the grief 
 and melancholy which the death of a friend, and more than a 
 father, might well cause in a mind less susceptible than his, 
 and counted the dull hours crawl onward until his servant re- 
 turned. " Lady Westborough and all the family had been gone 
 a week to their seat in ." 
 
 " Well," thought Clarence, "had 7/<?been alive, I could have 
 entrusted my cause to a mediator ; as it is, I will plead, or rather 
 assert it, myself. Harrison," said he aloud, " see that my 
 black mare is ready by sunrise to-morrow ; I shall leave town, 
 for some days." 
 
 " Not in your present state of health, sir, surely ?" said Har- 
 rison, with the license of one who had been a nurse. 
 
 " My health requires it no more words, my good Harrison, 
 see that I am obeyed." And Harrison, shaking his head doubt- 
 fully, left the room. 
 
 " Rich, independent, free to aspire to the heights which in 
 England are only accessible to those who join wealth to ambi- 
 tion, I have at least," said Clarence proudly, "no unworthy 
 pretensions even to the hand of Lady Flora Ardenne. If she 
 can love me for myself, if she can trust to my honor, rely on 
 my love, feel proud in my pride, and aspiring in my ambition, 
 then, indeed, this wealth will be welcome to me, and the dis- 
 guised name, which has cost me so many mortifications, become 
 grateful, since she will not disdain to share it." 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 "A little druid wight, 
 Of withered aspect ; but his eye was keen 
 With sweetness mixed in russet brown bedight." 
 
 THOMSON'S Castle of Indolence. 
 '' Thus holding high discourse, they came to where 
 The cursed carle was at his wonted trade, 
 Still tempting heedless men into his snare, 
 In witching wise, as I before have said." Ibid. 
 
 IT was a fine, joyous summer morning when Clarence set out, 
 alone, and on horseback, upon his enterprise of love and ad-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 venture. If there be anything on earth more reviving and 
 inspiriting than another, it is, to my taste, a bright day, a tree 
 horse, a journey of excitement before one, and loneliness ! 
 Rousseau in his own way, a great, though rather a morbid 
 epicure of this world's enjoyments talks with rapture of his 
 pedestrian rambles when in his first youth. But what are your 
 foot-ploddings to the joy which lifts you into air with the 
 bound of your mettled steed ? 
 
 But there are times when an iron and stern sadness locks, 
 as it were, within itself our capacities of enjoyment ; and the 
 song of the birds, and the green freshness of the summer morn- 
 ing, and the glad motion of the eager horse, brought neither 
 relief nor change to the musings of the young adventurer. 
 
 He rode on for several miles without noticing anything on 
 his road, and only now and then testifying the nature of his 
 thoughts and his consciousness of solitude by brief and abrupt 
 exclamations and sentences, which proclaimed the melancholy 
 yet exciting subjects of his meditations. During the heat of 
 
 the noon, he rested at a small public house about miles 
 
 from town ; and resolving to take his horse at least ten miles 
 further before his day's journey ceased, he remounted toward 
 the evening, and slowly resumed his way. 
 
 He was now entering the same county in which he first made 
 his appearance in this history. Although several miles from 
 the spot on which the memorable night with the gypsies had 
 been passed, his thoughts reverted to its remembrance, and he 
 sighed as he recalled the ardent hopes which then fed and 
 animated his heart. While thus musing, he heard the sound 
 of hoofs behind him, and presently came by a sober-looking 
 man, on a rough, strong pony, laden (besides its master's 
 weight), with saddle-bags of uncommon size, and to all appear- 
 ance substantially and artfully filled. 
 
 Clarence looked, and, after a second survey, recognized the 
 person of his old acquaintance, Mr. Morris Brown. 
 
 Not equally reminiscent was the worshipful itinerant, who, 
 in the great variety of forms and faces which it was his profes- 
 sional lot to encounter, could not be expected to preserve a 
 very nice or distinguishing recollection of each. 
 
 "Your servant, sir, your servant," said Mr. Brown, as he 
 rode his pony alongside of our traveller. "Are you going as 
 far as W this evening ?" 
 
 "I hardly know yet," answered Clarence; "the length of my 
 ride depends upon my horse rather than myself." 
 
 "Oh, well, very well," said Mr. Brown ; "but you will allow
 
 TH DISOWNED. 23! 
 
 me, perhaps, sir, the honor of riding with you as far as you 
 
 g-" 
 
 "You give me much gratification by your proposal, Mr. 
 
 Brown ! " said Clarence. 
 
 The broker looked in surprise at his companion. "So you 
 know me, sir ?" 
 
 " I do," replied Clarence. " I am surprised that you have 
 forgotten me." 
 
 Slowly Mr. Brown gazed, till at last his memory began to 
 give itself the rousing shake "God bless me, sir, I beg you a 
 thousand pardons I now remember you perfectly Mr. Lin- 
 den, the nephew of my old patroness, Mrs. Minden. Dear, 
 dear, how could I be so forgetful ! I hope, by the by, sir, 
 that the shirts wore well. I am thinking you will want 
 some more. I have some capital cambric of curiously fine 
 quality and texture, from the wardrobe of the late Lady 
 Waddilove." 
 
 " What, Lady Waddilove still ! " cried Clarence. "Why, my 
 good friend, you will offer next to furnish me with pantaloons 
 from her ladyship's wardrobe." 
 
 "Why, really, sir, I see you preserve your fine spirits; but I 
 do think I have one or two pair of plum-colored velvet inex- 
 pressibles, that passed into my possession when her ladyship's 
 husband died, which might, perhaps, with a leetle alteration, fit 
 you, and at all events, would be a very elegant present from a 
 gentleman to his valet." 
 
 "Well, Mr. Brown, whenever I or my valet wear plum col- 
 ored velvet breeches, I will certainly purchase those in your pos- 
 session ; but to change the subject, can you inform me what 
 has become of my old host and hostess, the Copperases of 
 Copperas Bower?" 
 
 "Oh, sir, they are the same as ever nice, genteel people 
 they are, too. . Master Adolphus has grown into a fine young 
 gentlemen, very nearly as tall as you and / are. His worthy 
 father preserves his jovial vein, and is very merry whenever I 
 call there. Indeed, it was but last week that he made an ad- 
 mirable witticism. ' Bob,' said he (Tom you remember Tom, 
 or De Warens, as Mrs. Copperas was pleased to call him Tom is 
 gone) ' Bob, have you stopt the coach ? ' ' Yes, sir,' said Bob. 
 'And what coach is it?' asked Mr. Copperas. 'It be the 
 Swallow, sir,' said the boy. ' The Swallow ! oh, very well,' 
 cried Mr. Copperas ; ' then, now, having swallowed in the roll, 
 I will e'en roll in the Swallow ! ' Ha ! ha ! ha ! sir, very face- 
 tious, was it not ?"
 
 932 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " Very, indeed," said Clarence ; " and so Mr. De Warens has 
 gone ; how came that? " 
 
 " Why, sir, you see, the boy was always of a gay turn, and 
 he took to frisking it, as he called it, of a night, and so he was 
 taken up for thrashing a watchman, and appeared before Sir 
 John, the magistrate, the next morning." 
 
 " Caractacus before Caesar ! " observed Linden : " and what 
 said Caesar? " 
 
 " Sir ! " said Mr. Brown. 
 
 " I mean, what said Sir John ? " 
 
 " Oh, he asked him his name, and Tom, whose head Mrs. 
 Copperas (poor, good woman !) had crammed with pride 
 enough for fifty foot-boys, replied, ' De Warens,' with all the 
 air of a man of independence. ' De Warens ! ' cried Sir Johrf, 
 amazed, 'we'll have no De's here: take him to Bridewell!' 
 and so, Mrs. Copperas, being without a foot-boy, sent for me, 
 and I supplied her with Bob !" 
 
 "Out of the late Lady Waddilove's wardrobe too?" said 
 Clarence. 
 
 " Ha, ha ! that's well, very well, sir. No, not exactly, but 
 he was a son of her late ladyship's coachman. Mr. Cop- 
 peras has had two other servants of the name of Bob before, 
 but this is the biggest of all, so he humorously calls him 
 ' Triple Bob Major ! ' You observe that road to the right, 
 sir it leads to the mansion of an old customer of mine, Gen- 
 eral Cornelius St. Leger ! many a good bargain have I sold to 
 his sister. Heaven rest her ! when she died I lost a good 
 friend, though she was a little hot or so, to be sure. But she 
 had a relation, a young lady such a lovely, noble-looking 
 creature it did one's heart, ay, and one's eyes also, good to 
 look at her ; and she's gone too well, well, one loses one's 
 customers sadly ; it makes me feel old and comfortless to 
 think of it. Now, yonder, as far as you can see among those 
 distant woods, lived another friend of mine, to whom I offered 
 to make some very valuable presents upon his marriage with 
 the young lady I spoke of just now, but, poor gentleman, he 
 had not time to accept them ; he lost his property by a law- 
 suit, a few months after he was married, and a very different 
 person now has Mordaunt Court." 
 
 " Mordaunt ! " cried Clarence ; " do you mean to say that 
 Mr. Mordaunt has lost all that property ? " 
 
 " Why, sir, one Mr. Mordaunt has lost it, and another has 
 gained it : but the real Mr. Mordaunt has not an acre in this 
 county or elsewhere, I fear, poor gentleman. He is univer-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 233 
 
 sally regretted, for he was very good and very generous, 
 though they say he was also mighty proud and reserved ; but, 
 for my part, I never perceived it. If one is not proud one's 
 self, Mr. Linden, one is very little apt to be hurt by pride in 
 other people." 
 
 "And where is Mr. Algernon Mordaunt?" asked Clarence, 
 as he recalled his interview with that person, and the interest 
 with which Algernon then inspired him. 
 
 " That, sir, is more than any of us can say. He has disap- 
 peared altogether. Some declare that he has gone abroad, 
 others think he is living in Wales in the greatest poverty. 
 However, wherever he is, I am sure that he cannot be rich ; 
 for the lawsuit quite ruined him, and the young lady he mar- 
 ried had not a farthing." 
 
 " Poor Mordaunt," said Clarence musingly. 
 
 " I think, sir, that the squire would not be best pleased if he 
 heard you pity him. I don't know why, but he certainly 
 looked, walked, and moved like one whom you felt it very 
 hard to pity. But I am thinking that it is a great shame that 
 the general should not do anything for Mordaunt's wife, for 
 she was his own flesh and blood ; and I am sure he had no 
 cause to be angry at her marrying a gentleman of such an old 
 family as Mr. Mordaunt. I am a great stickler for birth, 
 sir I learnt that from the late Lady W. ' Brown," she said, 
 and I shall never forget her ladyship's air when she did say it, 
 ' Brown, respect your superiors, and never fall into the hands 
 of the republicans and atheists ! ' ' 
 
 "And why," said Clarence, who was much interested in 
 Mordaunt's fate, " did General St. Leger withhold his con- 
 sent?" 
 
 " That we don't exactly know, sir ; but some say that Mr. 
 Mordaunt was very high and proud with the general, and the 
 general was, to the full, as fond of his purse as Mr. Mordaunt 
 could be of his pedigree and so, I suppose, one pride clashed 
 against the other, and made a quarrel between them." 
 
 " Would not the general, then, relent after the mar- 
 riage?" 
 
 "Oh no, sir ! for it was a runaway affair. Miss Diana St. 
 Leger, his sister, was as hot as ginger upon it, and fretted and 
 worried the poor general, who was never of the mildest, about the 
 match, till at last he forbade the poor young lady's very name 
 to be mentioned. And when Miss Diana died about two years 
 ago, he suddenly introduced a tawny sort of cretur, whom they 
 call a mulatto or Creole, or some such thing, into the house ;
 
 234 TI1K DISOWNED. 
 
 and it seems that he has had several children by her, whom 
 he never durst own during Miss Diana's life, but whom he 
 now declares to be his heirs. Well they rule him with a rod 
 of iron, and suck him as dry as an orange. They are a bad, 
 griping set, all of them ; and, I am sure, I don't say so from 
 any selfish feeling, Mr. Linden, though they have forbid me 
 the house, and dalled me, to my very face, an old cheating 
 Jew. Think of that, sir ! I, whom the late Lady W., in her 
 exceeding friendship used to call ' honest Brown ' I whom 
 your worthy " 
 
 "And who," uncourteously interrupted Clarence, "has Mor- 
 daunt Court now?" 
 
 " Why, a distant relation of the last squire's, an elderly gen- 
 tleman who calls himself Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt. I am 
 going there to-morrow morning, for I still keep up a connection 
 with the family. Indeed the old gentleman bought a lovely 
 little ape of me, which I did intend as a present to the late (as 
 I may call him) Mr. Mordaunt ; so, though I will not say I 
 exactly like him he is a hard hand at a bargain yet at least 
 I will not deny him his due." 
 
 " What sort of person is he ? What character does he bear ? " 
 asked Clarence. 
 
 "I really find it hard to answer that question, 9 ' said the 
 gossiping Mr. Brown. "In great things he is very lavish and 
 ostentatious, but in small things he is very penurious, and 
 saving, and miser-like and all for one son, who is deformed 
 and very sickly. He seems to doat on that boy ; and now I 
 have got two or three little presents in these bags for Mr. 
 Henry. Heaven forgive me, but when I look at the poor 
 creature, with his face all drawn up, and his sour, ill-tempered 
 voice, and his limbs crippled, I almost think it would be better 
 if he were in his grave, and the rightful Mr. Mordaunt, who 
 would then be the next of kin, in his place." 
 
 " So then, there is only this unhappy cripple between Mr. 
 Mordaunt and the property ?" said Clarence. 
 
 "Exactly so, sir. But will you let me ask where you shall 
 
 put up at W ? I will wait upon you, if you will give me 
 
 leave, with some very curious and valuable articles, highly 
 desirable either for yourself or for little presents to your 
 friends." 
 
 "I thank you," said Clarence, "I shall make no stay at 
 
 W , but I shall be glad to see you in town next week. 
 
 Favor me. meanwhile, by accepting this trifle." 
 
 "Nay, nay, sir," said Mr. Brown, pocketing the money "I
 
 THE DISOWNED. 235 
 
 really cannot accept this anything in the way of exchange 
 a ring, or a seal, or " 
 
 "No, no, not at present," said Clarence; "the night is 
 coming on, and I shall make the best of my way. Good-by, 
 Mr. Brown"; and Clarence trotted off ; but he had scarce got 
 sixty yards before he heard the itinerant merchant cry out 
 "Mr. Linden, Mr. Linden !" and looking back, he beheld the 
 honest Brown putting his shaggy pony at full speed, in order 
 to overtake him : so he pulled up. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Brown, what do you want ?" , 
 
 " Why, you see, sir, you gave me no exact answer about the 
 plum-colored velvet inexpressibles," said Mr. Brown. 
 
 CHAPTER LIT. 
 " Are we contemned?" The DoAble Marriage. 
 
 IT was dusk when Clarence arrived at the very same inn at 
 which, more than five years ago, he had assumed his present 
 Tiame. As he recalled the note addressed to him, and the sum 
 (his whole fortune) which it contained, he could not help 
 smiling at the change his lot had since then undergone : but 
 the smile soon withered when he thought of the kind and 
 paternal hand from which that change had proceeded, and 
 knew that his gratitude was no longer availing, and that that 
 hand, in pouring its last favors upon him, had become cold. 
 He was ushered into No. Four, and left to his meditations till 
 bed-time. 
 
 The next day he recommenced his journey. Westborough 
 Park was, though in another county, within a short ride of 
 
 W ; but, as he approached it, the character of the scenery 
 
 became essentially changed. Bare, bold, and meagre, the 
 features of the country bore somewhat of a Scottish character. 
 On the right side of the road was a precipitous and perilous 
 descent, and some workmen were placing posts along a path 
 for foot-passengers on that side nearest the carriage-road, 
 probably with a view to preserve unwary coachmen or eques- 
 trians from the dangerous vicinity to the descent, which a dark 
 night might cause them to incur. As Clarence looked idly on 
 the workmen, and painfully on the crumbling and fearful 
 descent I have described, he little thought that that spot 
 would, a few years after, become the scene of a catastrophe 
 affecting in the most powerful degree the interests of his future 
 life. Our young traveller put up his horse at a small inn,
 
 236 THE DISOWNED, 
 
 bearing the Westborough arms, and situated at a short distance 
 from the park gates. Now that he was so near his mistress 
 now that less than an hour, than the fourth part of an hour, 
 might place him before her, and decide his fate, his heart, 
 which had hitherto sustained him, grew faint, and presented 
 first fear, then anxiety, and, at last, despondency to his imagi- 
 nation and forebodings. 
 
 "At all events," said he, "I will see her alone before I will 
 confer with her artful and proud mother, or her cipher of a 
 father. I will then tell her all my history, and open to her all 
 my secrets : I will only conceal from her my present fortunes, 
 for, even if rumor should have informed her of them, it will 
 be easy to give the report no sanction ; I have a right to that 
 trial. When she is convinced that, at least, neither my birth 
 nor character can disgrace her, I shall see if her love can 
 enable her to overlook my supposed poverty, and to share my 
 uncertain lot. If so, there will be some triumph in undeceiv- 
 ing her error and rewarding her generosity: if not, I shall be 
 saved from involving my happiness with that of one who looks 
 only to my worldly possessions, I owe it to her, it is true, to 
 show her that I am no low-born pretender ; but I owe it also to 
 myself to ascertain if my own individual qualities are suffi- 
 cient to gain her hand." 
 
 Fraught with these ideas, which were natural enough to a 
 a man whose peculiar circumstances were well calculated to 
 make him feel rather soured and suspicious, and whose pride 
 had been severely wounded by the contempt with which his 
 letter had been treated Clarence walked into the park, and, 
 hovering around the house, watched and waited that opportu- 
 nity of addressing Lady Flora, which he trusted her habits of 
 walking would afford him ; but hours rolled away, the evening 
 set in, and Lady Flora had not once quitted the house. 
 
 More disappointed and sick at heart than he liked to con- 
 fess, Clarence returned to his inn, took his solitary meal, and 
 strolling once more into the park, watched beneath the windows 
 till midnight, endeavoring to guess which were the casements 
 of her apartments, and feeling his heart beat high at every light 
 which flashed forth, and disappeared, and every form which 
 flitted across the windows of the great staircase. Little did 
 Lady Flora, as she sat in her room alone, and, in tears, mused 
 over Clarence's fancied worthlessness and infidelity, and told 
 her heart again and again that she loved no more little did 
 she know whose eye kept vigils without, or whose feet brushed 
 away the rank dews beneath her windows, or whose thoughts,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 237 
 
 though not altogether unmingled with reproach, were riveted 
 with all the ardor of a young and first love upon her. 
 
 It was unfortunate for Linden that he had no opportunity of 
 personally pleading his suit ; his altered form and faded coun- 
 tenance would at least have insured a hearing and an interest 
 for his honest though somewhat haughty sincerity ; but though 
 that day, and the next, and the next, were passed in the most 
 anxious and unremitting vigilance, Clarence only once caught 
 a glimpse of Lady Flora, and then she was one amidst a large 
 party ; and Clarence, fearful of a premature and untimely dis- 
 covery, was forced to retire into the thicknesses of the park, 
 and lose the solitary reward of his watches almost as soon as he 
 had won it. 
 
 Wearied and racked by his suspense, and despairing of ob- 
 taining any favorable opportunity for an interview, without such 
 a request, Clarence at last resolved to write to Lady Flora, 
 entreating her assent to a meeting, in which he pledged himself 
 to clear up all that had hitherto seemed doubtful in his conduct 
 or mysterious in his character. Though respectful, urgent, and 
 bearing the impress of truth and feeling, the tone of the letter 
 was certainly that of a man who conceived he had a right to a 
 little resentment for the past, and a little confidence for the 
 future. It was what might well be written by one who imag- 
 ined his affection had once been returned, but would as cer- 
 tainly have been deemed very presumptuous by a lady who 
 thought that the affection itself was a liberty. 
 
 Having penned this epistle, the next care was how to convey 
 it. After much deliberation, it was at last committed to the 
 care of a little girl, the daughter of the lodge-keeper, whom 
 Lady Flora thrice a week personally instructed in the mysteries 
 of spelling, reading, and calligraphy. With many injunctions 
 to deliver the letter only to the hands of the beautiful teacher, 
 Clarence trusted his despatches to the little scholar, and, with 
 a trembling frame and wistful eye, watched Susan take her 
 road, with her green satchel and her shining cheeks, to the 
 great house. 
 
 One hour, two hours, three hours, passed, and the messenger 
 had not returned. Restless and impatient, Clarence walked 
 back to his inn, and had not been there many minutes before a 
 servant, in the Westborough livery, appeared at the door of the 
 humble hostelry, and left the following letter for his perusal 
 and gratification : 
 "SIR: 
 
 "The letter intended for my daughter, has just been given to
 
 338 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 me by Lady Westbdrough. I know not what gave rise to the 
 language, or the very extraordinary request for a clandestine 
 meeting, which you have thought proper to address to Lady 
 Flora Ardenne ; but you will allow me to observe, that if you 
 intend to confer upon my daughter the honor of a matrimonial 
 proposal, she fully concurs with me and her mother in the neg- 
 ative which I feel necessitated to put upon your obliging offer. 
 
 " I need not add that all correspondence with my daughter 
 must close here. I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 " Your very obedient servant, 
 
 " WESTBOROUQH. 
 
 " Westborough Park. 
 "To Clarence Linden, Esq." 
 
 Had Clarence's blood been turned to fire, his veins wuld not 
 have swelled and burnt with a fiercer heat than they did, as he 
 read the above letter a masterpiece, perhaps, in the line of 
 what may be termed the "d d civil" of epistolary favors. 
 
 "Insufferable arrogance!" he muttered within his teeth. 
 " I will live to repay it. Perfidious, unfeeling woman what 
 an escape I have had of her ! Now, now, I am on the world, 
 and alone, thank Heaven. I will accept Aspeden's offer and 
 leave this country ; when I return, it shall not be as a humble 
 suitor to Lady Flora Ardenne. Pish ! how the name sickens 
 me : but come, I have a father at least a nominal one. He is 
 old and weak, and may die before I return. I will see him 
 once more, and then, hey for Italy ! Oh ! I am so happy so 
 happy at my freedom and escape. What, ho! waiter! *y 
 horse instantly ! " 
 
 CHAPTER LIU. 
 
 Lucr. What has thy father done ? 
 Beat. What have I done ? 
 Am I not innocent ? The Cenci. 
 
 THE twilight was darkening slowly over a room of noble 
 dimensions, and costly fashion. Although it was the height of 
 summer, a low fire burnt in the grate ; and, stretching his hands 
 over the feeble flame, an old man, of about sixty, sate in an 
 arm-chair curiously carved with armorial bearings. The dim, 
 yet fitful flame, cast its upward light upon a countenance stern, 
 haughty, and repellent, where the passions of youth and man- 
 hood had dug themselves graves in many an iron line and deep 
 furrow: the forehead, though high, was narrow and compressed;
 
 THE DISOWNED. 23$ 
 
 the brows sullenly overhung the eyes, and the nose, which was 
 singularly prominent and decided, age had sharpened, and 
 brought out, as it were, till it gave a stubborn and very for- 
 bidding expression to the more sunken features over which it 
 rose with exaggerated dignity. Two bottles of wine, a few 
 dried preserves, and a water-glass, richly chased, and orna- 
 mented with gold, showed that the inmate of the apartment 
 had passed the hour of the principal repast, and his loneliness, 
 at a time usually social, seemed to indicate that few olive 
 branches were accustomed to overshadow his table. 
 
 The windows of the dining-room reached to the ground, and 
 without the closing light just enabled one to see a thick copse 
 of wood, which, at a very brief interval of turf, darkened im- 
 mediately opposite the house. While the old man was thus 
 bending over the fire and conning his evening contemplations, 
 a figure stole from the copse I have mentioned, and, approach- 
 ing the window, looked pryingly into the apartment ; then 
 with a noiseless hand it opened the spring of the casement, 
 which was framed on a peculiar and old-fashioned construction, 
 that required a practised and familiar touch entered the 
 apartment, and crept on, silent and unperceived by the in- 
 habitant of the room, till it paused and stood motionless with 
 folded arms, scarce three steps behind the high back of the old 
 man's chair. 
 
 In a few minutes the latter moved from his position, and 
 slowly rose ; the abruptness with which he turned brought the 
 dark figure of the intruder full and suddenly before him : he 
 started back, and cried in an alarmed tone " Who is there ?" 
 
 The stranger made no reply. 
 
 The old man, in a voice in which anger and pride mingled 
 with fear, repeated the question. The figure advanced, dropped 
 the cloak in which it was wrapped, and presenting the features 
 of Clarence Linden, said, in a low but clear tone: 
 
 "Your son." 
 
 The old man dropped his hold of the bell-rope, which he had 
 just before seized, and leaned as if for support against the oak 
 wainscot ; Clarence approached. 
 
 "Yes!" said he mournfully, "your unfortunate, your offend- 
 ing, but your guiltless son. More than five years I have been 
 banished from your house. I have been thrown, while yet a 
 boy, without friends, without guidance, without name, upon, 
 the wide world, and to the mercy of chance. I come now to 
 you as a man, claiming no assistance and uttering no reproach, 
 but to tell you that him whom an earthly father rejected, God
 
 24<5 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 has preserved ; that without one unworthy or debasing act, I 
 have won for myself the friends who support, and the wealth 
 which dignifies, life, since it renders it independent. Through 
 all the disadvantages I have struggled against, I have preserved 
 unimpaired my honor, and unsullied my conscience ; you have 
 disowned, but you might have claimed me without shame. 
 Father, these hands are clean !" 
 
 A strong and evident emotion shook the old man's frame. 
 He raised himself to his full height, which was still tall and 
 commanding, and in a voice, the natural harshness of which 
 was rendered yet more repellent by passion, replied, " Boy ! 
 Your presumption is insufferable. What to me is your wretched 
 fate ? Go go go to your miserable mother ; find her out 
 claim kindred there ; live together, toil together, rot together ; 
 but come not to me ! disgrace to my house ask not admit- 
 tance to my affections ; the law may give you my name, but 
 sooner would I be torn piece-meal than own your right to it. 
 If you want money, name the sum, take it ; cut up my fortune 
 to shreds seize my property revel on it but come not here, 
 This house is sacred ; pollute it not : I disown you ; I discard 
 you ; I ay, I detest I loathe you ! " 
 
 And with these words, which came forth as if heaved from 
 the inmost heart of the speaker, who shook with the fury he 
 endeavored to stifle, he fell back into his chair, and fixed his 
 eyes, which glared fearfully through the increasing darkness, 
 upon Linden, who stood high, erect, and sorrowfully before him. 
 
 "Alas, my lord!" said Clarence, with mournful bitterness, 
 "have not the years which have seared your form and whitened 
 your locks brought some meekness to your rancor, some mercy 
 to your injustice, for one whose only crime against you seems to 
 have been his birth. But I said I came not to reproach nof 
 do I. Many a bitter hour, many a pang of shame, and mor- 
 tification, and misery, which have made scars in my heart that 
 will never wear away, my wrongs have cost me but let them 
 pass. Let them not swell your future and last account when- 
 ever it be required. I am about to leave this country, with a 
 heavy and foreboding heart ; we may never meet again on 
 earth. I have no longer any wish, any chance of resuming 
 the name you have deprived me of. I shall never thrust my- 
 self on your relationship, or cross your view. Lavish your 
 wealth upon him whom you have placed so immeasurably 
 above me in your affections. But I have not deserved your 
 curse, father ; give me your blessing, and let me depart in 
 peace."
 
 THE DISOWNED. 24! 
 
 " Peace ! and what peace have I had ? what respite from 
 gnawing shame, the foulness and leprosy of humiliation and 
 reproach, since since ? But this is not your fault, you say : 
 no, no it is another's ; and you are only the mark of my 
 stigma, my disgrace, not its perpetrator. Ha ! a nice distinc- 
 tion, truly. My blessing, you say ! Come, kneel ; kneel, boy, 
 and have it ! " 
 
 Clarence approached, and stood bending and bareheaded 
 before his father, but he knelt not. 
 
 " Why do you not kneel ?" cried the old man vehemently. 
 
 " It is the attitude, of the injurer, not of the injured ! " said 
 Clarence firmly. 
 
 " Injured ! insolent reprobate is it not I who am injured ? 
 Do you not read it in my brow here, here?" and the old 
 man struck his clenched hand violently against his temples. 
 "Was I not injured (he continued, sinking his 'voice into a 
 key unnaturally low) ? <T did I not trust implicitly ? Did I not 
 give up my heart without suspicion ? Was I not duped deli- 
 ciously ? Was I not kind enough, blind enough, fool enough 
 and was I not betrayed damnably, filthily betrayed ? But 
 that was no injury. Was not my old age turned, a sapless tree, 
 a poisoned spring ? Were not my days made a curse to me, 
 and my nights a torture ? Was I not, am I not, a mock, and a 
 byword, and a miserable, impotent, unavenged old man ! In- 
 jured ! But this is no injury ! Boy, boy, what are your wrongs 
 to mine ?" 
 
 " Father ! " cried Clarence deprecatingly, " I am not the 
 cause of your wrongs : is it just that the innocent should suffer 
 for the guilty ?" 
 
 " Speak not in that voice ! " cried the old man " that voice ! 
 Fie, fie on it. Hence ! away ! away, boy ! why tarry you ! 
 My son, and have that voice ? Pooh, you are not my son. 
 Ha, ha ! my son ! " 
 
 "What am I, then ?" said Clarence soothingly ; for he was 
 shocked and grieved, rather than irritated, by a wrath which 
 partook so strongly of insanity. 
 
 " I will tell you," cried the father " I will tell you what you 
 are you are my curse ! " 
 
 " Farewell ! " said Clarence, much agitated, and retiring to 
 the window by which he had entered ; "may your heart never 
 smite you for your cruelty ! Farewell ! may the blessing you 
 have withheld from me be with you ! " 
 
 "Stop! stay!" cried the father; for his fury was checked 
 for one moment, and his nature, fierce as it was, relented ; but
 
 242 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 Clarence was already gone, and the miserable old man was left 
 alone to darkness, and solitude, and the passions which can 
 make a hell of the human heart ! 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 " Sed quae praeclara, et prospera tanti, 
 Ut rebus laetis par sit mensura malorum."*-^JUVENAL. 
 
 WE are now transported to a father and a son of a very dif- 
 ferent stamp. 
 
 It was about the hour of one, p. M., when the door of Mr. 
 Vavasour Mordaunt's study was thrown open, and the servant 
 announced Mr. Brown. 
 
 " Your servant, sir your servant, Mr. Henry," said the 
 itinerant, bowing low to the two gentlemen thus addressed. 
 The former, Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt, might be about the same 
 age as Linden's father. A shrewd, sensible, ambitious man of 
 the world, he had made his way from the state of a younger 
 brother, with no fortune and very little interest, to considerable 
 wealth, besides the property he had acquired by law, and to a 
 degree of consideration for general influence and personal 
 ability, which, considering he had no official or parliamentary 
 rank, very few of his equals enjoyed. Persevering, steady, 
 crafty, and possessing, to an eminent degree, that happy art of 
 11 canting" which opens the readiest way to character and conse- 
 quence, the rise and reputation of Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt 
 appeared less to be wondered at than envied ; yet, even envy 
 was only for those who could not look beyond the surface of 
 things. He was at heart an anxious and unhappy man. The 
 evil we do in the world is often paid back in the bosom of 
 home. Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt was, like Crauford, what 
 might be termed a mistaken utilitarian ; he had lived utterly 
 and invariably for self ; but instead of uniting self-interest 
 with the interest of others, he considered them as perfectly 
 incompatible ends. But character was among the greatest of 
 all objects to him ; so that, though he had rarely deviated into 
 what might fairly be termed a virtue, he had never transgressed 
 what might rigidly be called a propriety. He had not the 
 Aptitude, the wit, the moral audacity of Crauford ; he could 
 not have indulged in one offence with impunity, by a mingled 
 
 * Hut what excellence or prosperity so great that there should be an equal measure of 
 fvils for our joys.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 243 
 
 courage and hypocrisy in veiling others he was the slave of 
 the forms which Crauford subjugated to himself. He was only 
 so far resembling Crauford, as one man of the world resembles 
 another in selfishness and dissimulation: he could be dishonest, 
 not villainous, much less a villain upon system. He was a 
 canter, Crauford a hypocrite : his uttered opinions were, like 
 Crauford's, differing from his conduct ; but he believed the 
 truth of the former even while sinning in the latter ; he canted 
 so sincerely that the tears came in his eyes when he spoke. 
 Never was there a man more exemplary in words ; people who 
 departed from him went away impressed with the idea of an 
 excess of honor a plethora of conscience. "It was almost a 
 pity," said they, "that Mr. Vavasour was so romantic"; 
 and thereupon they named him an executor to their wills 
 and guardian to their sons. None but he could, in carrying 
 the lawsuit against Mordaunt, have lost nothing in reputation 
 by success. But there was something so specious, so ostensi- 
 bly fair in his manner and words, while he was ruining Mor- 
 daunt, that it was impossible not to suppose he was actuated 
 by the purest motives, the most holy desire for justice not for 
 himself, he said, for he was old, and already rich enough, but 
 for his son ! From that son came the punishment of all his 
 offenses the black drop at the bottom of a bowl, seemingly so 
 sparkling. To him. as the father grew old, and desirous of 
 quiet, Vavasour had transferred all his selfishness, as if to a 
 securer and more durable firm. The child, when young, had 
 been singularly handsome and intelligent ; but Vavasour, as he 
 toiled and toiled at his ingenious and graceful cheateries, 
 pleased himself with anticipating the importance and advan- 
 tages the heir to his labor would enjoy. For that son he cer- 
 tainly had persevered more arduously than otherwise he might 
 have done in the lawsuit, of the justice of which he better 
 satisfied the world than his own breast ; for that son he rejoiced 
 as he looked around the stately halls and noble domain from 
 which the rightful possessor had been driven : for that son he 
 extended economy into penuriousness. and hope into anxiety ; 
 and, too old to expect much more from the world himself, for 
 that son he anticipated, with a wearing and feverish fancy, 
 whatever wealth could purchase, beauty win, or intellect com- 
 mand. 
 
 But as if, like the Castle of Otranto, there was something in 
 Mordaunt Court which contained a penalty and a doom for the 
 usurper, no sooner had Vavasour possessed himself of his kins- 
 man's estate, than the prosperity of his life dried and withered
 
 244 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 away, like Jonah's gourd, in a single night. His son, at the 
 age of thirteen, fell from a scaffold, on which the workmen were 
 making some extensive alterations in the old house, and be- 
 came a cripple and a valetudinarian for life. But still Vava- 
 sour, always of a sanguine temperament, cherished a hope that 
 surgical assistance might restore him : from place to place, 
 from professor to professor, from quack to quack, he carried 
 the unhappy boy, and as each remedy failed, he was only the 
 more impatient to devise a new one. But as it was the mind 
 as well as person of his son in which the father had stored up 
 his ambition ; so, in despite of this fearful accident, and the 
 wretched health by which it was followed, Vavasour never suf- 
 fered his son to rest from the tasks, and tuitions, and lectures 
 of the various masters by whom he was surrounded. The poor 
 boy, it is true, deprived of physical exertion, and naturally of 
 a serious disposition, required very little urging to second his 
 father's wishes for his mental improvement ; and as the tutors 
 were all of the orthodox university calibre, who imagine that 
 there is no knowledge (but vanity) in any other works than those 
 in which their own education has consisted ; so Henry Vava- 
 sour became at once the victor and victim of Bentleys and Scali- 
 gers, word-weighers and metre-scanners, till, utterly ignorant of 
 everything which could have softened his temper, dignified his 
 misfortunes, and reconciled him to his lot, he was sinking fast 
 into the grave, soured by incessant pain into moroseness, envy, 
 and bitterness ; exhausted by an unwholesome and useless 
 application to unprofitable studies ; an excellent scholar (as it 
 is termed), with the worst regulated and worst informed mind 
 of almost any of his contemporaries equal to himself in the ad- 
 vantages of ability, original goodness of disposition, and the 
 costly and profuse expenditure of education. 
 
 But the vain father, as he heard on all sides of his son's tal- 
 ents, saw nothing sinister in their direction ; and though the 
 poor boy grew daily more contracted in mind and broken in 
 frame, Vavasour yet hugged more and more closely to his breast 
 the hope of ultimate cure for the latter, and future glory for the 
 former. So he went on heaping money, and extending acres, 
 and planting, and improving, and building, and hoping, and an^ 
 ticipating, for one at whose very feet the grave was already 
 dug! 
 
 But we left Mr Brown in the study, making his bow and pro- 
 fessions of service to Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt and his son. 
 
 ''Good day, honest Brown," said the former, a middle-sized 
 and rather stout man, with a well-powdered head, and a sharp,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 245 
 
 shrewd, and very sallow countenance; "good day have you 
 brought any of the foreign liqueurs you spoke of, for Mr. Henry ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir, I have some curiously fine eau d'or and liqueur des 
 Ves, besides the marasquino and curafoa. The late Lady Waddi- 
 love honored my taste in these matters with her especial appro- 
 bation." 
 
 " My dear boy," said Vavasour, turning to his son, who lay 
 extended on the couch, reading, not the Prometheus (that most 
 noble drama ever created), but the notes upon it " my dear boy, 
 as you are fond of liqueurs, I desired Brown to get some pecu- 
 liarly fine ; perhaps " 
 
 " Pish ! " said the son, fretfully interrupting him, " do, I be- 
 seech you, take your hand off my shoulder. See, now you have 
 made me lose my place. I really do wish you would leave me 
 alone for one moment in the day." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, Henry," said the father, looking rever- 
 ently on the Greek characters which his son preferred to the 
 newspaper. " It is very vexatious, I own ; but do taste these 
 liqueurs. Dr. Lukewarm said you might have everything you 
 liked" 
 
 " But quiet ! " muttered the cripple. 
 
 "I assure you, sir," said the wandering merchant, "that they 
 are excellent ; allow me, Mr. Vavasour Mordaunt, to ring for a 
 corkscrew. I really do think, sir, that Mr. Henry looks much 
 better I declare he has quite a color." 
 
 "No, indeed!" said Vavasour, eagerly. "Well it seems to 
 
 me, too, that he is getting better. I intend to try Mr. E 's 
 
 patent collar in a day or two ; but that will in some measure 
 prevent his reading. A great pity : for I am very anxious 
 that he should lose no time in his studies just at present. He 
 goes to Cambridge in October." 
 
 " Indeed, sir. Well, he will set the town in a blaze, I guess, 
 sir . r Everybody says what a fine scholar Mr. Henry is even 
 in the servants' hall ! " 
 
 "Ay, ay," said Vavasour, gratified even by this praise, "he 
 is clever enough, Brown ; and, what is more" (and here Vava- 
 sour's looks grew sanctified), "he is good enough. His princi- 
 ples do equal honor to his head and heart. He would be no 
 son of mine if he were not as much the gentleman as the 
 scholar." 
 
 The youth lifted his heavy and distorted face from his book, 
 and a sneer raised his lip for a moment ; but a sudden spasm 
 of pain seizing him, the expression changed, and Vavasour, 
 whose eyes were fixed upon him, hastened to his assistance.
 
 246 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " Throw open the window, Brown ; ring the bell call " 
 
 "Pooh, father," cried the boy, with a sharp, angry voice, "I 
 am not going to die yet, nor faint either ; but it is all your fault. 
 If you will have those odious, vulgar people here for your own 
 pleasure, at least suffer me, another day, to retire." 
 
 " My son, my son ! " said the grieved father, in reproachful 
 anger, " it was my anxiety to give you some trifling enjoyment 
 that brought Brown here you must be sensible of that ! " 
 
 "You tease me to death," grumbled the peevish unfortunate. 
 
 "Well, sir," said Mr. Brown, "shall I leave the bottles here/ 
 or do you please that I should give them to the butler? I see 
 that I am displeasing and troublesome to Mr. Henry ; but as 
 my worthy friend and patroness, the late Lady " 
 
 Go go honest Brown ? " said Vavasour (who desired every 
 man's good word) "go and give t\\Q liqueurs to Preston. Mr. 
 Henry is extremely sorry that he is too unwell to see you now; 
 and I I have the heart of a father for his sufferings." 
 
 Mr. Brown withdrew. "'Odious and vulgar,'" said he to 
 himself, in a little fury for Mr. Brosvn peculiarly valued him- 
 self on his gentility "'odious and vulgar !' To think of his 
 little lordship uttering such shameful words ! However, I will 
 go into the steward's room, and abuse him there. But, I suppose, 
 I shall get no dinner in this house no, not so much as a crust of 
 bread ; for while the old gentleman is launching out into such 
 prodigious expenses on a great scale making heathenish tem- 
 ples, and spoiling the fine old house with his new picture gallery 
 and nonsense he is so close in small matters, that I warrant not 
 a candle-end escapes him griping, and pinching, and squeez- 
 ing with one hand, and scattering money, as if it were dirt, with 
 the other and all for that cross, ugly, deformed, little whipper- 
 snapper of a son. ' Odious and vulgar,' indeed ! What shocking 
 language ! Mr. Algernon Mordaunt would never have made use 
 of such words, I know. And bless me, now I think of it, I 
 wonder where that poor gentleman is the young heir here is 
 not long for this world, I can see ; and who know but what Mr. 
 Algernon maybe in great distress ; and I am sure, as far as four 
 hundred pounds, or even a thousand, go, I would not mind 
 lending it him, only upon the post-obits of Squire Vavasour and 
 his hopeful. I like doing a kind thing; and Mr. Algernon was 
 always very good to me ; and I am sure I don't care about the 
 security, though I think it will be as sure as sixpence ; for the 
 old gentleman must be past sixty, and the young one is the worse 
 life of the two. And when he's gone what relation so near as 
 Mr. Algernon? We should help one another it is but one's
 
 THE DISOWNED. $4? 
 
 duty : and if he is in great distress he would not mind a hand- 
 some premium. Well, nobody can say Morris Brown is not as 
 charitable as the best Christian breathing ; and, as the late Lady 
 Waddilove very justly observed, 'Brown, believe me, a prudent 
 risk is the surest gain !' I will lose no time in rinding the late 
 squire out." 
 
 Muttering over these reflections, Mr. Brown took his way to 
 the steward's room. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 
 Clar. How, two letters? The Lover's Progress, 
 
 LETTER FROM CLARENCE LINDEN, ESQ., TO THE DUKE OF HAVER- 
 FIELD. 
 
 Hotel .Calais. 
 
 " MY DEAR DUKE : Aftr your kind letter, you will forgive me 
 for not having called upon you before I left England for you 
 have led me to hope that I may dispense with ceremony towards 
 you ; and, in sad and sober earnest, I was in no mood to visit 
 even you during the few days I was in London, previous to my 
 departure. Some French philosopher has said that ' the best 
 compliment we can pay our friends, when in sickness or misfor- 
 tune, is to avoid them.' I will not say how far I disagree with this 
 sentiment : but I know that a French philosopher wili be an 
 unanswerable authority with you ; and so I will take shelter 
 even under the battery of an enemy. 
 
 " I am waiting here for some days in expectation of Lord 
 Aspeden's arrival. Sick as I was of England, and all that has 
 lately occurred to me there, I was glad to have an opportunity 
 of leaving it sooner than my chief could do ; and I amuse my- 
 self very indifferently in this dull town, with reading all the morn- 
 ing, plays all the evening, and dreams of my happier friends all 
 the night. 
 
 " And so you are sorry that I did not destroy Lord Boro- 
 daile. My clear duke, you would have been much more sorry 
 if I had ! What could you then have done for a living Pasquin 
 for your stray lampoons and vagrant sarcasms? Had an un- 
 fortunate bullet carried away 
 
 " ' That peer of England pillar of the state,' 
 
 as you term him, pray on whom could 'Duke Humphrey 
 unfold his griefs?" Ah, Duke, better as it is, believe me ; and, 
 whenever you are at a loss for a subject for wit, you will find
 
 2 4 S THE DISOWNED. 
 
 cause to bless my forbearance, and congratulate yourself upotl 
 the existence of its object. 
 
 " Dare I hope that, amidst all the gayeties which court you, 
 you will find time to write to me ? If so, you shall have in re- 
 turn the earliest intelligence of every new soprano, and the most 
 elaborate criticisms on evey budding figurante of our court. 
 
 " Have you met Troilolop lately and in what new pursuit 
 are his intellectual energies engaged? There, you see, I have 
 fairly entrapped your Grace into a question, which common 
 courtesy will oblige you to answer. 
 
 "Adieu, ever, my dear duke, 
 
 " Most truly yours, etc." 
 
 LETTER FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD TO CLARENCE LINDEN, 
 
 ESQ. 
 
 " A THOUSAND thanks, mon cher, for your letter, though it was 
 certainly less amusing and animated than I could have wished 
 it for your sake, as well as my own ; yet it could not have been 
 more welcomely received, had it been as witty as your conver- 
 sation itself. I heard that you had accepted the place of 
 secretary to Lord Aspeden, and that you had passed through 
 London on your way to the continent, looking (the amiable 
 Callythorpe, ' who never flatters,' is my authority) more like 
 a ghost than yourself. So you may be sure my dear Linden, 
 that I was very anxious to be convinced, under your own hand, 
 of your carnal existence. 
 
 " Take care of yourself, my good fellow, and don't imagine, 
 as I am apt to do, that youth is like my hunter, Fearnought, 
 and will carry you over everything. In return for your philo- 
 sophical maxim, I will give you. another. "In age we should 
 remember that we have been young, and in youth that we are 
 to be old.' Ehem ! am I not profound as a moralist ? I think 
 a few such sentences would become my long face well ; and, to 
 say truth, I am tired of being witty every one thinks he can 
 be that so I will borrow Trollolop's philosophy take snuff, 
 wear a wig out of curl, and grow wise instead of merry. 
 
 "Apropos of Troilolop; let me not forget that you honor 
 him with your inquiries. I saw him three days since, and he 
 asked me if I had been impressed lately with the idea vulgarly 
 called Clarence Linden ; and he then proceeded to inform me 
 that he had heard the atoms which 'composed your frame were 
 about to be resolved into anew form. While I \vasknittingmy 
 brows very wisely at this intelligence, he passed on to apprise 
 me that 1 had neither length, breath, nor extension, nor any-
 
 THE DISOWNED, 649 
 
 thing but mind. Flattered by so delicate a compliment to my 
 understanding, I yielded my assent ; and he then shifted his 
 ground, and told me that there was no such thing as mind 
 that we were but modifications of matter and that, in a word, 
 I was all body. -I took advantage of this doctrine, and forth- 
 with removed my modification of matter from his. 
 
 " Findlater has just lost his younger brother in a duel. You. 
 have no idea how shocking it was. Sir Christopher one day 
 heard his brother, who had just entered the dragoons, 
 ridiculed for his want of spirit, by Major Elton, who professed 
 to be the youth's best friend the honest heart of our worthy 
 baronet was shocked beyond measure at this perfidy, and the 
 next time his brother mentioned Elton's name with praise, out 
 came the story. You may guess the rest ; young Findlater 
 called out Elton, who shot him through the lungs ! ' I did it 
 for the best,' " cried Sir Christopher. 
 
 " La pauvre petite Meronville ! What an Ariadne ! Just aa 
 1 was thinking to play the Bacchus to your Theseus, up steps 
 an old gentleman from Yorkshire, who hears it is fashionable- 
 to marry bonas robas, proposes honorable matrimony, and 
 deprives me and the world of La Meronville ! The wedding 
 took place on Monday last, and the happy pair set out to theii 
 seat in the North. Verily, we shall have quite a new race in 
 the next generation I expect all the babes will skip into the 
 world with &pas de zephyr, singing in sweet trebles : 
 
 ' Little dancing loves we are ! 
 Who the deuce is our papa ? ' 
 
 "I think you will be surprised to hear that Lord Borodaile 
 is beginning to thaw I saw him smile the other day ! Cer- 
 tainly, we are not so near the North Pole as we were ! He is 
 going, and so am I in the course of the autumn, to your old 
 friends, the Westboroughs. Report says that he is un pen e'fris 
 de la belle Flore ; but, then, Report is such a liar ! For my 
 own part I always contradict her. 
 
 " I eagerly embrace your offer of correspondence, and assure 
 you that there are few people by whose friendship I conceive 
 myself so much honored as by yours. You will believe this ; 
 for you know that, like Callythorpe, I never flatter. Farewell 
 for the present. 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 " HAVERFIELD."
 
 250 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 Q. .E#z. Shall I be tempted of the devil thus? 
 K. Kick. Ay, if the devil tempt thee to do good. 
 Q. Eliz, Shall I forget myself to be myself? 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 IT wanted one hour to midnight, as Crauford walked slowly 
 to the lonely and humble street where he had appointed his 
 meeting with Glendower. It was a stormy and fearful night. 
 The day had been uncommonly sultry, and as it died away 
 thick masses of clouds came laboring along the air, which lay 
 heavy and breathless, as if under a spell as if in those dense 
 and haggard vapors the rider of the storm sat, like an incubus, 
 upon the atmosphere beneath, and paralyzed the motion and 
 wholesomeness of the sleeping winds. And about the hour of 
 twilight, or rather when twilight should have been, instead of 
 its quiet star from one obscure corner of the heavens flashed a 
 solitary gleam of lightning, lingered a moment : 
 
 " And ere a man nad power to say, Behold ! 
 The jaws of darkness did devour it up." 
 
 But then, as if awakened from a torpor by a signal univer- 
 sally acknowledged, from the courts and quarters of heaven 
 came, blaze after blaze, and peal upon peal, the light and 
 voices of the Elements when they walk abroad. The rain fell 
 not ; all was dry and arid ; the mood of Nature seemed not 
 gentle enough for tears ; and the lightning, livid and forked, 
 flashed from the sullen clouds with a deadly fierceness, made 
 trebly perilous by the panting drought and stagnation of the 
 air. The streets were emply and silent, as if the huge city 
 had been doomed and delivered to the wrath of the tempest 
 and ever and anon the lightnings paused upon the housetops, 
 shook and quivered as if meditating their stroke, and then 
 baffled, as it were, by some superior and guardian agency, van- 
 ished into their gloomy tents, and made their next descent from 
 some opposite corner of the skies. 
 
 It was a remarkable instance of the force with which a cher- 
 ished object occupies the thoughts, and of the all-sufficiency of 
 the human mind to itself, the slowness and unconsciousness of 
 danger with which Crauford, a man luxurious as well as natur- 
 ally timid, moved amidst the angry fires of heaven, and 
 brooded, undisturbed, and sullenly serene, over the project at 
 his heart. 
 
 "A rare night for our meeting," thought he, "I suppose he
 
 THE DISOWNED. 2$I 
 
 Will not fail me. Now let me con over my task. I must not 
 tell him all yet. Such babes must be led into error before 
 they can walk just a little inkling will suffice a glimpse 
 into the arcana of my scheme. Well, it is indeed fortunate 
 that I met him, for verily I am surrounded with danger, and 
 a very little delay in the assistance I am forced to seek might 
 exalt me to a higher elevation than the peerage." 
 
 Such was the meditation of this man, as with a slow, shuffling 
 walk, characteristic of his mind, he proceeded to the appointed 
 spot. 
 
 A cessation of unusual length in the series of the lightnings, 
 and the consequent darkness, against which the dull and scanty 
 lamps vainly struggled, prevented Crauford and another figure, 
 approaching from the opposite quarter, seeing each other till 
 they almost touched Crauford stopped abruptly. 
 
 " Is it you ?-" said he. 
 
 "It is a man who has outlived fortune!" answered Glen- 
 dower, in the exaggerated and metaphorical language which 
 the thoughts of men who imagine warmly, and are excited pow- 
 erfully, so often assume. 
 
 " Then," rejoined Crauford, " you are the more suited for 
 my purpose. A littje urging of necessity behind is a marvel- 
 lous whetter of the appetitf to danger before. He ! he ! " 
 And as he said this, his low, chuckling laugh jarringly enough 
 contrasted with the character of the night and his companion. 
 Glendower replied not : a pause ensued ; and the lightning, 
 which, spreading on a sudden from east to west, hung over the 
 city a burning and ghastly canopy, showed the face of each 
 to the other, working,, and almost haggard, as it was, with the 
 conception of dark thoughts, and rendered wan and unearthly 
 by the spectral light in which it was beheld. "It is an awful 
 night ! " said Glendower. 
 
 "True," answered Crauford "a very awful night; but we 
 are safe under the care of Providence. Jesus! what a flash ! 
 Think you it is a favorable opportunity for our conversation ?" 
 
 "Why not?" said Glendower; "what have the thunders 
 and wrath of Heaven to do with us? " 
 
 " H-e-m ! h-e-m ! God sees all things," rejoined Crauford, 
 'and avenges himself on the guilty by his storms ! " 
 
 " Ay ; but those are the storms of the heart ! I tell you that 
 even the innocent may have that within to which the loudest 
 tempests without are peace ! But guilt, you say what have 
 we to do with guilt ? " 
 
 Crauford hesitated, and, avoiding any reply to this question,
 
 45* THE DISOWNED. 
 
 drew Glendower's arm within his own, and, in a low, half-whis- 
 pered tone said: 
 
 "Glendower, survey mankind ; look with a passionless and 
 unprejudiced eye upon the scene which moves around us : what 
 do you see anywhere but the same re-acted and eternal law of 
 nature all, all preying upon each other? Or if there be a 
 solitary individual who refrains, he is as a man without a com- 
 mon badge, without a marriage garment, and the rest trample 
 him under foot ! Glendower, you are such a man ! Now 
 hearken, I will deceive you not ; I honor you too much to be- 
 guile you, even to your own good. I own to you, fairly and at 
 once, that in the scheme I shall unfold to you, there may be 
 something repugnant to the factitious and theoretical princi- 
 ples of education something hostile to the prejudices, though 
 not to the reasonings, of the mind ; but " 
 
 " Hold ! " said Glendower abruptly, pausing and fixing his 
 bold and searching eye upon the tempter ; "hold ! there will 
 be no need of argument or refinement in this case : tell me at 
 once your scheme, and at once I will accept or reject it ! " 
 
 "Gently," answered Crauford : "to all deeds of contract 
 there is a preamble. Listen to me yet farther : when I have 
 ceased, I will listen to you. It is in vain, that you place man 
 in cities it is in vain that you fetter him with laws it is in 
 vain that you pour into his mind the light. of an imperfect 
 morality, of a glimmering wisdom, of an ineffectual religion : in 
 all places he is the same the same savage and crafty being, 
 who makes the passions which rule himself the tools of his con- 
 quest over others ! There is in all creation but one evident 
 law self-preservation ! Split it as you like into hairbreadths 
 and atoms, it is still fundamentally and essentially unaltered. 
 Glendower, that self-preservation is our bond now. Of my- 
 self I do not at present speak I refer only to you : self-pres- 
 ervation commands you to place implicit confidence in me ; it 
 impels you to abjure indigence, by accepting the proposal I 
 am about to make to you." 
 
 "You, as yet, speak enigmas," said Glendo\ver ; "but they 
 are sufficiently clear to tell me their sense is not such as I have 
 heard you utter." 
 
 " You are right. Truth is not always safe safe either to 
 others, or to ourselves ! But I dare open to you now my real 
 heart : look in it I dnre to say that you will behold charity, 
 benevolence, piety to God, love and friendship at this moment 
 to yourself; but I own, also, that you will behold there a de- 
 . termination which, to me, seems courage not to be the only
 
 THE DISOWNED. 253 
 
 idle being in the world, where all are busy ; or worse still, to 
 be the only one engaged in a perilous and uncertain game, and 
 yet shunning to employ all the arts of which he is master. I 
 will own to you that, long since, had I been foolishly inert, I 
 should have been at this moment more penniless and destitute 
 than yourself. I live happy, respected, wealthy ! I enjoy in 
 their widest range the blessings of life. I dispense those bless- 
 ings to others. Look round the world whose name stands 
 fairer than mine ? whose hand relieves more of human dis- 
 tresses ? whose tongue preaches purer doctrines ? None, Glen- 
 dower, none. I offer to you means not dissimilar to those I 
 have chosen fortunes not unequal to those I possess. Nothing 
 but the most unjustifiable fastidiousness will make you hesitate 
 to accept my offer." 
 
 "You cannot expect that I have met you this night with a 
 resolution to be unjustifiably fastidious," said Glendower, with 
 a hollow and cold smile. 
 
 Crauford did not immediately answer, for he was consider- 
 ing whether it was yet the time for disclosing the important 
 secret. While he was deliberating, the sullen clouds began to 
 break from their suspense. A double darkness gathered around, 
 and a few large drops fell on the ground in token of a more 
 general discharge about to follow from the floodgates of heaven. 
 The two men moved onward, and took shelter under an old 
 arch. Crauford first broke silence. "Hist," said he "hist 
 do you hear anything ? " 
 
 " Yes ! I heard the winds and the rain, and the shaking 
 houses, and the plashing pavements, and the reeking housetops; 
 nothing more." 
 
 Looking long and anxiously around to certify himself that 
 none was indeed the witness of their conference, Crauford ap- 
 proached close to Glendower, and laid his hand heavily upon 
 his arm. At that moment a vivid and lengthened flash of 
 lightning shot through the ruined arch, and gave to Crauford's 
 countenance a lustre which Glendower almost started to be- 
 hold. The face, usually so smooth, calm, bright in complex- 
 ion, and almost inexpressive from its extreme composure, now 
 agitated by the excitement of the moment, and tinged by the 
 ghastly light of the skies, became literally fearful. The cold 
 blue eye glared out from its socket the lips blanched, and, 
 parting in act to speak, showed the white glistening teeth ; and 
 the corners of the mouth, drawn down in a half sneer, gave to 
 the cheeks, rendered green and livid by the lightning, a lean 
 and hollow appearance, contrary to their natural shape.
 
 254 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " It is," said Crauford, in a whispered but distinct tone, "a, 
 perilous secret that I am about to disclose to you. I indeed 
 have no concern in it, but my lords the judges have, and you 
 will not therefore be surprised if I forestall the ceremonies of 
 their court, and require an oath." 
 
 Then, his manner and voice suddenly changing into an 
 earnest and deep solemnity, as excitement gave him an elo- 
 quence more impressive, because unnatural to his ordinary 
 moments, he continued : " By those lightnings and commotions 
 ibove by the heavens in which they revel in their terrible 
 sports by the earth, whose towers they crumble, and herbs 
 they blight, and creatures they blast into cinders at their 
 will by Him whom, whatever be the name He bears, all men 
 in the living world worship and tremble before by whatever 
 is sacred in this great and mysterious universe, and at the peril 
 of whatever can wither, and destroy, and curse swear to pre- 
 serve inviolable and for ever the secret I shall whisper to your 
 ear ! " 
 
 The profound darkness which now, in the pause of the 
 lightning, wrapt the scene, hid from Crauford all sight of the 
 effect he had produced, and even the very outline of Glen- 
 dower's figure : but the gloom made more distinct the voice 
 which thrilled through it upon Crauford's ear. 
 
 '' Promise me that there is not dishonor, nor crime, which is 
 dishonor, in this confidence, and I swear." 
 
 Crauford ground his teeth. He was about to reply impetu- 
 ously, but he checked himself. "I am not going," thought he, 
 "to communicate my own share of this plot, but merely to state 
 that a plot does exist, and then to point out in what manner 
 he can profit by it so far, therefore, there is no guilt in his 
 concealment, and, consequently, no excuse for him to break his 
 vow." 
 
 Rapidly running over this self-argument, he said aloud "I 
 promise ! " 
 
 " And," rejoined Glendower, "I swear! " 
 
 At the close of this sentence another flash of lightning again 
 made darkness visible, and Glendower, beholding the counte- 
 nance of his companion, again recoiled; for its mingled haggard- 
 ness and triumph seemed to his excited imagination the very 
 expression of a fiend ! "Now," said Crauford, relapsing into 
 his usual careless tone, somewhat enlivened by his sneer, ''now, 
 then, you must not interrupt me in my disclosure, by those 
 starts and exclamations which break from your philosophy lilrs 
 sparks from flint. Hear me throughout."
 
 THE DISOWNED. 255 
 
 An<3, bending down, till his mouth reached Glendower's ear, 
 he commenced his recital. Artfully hiding his own agency, the 
 master-spring of the gigantic machinery of fraud, which, too 
 mighty for a single hand, required an assistant throwing into 
 obscurity the sin, while, knowing the undaunted courage and 
 desperate fortunes of the man, he did not affect to conceal the 
 danger expatiating upon the advantages, the immense and 
 almost inexhaustible resources of wealth which his scheme 
 suddenly opened upon one in the deepest abyss of poverty, and 
 slightly sketching, as if to excite vanity, the ingenuity and 
 genius by which the scheme originated, and could only be 
 sustained Crauford's detail of temptation, in its knowledge of 
 human nature, in its adaptation of act to principles, in its web- 
 like craft of self -concealment, and the speciousness of its lure, 
 was indeed a splendid masterpiece of villainous invention. 
 
 But while Glendower listened, and his silence flattered Crau- 
 ford's belief of victory, not for one single moment did a weak 
 or yielding desire creep around his heart. Subtly as the scheme 
 was varnished, and scarce a tithe of its comprehensive enormity 
 unfolded, the strong and acute mind of one long accustomed 
 to unravel sophistry and gaze on the loveliness of truth, saw at 
 once that the scheme proposed was of the most unmingled 
 treachery and baseness. Sick, chilled, withering at heart, Glen- 
 dower leant against the damp wall ; as every word which the 
 tempter fondly imagined was irresistibly confirming his purpose, 
 tore away the last prop to which, in the credulity of hope, the 
 student had clung, and mocked while it crushed the fondness 
 of his belief. 
 
 Crauford ceased, and stretched forth his hand to grasp Glen- 
 dower's. He felt it not. "You do not speak, my friend, "said 
 he; " do you deliberate, or have you not decided ?" Still no 
 answer came. Surprised, and half alarmed, he turned round, 
 and perceived, by a momentary flash of lightning, that Glen- 
 dower had risen, and was moving away towards the mouth of 
 the arch. 
 
 " Good Heavens ! Glendower," cried Crauford, "where are 
 you going ? " 
 
 " Anywhere," cried Glendower, in a sudden paroxysm of 
 indignant passion, " anywhere in this great globe of suffering, 
 so that the agonies of my human flesh and heart are not polluted 
 by the accents of crime ! And such crime ! Why, I would 
 rather go forth into the highways, and win bread by the sharp 
 knife, and the death-struggle, than sink my soul in such mire 
 and filthiness of sin. Fraud fraud treachery ! Merciful
 
 256 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 Father ! what can be my state, when these are supposed to 
 tempt me ! " 
 
 Astonished and aghast, Crauford remained rooted to the spot. 
 
 " Oh ! " continued Glendower and his noble nature was 
 Wrung to the utmost ; " Oh, MAN MAN ! that I should 
 have devoted my best and freshest years to the dream of serv- 
 ing thee ! In my boyish enthusiasm, in my brief day of 
 pleasure and of power, in the intoxication of love, in the 
 reverse of fortune, in the squalid and obscure chambers of 
 degradation and poverty, that one hope animated, cheered, 
 sustained me through all ! In temptation did this hand belie, 
 or in sickness did this brain forego, or in misery did this heart 
 forget, thy great and advancing cause ? In the wide world, is 
 there one being whom I have injured, even in thought one 
 being who, in the fellowship of want, should not have drunk of 
 my cup, or broken with me the last morsel of my bread ! and 
 now now, is it come to this ! " 
 
 And, hiding his face in his hands, he gave way to a violence 
 of feeling, before which the weaker nature of Crauford stood 
 trembling and abashed. It lasted not long ; he raised his head 
 from its drooping posture, and, as he stood at the entrance of 
 the arch, a prolonged flash from the inconstant skies shone full 
 upon his form. Tall, erect, still, the gloomy and ruined walls 
 gave his colorless countenance and haughty stature in bold and 
 distinct relief ; all trace of the past passion had vanished : per- 
 fectly calm and set, his features borrowed even dignity from 
 their marble paleness, and the marks of suffering, which the 
 last few months had writ in legible characters on the cheek and 
 brow. Seeking out, with an eye to which the intolerable light- 
 nings seemed to have lent something of their fire, the cowering 
 and bended form of his companion, he said : 
 
 " Go home, miserable derider of the virtue you cannot under- 
 stand go to your luxurious and costly home go and repine 
 that human nature is not measured by your mangled and 
 crippled laws ; amidst men, yet more fallen than I am, hope 
 to select your victim amidst prisons, and hovels, and roofless 
 sheds amidst rags and destitution, and wretches made mad by 
 hunger, hope that you may find a villain. I leave you to that 
 hope, and to remembrance ! " 
 
 As Glendower moved away, Crauford recovered himself. 
 Rendered desperate by the vital necessity of procuring some 
 speedy aid in his designs, and not yet perfectly persuaded of 
 the fallacy of his former judgment, he was resolved not to suffer 
 Glendower thus easily to depart. Smothering his feelings by
 
 THE DISOWNED. 257 
 
 an effort violent even to his habitual hypocrisy, he sprung for- 
 ward, and laid his hand upon Glendower's shoulder. 
 
 " Stay, stay," said he, in a soothing and soft voice ; " you 
 have wronged me greatly. I pardon your warmth nay, I 
 honor it ; but hereafter you will repent your judgment of me. 
 At least, do justice to my intentions. Was I an actor in the 
 scheme proposed to you ? what was it to me ? Was I in the 
 smallest degree to be benefited by it ? Could I have any 
 other motive than affection for you ? If I erred, it was from 
 a different view of the question ; but is it not the duty of a 
 friend to find expedients for distress, and to leave to the dis- 
 tressed person the right of accepting or rejecting them ? 
 But let this drop for ever partake of my fortune be my 
 adopted brother. Here, I have hundreds about me at this 
 moment ; take them all, and own at least that I meant you 
 well." 
 
 Feeling that Glendower, who at first had vainly endeavored 
 to shake off his hand, now turned towards him, though at the 
 moment it was too dark to see his countenance, the wily 
 speaker continued " Yes, Glendower, if by that name I must 
 alone address you, take all I have there is no one in this 
 world dearer to me than you are. I am a lonely and disap- 
 pointed man, without children or ties. I sought out a friend 
 who might be my brother in life, and my heir in death. I 
 found you be that to me ! " 
 
 "I am faint and weak," said Glendower slowly, "and I 
 believe my senses cannot be clear ; but a minute since, and 
 you spoke at length, and with a terrible distinctness, words 
 which it polluted my very ear to catch, and now you speak as 
 if you loved me. Will it please you to solve the riddle ?" 
 
 "The truth is this," said Crauford : " I knew your pride 
 I feared you would not accept a permanent pecuniary aid, 
 even from friendship. I was driven therefore, to devise some 
 plan of independence for you. I could think of no plan but 
 that which I proposed. You speak of it as wicked : it may be 
 so ; but it seemed not wicked to me. I may have formed a 
 wrong I own it is a peculiar system of morals ; but it is, at 
 least, sincere. Judging of my proposal by that system, I saw 
 no sin in it. I saw, too, much less clanger than, in the honesty 
 of my heart, I spoke of. In a similar distress, I solemnly 
 swear, I myself would have adopted a similar relief. Nor is 
 this all ; the plan proposed would have placed thousands in 
 your power. Forgive me if I thought your life, and the lives 
 of those most dear to you, of greater value than these sums tQ
 
 258 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 the persons defrauded ay defrauded, if you will ; forgive 
 me it" I thought that with these thousands you would effect far 
 more good to the community than their legitimate owners. 
 Upon these grounds, and on some others, too tedious now to 
 state, I justified my proposal to my conscience. Pardon me, 
 I again beseech you : accept my last proposal ; be my partner, 
 my friend, my heir ; and forget a scheme never proposed to 
 you, if I had hoped (what I hope now) that you would accept 
 the alternative which it is my pride to offer, and which you 
 are not justified, even by pride, to refuse." 
 
 "Great Source of all knowledge!" ejaculated Glendower, 
 scarcely audibly, and to himself. "Supreme and unfathomable 
 God dost thou most loathe or pity thine abased creatures, 
 walking in their dim reason upon this little earth, and sanction- 
 ing fraud, treachery, crime, upon a principle borrowed from 
 thy laws ! Oh ! when when will thy full light of wisdom 
 travel down to us, and guilt, and sorrow, and this world's evil 
 mysteries roll away like vapors before the blaze ! " 
 
 "I do not hear you, my friend," said Crauford. "Speak 
 aloud ; you will I feel you will, accept my offer, and become 
 my brother ! " 
 
 " Away ! " said Glendower. " I will not." 
 
 "He wanders his brain is touched!" muttered Crauford, 
 and then resumed aloud " Glendower, we are both unfit for 
 talk at present both unstrung by our late jar. You will meet 
 me again to morrow, perhaps. I will accompany you now to 
 your door." 
 
 ''Not a step : our paths are different." 
 
 " Well, well, if you will have it so, be it as you please. I 
 have offended ; you have a right to punish me, and play the 
 churl to-night ; but your address ?" 
 
 "Yonder," said Glendower, pointing to the heavens. "Come 
 to me a month hence, and you will find me there /" 
 
 *' Nay, nay, my friend, your brnin is heated, but you leave 
 me ! Well, as I said, your will is mine at least take some of 
 these paltry notes in earnest of our bargain ; remember when 
 next we meet you will share all I have." 
 
 " You remind me," said Glendower, quietly, "that we have 
 old debts to settle. When last I saw you, you lent me a certain 
 sum there it is take it count it there is but one poor 
 guinea gone. Fear not even to the uttermost farthing you 
 shall be repaid." 
 
 " Why, why, this is unkind, ungenerous. Stay, stay, " 
 but, waving his hand impatiently, Glendower darted away,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 25$ 
 
 and passing into another street, the darkness effectually closed 
 upon his steps. 
 
 "Fool, fool that I am !" cried Crauford, stamping vehemently 
 on the ground "in what point did my wit fail me, that I could 
 not win one whom very hunger had driven into my net ! But 
 I must yet find him and I will the police shall be set to 
 work : these half confidences may ruin me. And how deceitful 
 he has proved to talk more diffidently than a whining harlot 
 upon virtue, and yet be so stubborn upon trial ! Dastard that 
 I am too, as well as fool I felt sunk into the dust by his 
 voice. But pooh, I must have him yet ; your worst villains 
 make the most noise about the first step. True, that I cannot 
 storm, but I will undermine. But, wretch that I am, I must 
 win him or another soon, or I perish on a gibbet Out, base 
 thought ! " 
 
 CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 " Formam quidem ipsam, Marce fili, et tanquam faciem honesti vides : 
 qua?, si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles amores (ut ait Plato) excitaret sapien- 
 tia."* TULL. 
 
 IT was almost dawn when Glendower returned to his home. 
 Fearful of disturbing his wife, he stole with mute steps to the 
 damp and rugged chamber, where the last son of a princely line, 
 and the legitimate owner of lands and halls which ducal rank 
 might have envied, held his miserable asylum. The first faint 
 streaks of coming light broke through the shutterless and 
 shattered windows, and he saw that she reclined in a deep sleep 
 upon the chair beside their child's couch. She would not go 
 to bed herself till Glendower returned, and she had sat up, 
 watching and praying, and listening for his footsteps, till, in 
 the utter exhaustion of debility and sickness, sleep had fallen 
 upon her. Glendower bent over her. 
 
 " Sleep," said he, " sleep on ! The wicked do not come to 
 thee now. Thou art in a world that has no fellowship with 
 this a world from which even happiness is not banished ! 
 Nor woe, nor pain, nor memory of the past, nor despair of all 
 before thee, make the characters of thy present state ! Thou 
 forestallest the forgetfulness of the grave, and thy heart con- 
 centrates all earth's comfort in one word 'Oblivion.' Beauti- 
 ful, hmt' beautiful thou art even yet ! that smile, that momen- 
 
 * Son Marcus, you see the form and as it were the face of Virtue that Wisdom, which, 
 if it could be perceived by the eyes, would (as Plato saith) kindle absolute and marvellous 
 affection.
 
 200 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 tary blush, years have not conquered them. They are as when, 
 my young bride, thou didst lean first upon my bosom, and 
 dream that sorrow was no more ! And I have brought thee 
 unto this. These green walls make thy bridal chamber yon 
 fragments of bread thy bridal board. Well ! it is no matter ! 
 thou art on thy way to a land where all things, even a breaking 
 heart, are at rest. I weep not ; wherefore should I weep ! 
 Tears are not for the dead, but their survivors. I would rather 
 see thee drop inch by inch into the grave, and smile as I beheld 
 it, than save thee for an inheritance of sin. What is there in 
 this little and sordid life that we should strive to hold it? What 
 in this dreadful dream that we should fear to wake ? " 
 
 And Glendower knelt beside his wife, and, despite his words, 
 tears flowed fast and gushingly down his cheeks ; and wearied 
 as he was, he watched upon her slumbers, till they fell from the 
 eyes to which his presence was more joyous than the day. 
 
 It was a beautiful thing, even in sorrow, to see that couple, 
 whom want could not debase, nor misfortune, which makes 
 even generosity selfish, divorce ! All that Fate had stripped 
 from the poetry and graces of life had not shaken one leaf 
 from the romance of their green and unwithered affections ! 
 They were the very type of love in its holiest and most en- 
 during shape : their hearts had grown together their being 
 had flowed through caves and deserts, and reflected the storms 
 of an angry Heaven ; but its waters had indissolubly mingled 
 into one ! Young, gifted, noble, and devoted, they were worthy 
 victims of this blighting and bitter world ! Their garden was 
 turned into a wilderness ; but, like our first parents, it was hand 
 in hand that they took their solitary way ! Evil beset them, 
 but they swerved not ; the rains and the winds fell upon their 
 unsheltered heads, but they were not bowed ; and through the 
 mazes and briars of this weary life, their bleeding footsteps 
 strayed not, for they had a clue ! The mind seemed, as it were, 
 to become visible and external as the frame decayed, and to 
 cover the body with something of its own invulnerable power ; 
 so that whatever should have attacked the moral and frail part, 
 fell upon that which, imperishable and divine, resisted and 
 subdued it ! 
 
 It was unfortunate for Glendower that he never again met 
 Wolfe ; for neither fanaticism of political faith, nor sternness 
 of natural temper, subdued in the republican the real benevo- 
 lence and generosity which redeemed and elevated his charac- 
 ter : nor could any impulse of party-zeal have induced him, 
 like Cnuford, systematically to take advantage of poverty in
 
 THE DISOWNED. 26t 
 
 order to tempt to participation in his schemes. From a more 
 evil companion Glendower had not yet escaped : Crauford, by 
 some means or other, found out his abode, and lost no time in 
 availing himself of the discovery. Jn order fully to compre- 
 hend his unwearied persecution of Glendower. it must con- 
 stantly be remembered, that to this persecution he was bound 
 by a necessity which, urgent, dark, and implicating life itself, 
 rendered him callous to every obstacle, and unsusceptible of all 
 remorse. With the exquisite tact which he possessed, he never 
 openly recurred to his former proposal of fraud : he contented 
 himself with endeavoring to persuade Glendower to accept 
 pecuniary assistance ; but in vain. The veil once torn from 
 his character, no craft could restore. Through all his pre- 
 tences, and seven-fold hypocrisy, Glendower penetrated at once 
 into his real motives : he was not to be duped by assurances of 
 friendship which he knew the very dissimilarities between their 
 natures rendered impossible. He had seen at the first, despite 
 of all allegations to the contrary, that in the fraud Crauford 
 had proposed, that person could by no means be an unin- 
 fluenced and cold adviser. In after-conversations, Crauford, 
 driven by the awful interest he had in success, from his usual 
 consummateness of duplicity, betrayed in various important 
 minutiae how deeply he was implicated in the crime for which 
 he had argued ; and not even the visible and progressive decay 
 of his wife and child could force the stern mind of Glendower 
 into accepting those wages of iniquity which he knew well were 
 only offered as a.n earnest or a snare. 
 
 There is a royalty in extreme suffering, when the mind falls 
 not with the fortunes, which no hardihood of vice can violate 
 unabashed. Often and often, humbled and defeated, through 
 all his dissimulation, was Crauford driven from the presence 
 of the man whom it was his bitterest punishment to fear most 
 when most he affected to despise ; and as often, recollecting 
 his powers, and fortifying himself in his experience of human 
 frailty when sufficiently tried, did he return to his attempts. 
 He waylaid the door and watched the paths of his intended 
 prey. He knew that the mind which even best repels tempta- 
 tion first urged, hath seldom power to resist the same sugges- 
 tion, if daily, dropping, enwearying, presenting itself in 
 every form, obtruded in every hour, losing its horror by 
 custom, and finding in the rebellious bosom itself its smoothest 
 vizard and most alluring excuse. And it was, indeed, a mighty 
 and perilous trial to Glendower, when rushing from the pres- 
 ence of his wife and child when fainting under accumulated
 
 262 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 evils when almost delirious with sickening and heated thought, 
 to hear at each prompting of the wrong and excited nature, 
 each heave of the black fountain that in no mortal breast is 
 utterly exhausted, one smooth, soft, persuasive voice forever 
 whispering, " Relief ! " relief, certain, utter, instantaneous ! 
 the voice of one pledged never to relax an effort or spare a 
 pang, by a danger to himself, a danger of shame and death 
 the voice of one who never spoke but in friendship and com- 
 passion, profound in craft, and a very sage in the disguises 
 with which language invests deeds. 
 
 But VIRTUE his resources buried in itself, which we know 
 not, till the invading hour calls them from their retreats. Sur- 
 rounded by hosts without, and when Nature itself, turned 
 traitor, is its most deadly enemy within ; it assumes a new and 
 a superhuman power, which is greater than Nature itself. 
 Whatever be its creed whatever be its sect from whatever 
 segment of the globe its orisons arise, Virtue is God's empire, 
 and from His throne of thrones He will defend it. Though 
 cast into the distant earth, and struggling on the dim arena of 
 a human heart, all things above are spectators of its conflict, or 
 enlisted in its cause. The angels have their charge over it 
 the banners of archangels are on its side ; and from sphere to 
 sphere, through the illimitable ether, and round the impene- 
 trable darkness at the feet of God, its triumph is hymned by 
 harps, which are strung to the glories of the Creator ! 
 
 One evening, when Crauford had joined Glendower in his 
 solitary wanderings, the dissembler renewed his attacks. 
 
 "But why not," said he, "accept from my friendship what to 
 my benevolence you would deny ? I couple with my offers, 
 my prayers rather, no conditions. How then do you, can you, 
 reconcile it to your conscience, to suffer your wife and child 
 to perish before your eyes?" 
 
 " Man man," said Glendower, " tempt me no more let 
 them die ! At present the worst is death what you offer me 
 is dishonor." 
 
 " Heavens ! how uncharitable is this ! Can you call the 
 mere act of accepting money from one who loves you, dis- 
 honor !" 
 
 "It is in vain that you varnish your designs," said Glen- 
 dower, stopping, and fixing his eyes upon him. " Do you not 
 think that cunning ever betrays itself ? In a thousand words 
 in a thousand looks, which have escaped you, but not me, I 
 know that, if there be one being on this earth whom you hate, 
 and would injure, that being is myself. Nay, start not listen
 
 THE DISOWNED. 263 
 
 to me patiently. I have sworn that it is the last opportunity 
 you shall have. I will not subject myself to farther tempta- 
 tion : I am now sane ; but there are things which may drive 
 me mad, and in madness you might conquer. You hate me : 
 it is out of the nature of earthly things that you should not. 
 But even were it otherwise, do you think that I could believe 
 you would come from your voluptuous home to these miserable 
 retreats ; that, among the lairs of beggary and theft, you would 
 lie in wait to allure me to forsake poverty, without a stronger 
 motive than love for one who affects it not for you ? I know 
 you I have read your heart I have penetrated into that 
 stronger motive it is your own safety. In the system of 
 atrocity you proposed to me, you are the principal. You have 
 already bared to me enough of the extent to which that system 
 reaches, to convince me that a single miscreant, however 
 ingenious, cannot, unassisted, support it with impunity. You 
 want help: I am he in whom you have dared to believe 
 that you could find it. You are detected now be un- 
 deceived ! " 
 
 ''Is it so?" said Crauford ; and as he saw that it was 
 no longer possible to feign, the poison of his heart broke forth 
 in its full venom. The fiend rose from the reptile, and stood 
 exposed in its natural shape. Returning Glendower's stern 
 but lofty gaze with an eye to which all evil passions lent their 
 unholy fire, he repeated, "Is it so? then you are more pene- 
 trating than I thought ; but it is indifferent to me. It was for 
 your sake, not mine, most righteous man, that I wished you 
 might have a disguise to satisfy the modesty of your punctilios. 
 It is all one to Richard Crauford whether you go blindfold or 
 with open eyes into his snare. Go you must, and shall. Ay, 
 frowns will not awe me. You have desired the truth ; you 
 shall have it. You are right, I hate you hate you with a soul 
 whose force of hatred you cannot dream of. Your pride, your 
 stubbornness, your coldness of heart, which things that would 
 stir the blood of beggars, cannot warm your icy and passion- 
 less virtue I hate I hate all ! You are right also, most wise 
 inquisitor, in supposing that in the scheme proposed to you, I 
 am the principal I am ! You were to be the tool, and shall. 
 I have offered you mild inducements pleas to soothe the 
 technicalities of your conscience you have rejected them be 
 it so. Now choose between my first offer and the gibbet. 
 Ay, the gibbet ! That night on which we made the appoint- 
 ment, which shall not yet be in vain on that night you stopped 
 me in the street you demanded money you robbed rae I
 
 264 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 will swear I will prove it. Now, then, tremble, man of 
 morality dupe of your own strength you are in my power 
 tremble ! Yet in my safety is your escape I am generous. I 
 repeat my original offer wealth, as great as you will demand, 
 or the gibbet -the gibbet do I speak loud enough ? do 
 you hear ?" 
 
 "Poor fool!" said Glendower, laughing scornfully, and 
 moving away. But when Crauford, partly in mockery, partly 
 in menace, placed his hand upon Glendower's shoulder, as if 
 to stop him, the touch seemed to change his mood from scorn 
 to fury turning abruptly round, he seized the villain's throat 
 with a giant's strength, and cried out, while his whole counte- 
 nance worked beneath the tempestuous wrath within, "What 
 if I squeeze out thy poisonous life from thee this moment ?" L - 
 and then once more bursting into a withering laughter, as he 
 surveyed the terror which he had excited, he added, ".No, no; 
 thou art too vile!" and, dashing the hypocrite against the 
 wall of a neighboring house, he strode away. 
 
 Recovering himself slowly, and trembling with rage and 
 fear, Crauford gazed round, expecting yet to find he had 
 sported too far with the passions he had sought to control. 
 When, however, he had fully satisfied himself that Glendower 
 was gone, all his wrathful and angry feelings returned with 
 redoubled force. But their most biting torture was the con- 
 sciousness of their impotence. For- after the first paroxysm of 
 rage had subsided, he saw, too clearly, that his threat could not 
 be executed without incurring the most imminent danger of 
 discovery. High as his character stood, it was possible that 
 no charge against him might excite suspicion ; but a word 
 might cause inquiry and inquiry would be .ruin. Forced, 
 therefore, to stomach his failure, his indignation, his shame, his 
 hatred, and his vengeance, his own heart became a punish- 
 ment almost adequate to his vices. 
 
 "But my foe will die," said he, clenching his fist so firmly 
 that the nails almost brought blood from the palm ; "he will 
 starve, famish ; and see them his wife, his child perish first ! 
 I shall have my triumph, though I shall not witness it : But 
 now away to my villa : there, at least, will be some one whom 
 I can mock, and beat, and trample, if I will ! Would would 
 ivould that I were that very man, destitute as he is? His 
 neck, at least, is safe : if he dies, it will not be upon the gal- 
 lows, nor among the hootings of the mob ! O, horror ! horror ! 
 What are my villa, my wine, my women, with that black 
 thought ever following me like a shadow ? Who who, while
 
 THE DISOWNED. 265 
 
 an avalanche is sailing over him, who would sit down to 
 feast !" 
 
 Leaving this man to shun or be overtaken by Fate, we return 
 to Glendovver. It is needless to say that Crauford visited him 
 no more ; and, indeed, shortly afterwards Glendower again 
 changed his home. But every day and every hour brought new 
 strength to the disease which was creeping and burning through 
 the veins of the devoted wife; and Glendower, who saw, on 
 earth, nothing before them but a gaol, from which, as yet, they 
 had been miraculously delivered, repined not as he beheld her 
 approach to a gentler and benigner home. Often he sate, as she 
 was bending ever their child, and gazed upon her cheek with 
 an insane and fearful joy .at the characters which consumption 
 had there engraved ; but when she turned towards him her 
 fond eyes (those deep wells of lo've, in which truth lay hid, and 
 which neither languor nor disease could exhaust), the unnatural 
 hardness of his heart melted away, and he would rush from the 
 house, to give vent to an agony against which fortitude and 
 manhood were in vain ! 
 
 There was no hope for their distress. His wife had, un- 
 known to Glendower (for she dreaded his pride), written sev- 
 eral times to a relation, who, though distant, was still the 
 nearest in blood which fate had spared her, but ineffectually ; 
 the scions of a large and illegitimate family, which surrounded 
 him, utterly prevented the success, and generally interrupted 
 the application, of any claimant on his riches but themselves. 
 Glendower, whose temper had ever kept him aloof from all but 
 the commonest acquaintances, knew no human being to apply 
 to. Utterly unable to avail himself of the mine which his 
 knowledge and talents should have proved sick, and despon- 
 dent at heart, and debarred by the loftiness of honor, or rather 
 principle, that nothing could quell, from any unlawful means of 
 earning bread, which to most minds would have been rendered 
 excusable by the urgency of nature, Glendower marked the 
 days drag on in dull and protracted despair, and envied every 
 corpse that he saw borne to the asylum in which all earth's 
 hopes seemed centred and confined.
 
 266 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 " For ours was not like earthly love. 
 
 And must this parting be our very last? 
 
 No ! I shall love thee still when death itself is past 
 * * * * * 
 
 ***** 
 
 Hush'd were his Gertrude's lips ! but still their bland 
 
 And beautiful expression seemed to melt 
 
 With love that could not die ! and still his hand 
 
 She presses to the heart, no more that felt. 
 
 Ah, heart ! where once each fond affection dwelt." CAMPBELL. 
 
 "I WONDER," said Mr. Brown to himself, as he spurred his 
 shaggy pony to a speed very unusual to the steady habits of 
 either party " I wonder where I shall find him. I would not for 
 the late Lady Waddilove's best diamond cross have anybody 
 forestall me in the news. To think of my young master dying 
 so soon after my last visit, or rather my last visit but one and 
 to think of the old gentleman taking on so, and raving about 
 his injustice to the rightful possessor, and saying that he is 
 justly punished, and asking me so eagerly if I could discover 
 the retreat of the late squire, and believing me so implicitly 
 when I undertook to do it, and giving me this letter?" And 
 here Mr. Brown wistfully examined an epistle sealed with black 
 wax, peeping into the corners, which irritated rather than satis- 
 fied his curiosity "I wonder what the old gentleman says in 
 it I suppose he will, of course, give up the estate and house. 
 Let me see that long picture gallery, just built, will, at all 
 events, want furnishing. That would be a famous opportunity 
 to get rid of the Indian jars, and the sofas, and the great Tur- 
 key carpet. How lucky that I should just have come in time 
 to get the letter. Bet let me consider how I shall find out ! 
 an advertisement in the paper ? Ah! that's the plan. 'Alger- 
 non Mordaunt, Esq.: something greatly to his advantage- ap- 
 ply to Mr. Brown, etc.' Ah! that will do well, very well. 
 The Turkey carpet won't be quite long enough. I wish I had 
 discovered Mr. Mordaunt's address before, and lent him some 
 money during the young gentleman's life ; it would have 
 seemed more generous. However, I can offer it now, before I 
 show the letter. Bless me, it's getting dark. Come, Dobbin, 
 ye-up ! " Such were the meditations of the faithful friend of 
 the late Lady Waddilove, as he hastened to London, charged 
 with the task of discovering Mordaunt, and with the delivery 
 of the following epistle ;
 
 THE DISOWNED. 267 
 
 " You are now, sir, the heir to that property, which, some 
 years ago, passed from your hands into mine. My son, for 
 whom alone wealth, or, I may say life, was valuable to me, is 
 no more. I only, an old, childless man, stand between you 
 and the estates of Mordaunt. Do not wait for my death to en- 
 joy them. I cannot live here, where everything reminds me of 
 my great and irreparable loss. I shall remove next month into 
 another home. Consider this, then, as once more yours. The 
 house, I believe, you will find not disimproved by my altera- 
 tions ; the mortgages on the estate have been paid off ; the 
 former rental you will perhaps allow my steward to account to 
 you for, and after my death the present one will be yours. I 
 am informed that you are a proud man, and not likely to re- 
 ceive favors. Be it so, sir ! it is no favor you will receive, but 
 justice there are circumstances connected with my treaty with 
 your father, which have of late vexed my conscience and con- 
 science, sir, must be satisfied at any loss. But we shall meet, 
 perhaps, and talk over the past ; at present I will not enlarge 
 on it. If you have suffered by me, I am sufficiently punished, 
 and my only hope is to repair your losses. 
 "I am, etc., 
 
 " H. VAVASOUR MORDAUNT." 
 
 Such was the letter, so important to Mordaunt, with which 
 our worthy friend was charged. Bowed to the dust as Vava- 
 sour was by the loss of his son, and open to conscience as afflic- 
 tion had made him, he had lived too long for effect, not to be 
 susceptible to its influence, even to the last. Amidst all his 
 grief, and it was intense, there were some whispers of self-exalta- 
 tion at the thought of the hlat which his generosity and abdica- 
 tion, would excite ; and, with true worldly morality, the hoped- 
 for plaudits of others gave a triumph, rather than humiliation, 
 to his reconcilement with himself. 
 
 To say truth, there were indeed circumstances connected with 
 his treaty with Mordaunt's father, calculated to vex his con- 
 science. He knew that he had not only taken great advantage 
 of Mr. Mordaunt's distress, but that, at his instigation, a paper 
 which could forever have prevented Mr. Mordaunt's sale of the 
 property had been destroyed. These circumstances, during 
 the life of his son, he had endeavored to forget or to palliate. 
 But grief is rarely deaf to remorse ; and at the death 
 of that idolized son, the voice at his heart grew imperious, 
 and he lost the power, in losing the motive, of reasoning 
 it away.
 
 268 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 Mr. Brown's advertisement was unanswered ; and, with the 
 zeal and patience of the Christian proselyte's tribe and calling, 
 the good man commenced, in person, a most elaborate and 
 painstaking research. For a long time, his endeavors were so 
 ineffectual, that Mr. Brown, in despair, disposed of the two 
 Indian jars for half their value and heaved a despondent sigh, 
 whenever he saw the great Turkey carpet rolled up in his ware- 
 house with as much obstinacy as if it never meant to unroll 
 itself again. 
 
 At last, however, by dint of indefatigable and minute 
 investigation, he ascertained that the object of his search had 
 resided in London, under a feigned name; from lodging to 
 lodging, and corner to corner, he tracked him, till at length he 
 made himself master of Mordaunt's present retreat. A joyful 
 look did Mr. Brown cast at the great Turkey carpet, as he 
 passed by it, on his way to his street door, on the morning of his 
 intended visit to Mordaunt. " It is a fine thing to have a good 
 heart," said he, in the true style of Sir Christopher Findlater, 
 and he again eyed the Turkey carpet. "I really feel quite 
 happy at the thought of the pleasure I shall give ! " 
 
 After a walk through as many obscure and filthy ivynds, and 
 lanes, and alleys, and courts, as ever were threaded by some 
 humble fugitive from justice, the patient Morris came to a sort 
 of court, situated among the miserable hovels in the vicinity of 
 the Tower. He paused, wonderingly, at a dwelling, in which 
 every window was broken, and where the tiles, torn from the 
 roof, lay scattered in forlorn confusion beside the door : where 
 the dingy bricks looked crumbling away, from very age and. 
 rottenness, and the fabric, which was of great antiquity, seemed 
 so rocking and infirm, that the eye looked upon its distorted 
 and overhanging position with a sensation of pain and dread ; 
 where the very rats had deserted their loathsome cells, from the 
 insecurity of their tenure, and the ragged mothers of the abject 
 neighborhood forbade their brawling children to wander under 
 the threatening walls, lest they should keep the promise of their 
 mouldering aspect, and, falling, bare to the obstructed and 
 sickly day the secrets of their prison-house. Girt with the 
 foul and reeking lairs of that extreme destitution which neces- 
 sity urges irresistibly into guilt, and excluded by filthy alleys, 
 and an eternal atmosphere of smoke and rank vapor, from the 
 blessed sun and the pure air of Heaven, the miserable mansion 
 seemed set apart for every disease to couch within too per- 
 ilous even for the hunted criminal too dreary even for the 
 beggar to prefer it to the bare hedge, or the inhospitable porch,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 269 
 
 beneath whose mockery of shelter the frosts of winter had so 
 often numbed him into sleep. 
 
 Thrice did the heavy and silver-headed cane of Mr. Brown 
 resound upon the door, over which was a curious carving of a 
 lion dormant, and a date of which only the two numbers 15 
 were discernible. Roused by a note so unusual, and an appari- 
 tion so unwontedly smug as the worthy Morris, a whole legion 
 of dingy and smoke-dried brats came trooping from the sur- 
 rounding huts, and with many an elvish cry, and strange oath, and 
 cabalistic word, which thrilled the respectable marrow of Mr. 
 Brown, they collected in a gaping and, to his alarmed eye, a 
 menacing group, as near to the house as their fears and parents* 
 would permit them. 
 
 " It is very dangerous," thought Mr. Brown, looking shiver- 
 ingly up at the hanging and tottering roof, "and very appalling," 
 as he turned to the ragged crowd of infant reprobates which 
 began with every moment to increase. At last he summoned 
 courage, and inquired, in a tone half soothing and half digni- 
 fied, if they could inform him how to obtain admittance, or 
 how to arouse the inhabitants. 
 
 An old crone leaning out of an opposite window, with matted 
 hair hanging over a begrimed and shrivelled countenance, 
 made answer. " No one," she said, in her peculiar dialect, 
 which the worthy man scarcely comprehended, " lived there, 
 or had done so for years"; but Brown knew better: and while 
 he was asserting the fact, a girl put her. head out of another 
 hovel, and said that she had sometimes seen, at the dusk of the 
 evening, a man leave the house, but whether any one else lived 
 in it, she could not tell. Again Mr. Brown sounded an alarm, 
 but no answer came forth, and in great fear and trembling he 
 applied violent hands to the door ; it required but little force ; 
 it gave way ; he entered ; and, jealous of the entrance of the 
 mob without, reclosed and barred, as well as he was able, the 
 shattered door. The house was unnaturally large for the neigh- 
 borhood, and Brown was in doubt whether first to ascend a 
 broken and perilous staircase, or search the rooms below ; he 
 decided on the latter ; he found no one, and with a misgiving 
 heart, which nothing but the recollection of the great Turkey 
 carpet could have inspired, he ascended the quaking steps. 
 All was silent. But a door was unclosed. He entered, and 
 saw the object of his search before him. 
 
 Over a pallet bent a form, on which, though youth seemed 
 withered, and even pride broken, the unconquerable soul left 
 somewhat of grace and of glory, that sustained the beholder's
 
 270 THE DISOWNED, 
 
 remembrance of better days a child in its first infancy knelt 
 on the nearer side of the bed, with clasped hands, and vacant 
 eyes that turned towards the intruder with a listless and lack- 
 lustre gaze. But Glendovver, or rather Mordaunt, as he benf 
 over the pallet, spoke not, moved not ; his eyes were riveted on 
 one object ; his heart seemed turned into stone, and his veins 
 curdled into ice. Awed and chilled by the breathing desola- 
 tion of the spot, Brown approached, and spoke, he scarcely 
 knew what. "You are," he concluded his address, " the mas- 
 ter of Mordaunt Court"; and he placed the letter in the hands 
 of the person he thus greeted. 
 
 " Awake, hear me ! " cried Algernon to Isabel, as she lay 
 extended on the couch ; and the messenger of glad tidings, for 
 the first time seeing her countenance, shuddered, and knew 
 that he was in the chamber of death. 
 
 " Awake my own, own love ! Happy days are in store for 
 us yet : our misery is past ; you will live, live to bless me in 
 riches, as you have done in want." 
 
 Isabel raised her eyes to his, and a smile, sweet, comforting, 
 and full of love, passed the lips which were about to close for 
 ever. "Thank Heaven," she murmured, "for your dear sake. 
 It is pleasant to die now, and thus ! " and she placed the hand 
 that was clasped in her relaxing and wan fingers, within the 
 bosom which had been, for anguished and hopeless years, his 
 asylum and refuge, and which now, when fortune changed, as 
 if it had only breathed in comfort to his afflictions, was, for the 
 first time, and for ever, to be cold, cold even to him ! 
 
 " You will live you will live ! " cried Mordaunt, in wild and 
 incredulous despair " in mercy live ! You who have been my 
 angel of hope, do not God, O God! do not desert me now ! " 
 
 But that faithful and loving heart was already deaf to his 
 voice, and the film grew darkening and rapidly over the eye, 
 which still, with undying fondness, sought him out through the 
 shade and agony of death. Sense and consciousness were 
 gone, and dim and confused images whirled around her soul, 
 straggling a little moment before they sunk into the depth and 
 silence where the past lies buried. But still mindful of him, 
 and grasping as it were, at his remembrance, she clasped, 
 closer and closer, the icy hand which she held, to her breast. 
 "Your hand is cold, dearest it is cold," said she faintly, " but 
 I will warm it here ! " And so her spirit passed away, and 
 Mordaunt felt afterward in a lone and surviving pilgrimage, that 
 her last thought had been kindness to him, and her last act had 
 spoken forgetfulness even of death, in the tenderness of love !
 
 THE DISOWNED. 2? I 
 
 CHAPTER LIX. 
 "Change and time take together their flight." Golden Violet, 
 
 ONE evening in autumn, about three years after the date of 
 our last chapter, a stranger on horseback, in deep mourning, 
 dismounted at the door of "the Golden Fleece," in the mem- 
 orable town of W . He walked into the tap-room, and 
 
 asked for a private apartment and accommodation for the 
 night. The landlady, grown considerably plumper than when 
 we first made her acquaintance, just lifted up her eyes to the 
 stranger's face, and summoning a short, stout man (formerly the 
 waiter, now the second helpmate of the comely hostess), 
 desired him, in a tone which partook somewhat more of- the 
 authority indicative of their former relative situations than of the 
 obedience which should have characterized their present, to 
 "show the gentleman to the Griffin, No. Four." 
 
 The stranger smiled as the sound greeted his ears, and he 
 followed not so much the host as the hostess's spouse into the 
 apartment thus designated. A young lady, who some eight 
 years ago little thought that she should still be in a state of 
 single blessedness, and who always honored with an attentive 
 eye the stray travellers who, from their youth, loneliness, or 
 that ineffable air which usually designates the unmarried man, 
 might be in the same solitary state of life, turned to the land- 
 lady, and said : 
 
 " Mother, did you observe what a handsome gentleman that 
 was?" 
 
 " No," replied the landlady ; " I only observed that he 
 brought no servant." 
 
 " I wonder, " said the daughter, " if he is in the army ? he 
 has a military air ! " 
 
 " I suppose he has dined," muttered the landlady to herself, 
 looking towards the larder. 
 
 " Have you seen Squire Mordaunt within a short period of 
 time?" asked, somewhat abruptly, a little thick-set man, who 
 was enjoying his pipe and negus in a sociable way at the window- 
 seat. The characteristics of this personage were, a spruce 
 wig, a bottle nose, an elevated eyebrow, a snuff-colored skin 
 and coat, and an air of that consequential self-respect which 
 distinguishes the philosopher who agrees with the French sage, 
 and sees " no reason in the world why a man should not esteem 
 himself." 
 
 "No, indeed, Mr. Bossolton," returned the landlady ; "but
 
 27* THE DtSOWNfiD. 
 
 I suppose that, as he is now in the parliament-house, he will 
 live less retired. It is a pity that the inside of that noble old 
 hall of his should not be more seen and after all the old 
 gentleman's improvements, too ! They say that the estate 
 now, since the mortgages were paid off, is above ten thousand 
 pounds a-year, clear ! " 
 
 "And, if I am not induced into an error," rejoined Mr. 
 Bossolton, refilling his pipe, "old Vavasour left a great sum of 
 ready money besides, which must have been in aid, and an 
 assistance, and an advantage, mark me, Mistress Merrylack, to 
 the owner of Mordaunt Hall, that has escaped the calculation 
 of your faculty, and the and the faculty of your calcu- 
 lation ! " 
 
 " You mistake, Mr. Boss," as, in the friendliness of diminu- 
 tives, Mrs. Merrylack sometimes styled the grandiloquent 
 practitioner " You mistake : the old gentleman left all his 
 
 ready money in two bequests the one to the College of , 
 
 in the university of Cambridge, and the other to an hospital 
 in London. I remember the very words of the will they ran 
 thus, Mr. Boss : 'And whereas my beloved son, had he lived, 
 
 would have been a member of the College of , in the 
 
 university of Cambridge, which he would have adorned by his 
 genius, learning, youthful virtue, and the various qualities 
 which did equal honor to his head and heart, and would have 
 rendered him alike distinguished as the scholar and the 
 Christian I do devise and bequeath the sum of thirty- 
 seven thousand pounds sterling, now in the English funds, ' 
 etc., etc. ; and then follows the manner in which he will have 
 his charity vested and bestowed, and all about the prize which 
 shall be for ever designated and termed ' The Vavasour Prize,' 
 and what shall be the words of the Latin speech which shall be 
 spoken when the said prize be delivered, and a great deal more 
 to that effect : so, then, he passes to the other legacy, of exactly 
 
 the same sum, to the hospital, usually called and styled , 
 
 in the city of London, and says, ' And whereas we are assured 
 by the Holy Scriptures, which, in these days of blasphemy and 
 sedition, it becomes every true Briton and member of the 
 Established Church to support, that " charity doth cover a 
 multitude of sins " so I do give and devise,' etc., etc., ' to be 
 for ever termed in the deeds,' etc., etc., ' of the said hospital, 
 " The Vavasour Charity"; and always provided that, on the 
 anniversary of the day of my death, a sermon shall be preached 
 in the chapel attached to the said hospital, by a clergyman of 
 the Established Church, on any tert appropriate to the dayand
 
 THE DISOWNED. 273 
 
 deed so commemorated,' but the conclusion is most beautiful, 
 Mr. Bossolton : ' And now, having discharged my duties, to 
 the best of my humble ability, to my God, my king, and my 
 country, and dying in the full belief of the Protestant Church, 
 as by law established, I do set my hand and seal,' etc., etc." 
 
 "A very pleasing, and charitable, and devout, and virtuous, 
 testament or will, Mistress Merrylack," said Mr. Bossolton ; 
 " and in a time when anarchy with gigantic strides does de- 
 vastate, and devour, and harm, the good old customs of our 
 ancestors and forefathers, and tramples with its poisonous 
 breath the Magna Charta, and the glorious Revolution, it is 
 beautiful ay, and sweet mark you, Mrs. Merrylack, to behold 
 a gentleman of the aristocratic classes, or grades, supporting 
 the institutions of his country with such remarkable energy of 
 sentiments, and with and with ^Mistress Merrylack ^with 
 sentiments of such remarkable energy." 
 
 "Pray," said the daughter, adjusting her ringlets, by a little 
 glass which hung over the tap, " how long has Mr. Mordaunt's 
 lady been dead ?" 
 
 "Oh ! she died just before the squire came to the property," 
 quoth the mother. "Poor thing she was so pretty. lam 
 sure I cried for a whole hour when I heard it ! I think it was 
 three years last month, when it happened. Old Mr. Vavasour 
 died about two months afterwards." 
 
 " The afflicted husband" (said Mr. Bossolton, who was the 
 victim of a most fiery Mrs. Boss at home) " went into foreign 
 lands or parts, or, as it is vulgarly termed, the continent, im- 
 mediately after an event, or occurrence, so fatal to the cup of 
 his prosperity, and the sunshine of his enjoyment, did he not, 
 Mrs. Merrylack ? " 
 
 " He did. And you know, Mr. Boss, he only returned about 
 six months ago." 
 
 " And of what borough, or burgh, or town, or city, is he the 
 member and representative?" asked Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton, 
 putting another lump of sugar into his negus. " I have heard, 
 it is true, but my memory is short ; and in the multitude and 
 multifariousness of my professional engagements, I am often 
 led into a forgetfulness of matters less important in their variety, 
 and less less various in their importance." 
 
 "Why," answered Mr. Merrylack, "somehow or other, I 
 quite forget too ; but it is some distant borough. The gen- 
 tleman wanted him to stand for the county, but he would riot 
 hear of it ; perhaps he did not like the publicity of the thing, 
 for he is mighty reserved."
 
 274 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " Proud, haughty, arrogant, and assumptious ! " said Mr. Bos- 
 solton, with a puff of unusual length. 
 
 " Nay, nay," said the daughter (young people are always the 
 first to defend), " I'm sure he's not proud he does a mort of 
 good, and has the sweetest smile possible ! I wonder if he'll 
 marry again ! He is very young yet, not above two or three- 
 and-thirty." (The kind damsel would not have thought two or 
 three-and-thirty very young some years ago ; but we grow 
 wonderfully indulgent to the age of other people as we grow 
 older ourselves !) 
 
 " And what an eye he has ! " said the landlady. "Well, for 
 my part but, bless me. Here, John John John waiter 
 husband, I mean here's a carriage and four at the door. 
 Lizzy, dear, is my cap right ?" 
 
 And mother, daughter, and husband, all flocked, charged 
 with simper, courtesy, and bow, to receive their expected guests. 
 
 With a disappointment which we who keep not inns can but 
 very imperfectly conceive, the trio beheld a single personage 
 a valet descent from the box, open the carriage door, and 
 take out a desk ! Of all things human, male or female, the 
 said carriage was utterly empty. 
 
 The valet bustled up to the landlady ; " My master's here, 
 ma'am, I think rode on before ! " 
 
 "And who is your master ? " asked Mrs. Merrylack a thrill 
 of alarm, and the thought of No. Four, coming across her at 
 the same time. 
 
 '" Who ! " said the valet rubbing his hands ; " who ! why 
 Clarence Talbot Linden, Esq., of Scarsdale Park, county of 
 
 York, late Secretary of Legation at the Court of , now M. 
 
 P., and one of his Majesty's under Secretaries of State. " 
 
 " Mercy upon us ! " cried the astounded landlady, "and No. 
 Four ! only think of it. Run, John, John run light a fire 
 (the night's cold, I think) in the Elephant, Number Sixteen 
 beg the gentleman's pardon say it was occupied till now ; 
 ask what he'll have for dinner fish, flesh, fowl, steak, joints, 
 chops, tarts or, if it's too late (but it's quite early yet you 
 may put back the day an hour or so), ask what he'll have for 
 supper run, John, run : what's the oaf staying for run, I tell 
 you ! Pray, sir, walk in (to the valet, our old friend Mr. Har- 
 rison) you'll be hungry after your journey, I think ; no 
 ceremony, I beg." 
 
 " He's not so handsome as his master," said Miss Elizabeth, 
 glancing-at Harrison discontentedly " but he does not look 
 like a married man, somehow. I'll just step upstairs, and
 
 THE DISOWNED. 275 
 
 change my cap ; it would be but civil if the gentleman's gen* 
 tleman sups with us." 
 
 Meanwhile Clarence, having been left alone in the quiet en- 
 joyment of No. Four, had examined the little apartment with 
 an interest not altogether unmingled with painful reflections. 
 There are few persons, however fortunate, who can look back 
 to eight years of their life, and not feel somewhat of disappoint- 
 ment in the retrospect : few persons, whose fortunes the world 
 envy, to whom the token of past time, suddenly obtruded on 
 their remembrance, does not awaken hopes destroyed, and 
 wishes deceived, which the world has never known. We tell 
 our triumphs to the crowd, but our own hearts are the sole 
 confidants of our sorrows. " Twice," said Clarence to himself, 
 " twice before have I been in this humble room ; the first was 
 when, at the age of eighteen, I was just launched into the 
 world a vessel which had for its only hope the motto of the 
 chivalrous Sydney: 
 
 " 'Aut viam inveniam, aut faciam ; '* 
 
 yet, humble and nameless as I was, how well I can recall the 
 exaggerated ambition, nay, the certainty of success, as well as 
 its desire, which then burnt within me. I smile now at the 
 overweening vanity of those hopes some, indeed, realized, 
 but how many nipped and withered forever ! seeds of which a 
 few fell upon rich ground, and prospered, but of which how far 
 the greater number were scattered, some upon the wayside, 
 and were devoured by immediate cares, some on stony places, 
 and when the sun of manhood was up, they were scorched, 
 and because they had no root, withered away, and some 
 among thorns, and the thorns sprang up and choked them. I 
 am now rich, honored, high in the favor of courts, and not 
 altogether unknown or unesteemed arbitrio popularis aura: 
 and yet I almost think I was happier when, in that flush of 
 youth and inexperience, I looked forth into the wide world, 
 and imagined that from every corner would spring up a triumph 
 for my vanity, or an object for my affections. The next time 
 I stood in this little spot, I was no longer the dependent of a 
 precarious charity, or the idle adventurer who had no stepping- 
 stone but his ambition. I was then just declared the heir of 
 wealth, which I could not rationally have hoped for five years 
 before, and which was in itself sufficient to satisfy the aspir- 
 ings of ordinary men. But I was corroded with anxieties for 
 the object of my love, and regret for the friend whom I had 
 
 * J will either find my way, or make it,
 
 276 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 lost ; perhaps the eagerness of my heart for the one rendered 
 me, for the moment, too little mindful of the other; but, in 
 after-years, memory took ample atonement for that temporary 
 suspension of her duties. Ho\v often have I recalled, in this 
 world of cold ties and false hearts, that true and generous 
 friend, from whose lessons my mind took improvement, and 
 from whose warnings, example ; who was to me, living, a 
 father, and from whose generosity, svhatever worldly advan- 
 tages I have enjoyed, or distinctions I have gained, are de- 
 rived ! Then I was going with a torn, yet credulous, heart, to 
 pour forth my secret and my passion to her, and, within one 
 little week thence, how shipwrecked of all hope, object, and 
 future happiness, I was ! Perhaps, at that time, I did not suf- 
 ficiently consider the excusable cautions of the world I 
 should not have taken such umbrage at her father's letter 
 I should have revealed to him my birth, and accession of for- 
 tune nor bartered the truth of certain happiness for the trials 
 and manoeuvres of romance. But it is too late to repent now. 
 By this time my image must be wholly obliterated from her 
 heart : she has seen me in the crowd, and passed me coldly 
 by her cheek is pale, but not for me ; and in a little little 
 while she will be another's, and lost to me forever ! Yet have 
 I never forgotten her through change or time the hard and 
 harsh projects of ambition the labors of business, or the en- 
 grossing schemes of political intrigue. Never ! but this is a 
 vain and foolish subject of reflection now." 
 
 And not the less reflecting upon it for that sage and vera- 
 cious recollection, Clarence turned from the window, against 
 which he had been leaning, and drawing one of the four chairs 
 to the solitary table, he sat down, moody and disconsolate, and 
 leaning his face upon his hands, pursued the confused, yet not 
 disconnected, thread of his meditations. 
 
 The door abruptly opened, and Mr. Merrylack appeared. 
 
 " Dear me, sir ! " cried he, " a thousand pities you should 
 have been put here, sir ! Pray step upstairs, sir; the front 
 drawing-room is just vacant, sir ; what will you please to have 
 for dinner, sir," etc., etc., according to the instructions of his 
 wife. To Mr. Merrylack's great dismay, Clarence, however, 
 resolutely refused all attempts at locomotion, and contenting 
 himself with entrusting the dinner to the discretion of the land- 
 lady, desired to be left alone until it was prepared. 
 
 Now when Mr. John Merrylack returned to the tap-room, 
 and communicated the stubborn adherence to No. Four, mani- 
 fested by its occupier, our good hostess felt exceedingly dis*
 
 THE DISOWNED. 277 
 
 composed. "You are so stupid, John," cried she, "I'll go and 
 expostulate like with him " ; and she was rising for that pur- 
 pose, when Harrison, who was taking particularly good care 
 of himself, drew her back : " I know my master's temper better 
 than you do, ma'am," said he ; "and when he is in the humor 
 to be stubborn, the very devil himself could not get him out of 
 it. I dare say he wants to be left to himself : he is very fond 
 of being alone now and then ; state affairs, you know (added 
 the valet, mysteriously touching his forehead), and even I dare 
 not disturb him for the world : so make yourself easy and I'll 
 go to him when he has dined and 2 supped. There is time 
 enough for No. Four when we have taken care of number 
 one. Miss, your health ! " 
 
 The landlady, reluctlantly overruled in her design, .reseated 
 herself. 
 
 "Mr. Clarence Linden, M. P., did you say, sir? "said the 
 learned Jeremiah : "surely, I have had that name or appella- 
 tion in my books, but I cannot, at this instant of time, recall to 
 my recollection the exact date and circumstance of my pro- 
 fessional services to the gentleman so designated, styled, or, I 
 may say, termed." 
 
 ' Can't say, I am sure, sir," said Harrison " lived with my 
 master many years never had the pleasure of seeing you be- 
 fore, nor of travelling this road a very hilly road it is, sir. 
 Miss, this negus is as bright as your eyes, and as warm as my 
 admiration." 
 
 "Oh, sir!" 
 
 " Pray," said Mr. Merrylack, who, like most of his tribe, was 
 a bit of a politician ; "is it the Mr. Linden who made that 
 long speech in the House the other day ? " 
 
 " Precisely, sir. He is a very eloquent gentleman, indeed : 
 pity he speaks so little never made but that one long speech 
 since he has been in the House, and a capital one it was, too. 
 You saw how the prime minister complimented him upon it. 
 * A speech,' said his lordship, 'which had united the graces of 
 youthful genius, with the sound calculations of matured expe- 
 rience ' ! " 
 
 "Did the prime minister really so speak?" said Jeremiah: 
 "what a beautiful, and noble, and sensible compliment.! I will 
 examine my books when I go home 'the graces of youthful 
 genius, with the sound calculations of matured experience ' ! " 
 
 "If he is in the Parliament House," quoth the landlady, "I 
 suppose he will know our Mr. Mordaunt, when the squire 
 takes his seat, next what do you call it sessions?"
 
 278 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " Know Mr. Mordaunt ! " said the valet. " It is to see him 
 that we have come down here. We intended to have gone 
 there to-night, but master thought it too late, and I saw he was 
 in a melancholy humor; we therefore resolved to come here; 
 and so master took one of the horses from the groom, whom 
 we have left behind with the other, and came on alone. I 
 take it, he must have been in this town before, for he de- 
 scribed the inn so well. Capital cheese this; as mild as mild 
 as your sweet smile, miss ! " 
 
 "Oh, sir!" 
 
 " Pray, Mistress Merrylack," said Mr. Jeremiah Bossolton, 
 depositing his pipe on the table, and awakening from a profound 
 reverie in which, for the last five minutes, his senses had been 
 buried "pray, Mistress Merrylack, do you not call to your 
 mind, or your reminiscence, or your your recollection a young 
 gentleman, equally comely in his aspect and blandiloquent 
 (ehem !)in his address, who had the misfortune to have his arm 
 severely contused and afflicted by a violent kick from Mr. Mor- 
 daunt's horse, even in the yard in which your stables are situ- 
 ated, and who remained for two or three days in your house, or 
 tavern, or hotel ? I do remember that you were grievously per- 
 plexed because of his name, the initials of which only' he 
 gave, or intrusted, or communicated to you, until you did 
 xam " 
 
 "I remember," interrupted Miss Elizabeth "I rememl>er 
 well a very beautiful young gentleman, who had a letter di- 
 rected to be left here, addressed to him by the letters C. L., and 
 who was afterwards kicked, and who admired your cap. mother, 
 and whose name was Clarence Linden. You remember it well 
 enough, mother, surely ?" 
 
 " I think I do, Lizzy,"said the landlady, slowly ; for her mem- 
 ory, not so much occupied as her daughter's by beautiful young 
 gentlemen, struggled slowly amidst dim ideas of the various 
 travellers and visitors with whom her house had been honored, 
 before she came, at last, to the reminiscence of Clarence Lin- 
 den " I think I do and Squire Mordaunt was very attentive 
 to him and he broke one of the panes of glass in No. Eight, 
 and gave me half a guinea to pay for it. I do remember, per- 
 fectly Lizzy. So that is Mr. Linden now here ! only think ! " 
 
 ''I should not have known him, certainly," said Miss Eliza- 
 beth ; " he is grown so much taller, and his hair looks quite 
 dark now, and his face is much thinner than it was ; but he is 
 very handsome still is he not, sir?" turning to the valet. 
 
 "Ah! ah! well enough," said Mr, Harrison, stretching out
 
 THE DISOWNED. 279 
 
 his right leg and falling away a little to the left, in the manner 
 adopted by the renowned Gil Bias, in his address to the fair 
 Laura " well enough ; but he's a little too tall and thin, 1 
 think." 
 
 Mr. Harrison's faults in shape were certainly not those of 
 being too tall and thin. 
 
 " Perhaps so ! " said Miss Elizabeth, who scented the vanity 
 by a kindred instinct, and had her own reasons for pampering 
 it " Perhaps so ! " 
 
 " But he is a great favorite with the ladies all the same ; how- 
 ever, he only loves one lady. Ah, but I must not say who, 
 though I know. However, she is so handsome ; such eyes, they 
 would go through you like a skewer, but not like yours, yours 
 miss, which, I vow and protest, are as bright as a service of 
 plate." 
 
 " Oh, sir ! " 
 
 And amidst these graceful compliments the time slipped away, 
 till Clarence's dinner, and his valet's supper, being fairly over, 
 Mr. Harrison presented himself to his master, a perfectly dif- 
 ferent being in attendance to what he was in companionship 
 flippancy, impertinence, forwardness, all merged in the steady, 
 sober, serious demeanor which characterizes the respectful and 
 well-bred domestic. 
 
 Clarence's orders were soon given. They were limited to the 
 appurtenances of writing ; and as soon as Harrison reappeared 
 with his master's writing-desk, he was dismissed for the night. 
 
 Very slowly did Clarence settle himself to his task, and at- 
 tempt to escape the ennui of his solitude, or the restlessness of 
 thought feeding upon itself, by inditing the following epistle : 
 
 "TO THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD. 
 
 " I WAS very unfortunate, my dear Duke, to miss seeing you, 
 when I called in Arlington Street, the evening before last, for I 
 had a great deal to say to you something upon public and 
 a little upon private affairs. I will reserve trie latter, since I 
 only am the person concerned, for a future opportunity. With 
 respect to the former, 
 
 "And now, having finished the political part of my letter, let 
 me congratulate you most sincerely upon your approaching 
 marriage with Miss Trevanion. I do not know her myself; 
 but I remember that she was the bosom friend of Lady Flora 
 Ardenne, whom I have often heard speak of her in the highest 
 and most affectionate terms, so that 1 imagine her brother, could 
 not better atone to you for dishonestly carrying off the fair Julia
 
 JfSo THE DISOWNED. 
 
 some three years ago, than by giving you his sister in honor, 
 able and orthodox exchange the gold armor for the brazen. 
 
 "As for my lot, though I ought not, at this moment, to dim 
 yours by dwelling upon it, you know how long, how constantly, 
 how ardently I have loved Lady Flora Ardenne how, for her 
 sake, I have refused opportunities of alliance which might have 
 gratified, to the utmost, that worldliness of heart which so 
 many who saw me only in the crowd have been pleased to im- 
 pute to me. You know that neither pleasure, nor change, nor 
 the insult I received from her parents, nor the sudden indiffer- 
 ence which I so little deserved from herself, have been able to 
 obliterate her image. You will therefore sympathize with me, 
 when I inform you that there is no longer any doubt of her 
 marriage with Borodaile (or rather Lord Ulswater, since his 
 father's death), as soon as the sixth month of his mourning ex- 
 pires ; to this period only two months remain. 
 
 " Heavens ! when one thinks over the past, how incredulous 
 one could become to the future : when I recall all the tokens 
 of love I received from that woman, I cannot persuade myself 
 that they are now all forgotten, or rather, all lavished upon 
 another. 
 
 "But I do not blame her may she be happier with him than 
 she could have been with me ! and that hope shall whisper peace 
 to regrets which I have been foolish to indulge so long, and it 
 is perhaps well for me that they are about to be rendered for- 
 ever unavailing. 
 
 " I am staying at an inn, without books, companions, or any 
 thing to beguile time and thought, but this pen, ink, and paper. 
 You will see, therefore, a reason and an excuse for my scribbling 
 on to you, till my two sheets are filled, and the hour of ten (one 
 can't well go to bed earlier) arrived. 
 
 "You remember having often heard me speak of a very ex- 
 traordinary man whom I met in Italy, and with whom 1 became 
 intimate. He returned to England some months ago ; and on 
 hearing it my desire of renewing our acquaintance was so great 
 that I wrote to invite myself to his house. He gave me what 
 is termed a very obliging answer, and left the choice of time 
 to myself. You see now, most noble Festus, the reason of my 
 journey hitherwards. 
 
 " His house, a fine old mansion, is situated about five or six 
 miles from this town : and, as I arrived here late in the even- 
 ing, and knew that his habits were reserved and peculiar, I 
 thought it better to take 'mine ease in my inn' for this night, 
 And defer my visit to Mordaunt Court till to-morrow morning.
 
 1'HE DISOWNED. 2$I 
 
 In truth, I -was not averse to renewing an old acquaintance 
 not, as you in your malice would suspect, with my hostess, but 
 with her house. Some years ago, when I was eighteen, I first 
 made a slight acquaintance with Mordaunt at this very inn, and 
 now, at twenty-six, I am glad to have one evening to myself 
 on the same spot, and retrace here all that has since happened 
 to me. 
 
 " Now, do not be alarmed ; 1 am not going to inflict upon 
 you the unquiet retrospect with which I have just been vexing 
 myself; no, I will rather speak to you of my acquaintance and 
 host to be. I have said that I first met Mordaunt some years 
 since at this inn an accident, for which his horse was to blame, 
 brought us acquainted I spent a day at his house, and was 
 much interested in his conversation ; since then, we did not 
 meet till about two years and a half ago^ when we were in Italy 
 together. During the intermediate interval Mordaunt had 
 married lost his property by a lawsuit disappeared from the 
 world (whither none knew) for some years recovered the 
 estate he had lost by the death of his kinsman's heir, and shortly 
 afterwards by that of the kinsman himself, and had become a 
 widower, with one only child, a beautiful little girl of about 
 four years old. He lived in perfect seclusion, avoided all inter- 
 course with society, and seemed so perfectly unconscious of 
 having ever seen me before, whenever in our rides or walks we 
 met, that I could not venture to intrude myself on a reserve so 
 rigid and unbroken as that which characterized his habits and 
 life. 
 
 "The gloom and loneliness, however, in which Mordaunt's 
 days were spent, were far from partaking of that selfishness so 
 common, almost so necessarily common, to recluses. Wherever 
 he had gone in his travels through Italy, he had left light and 
 
 rejoicing behind him. In his residence at , while unknown 
 
 to the great and gay, he was familiar with the outcast and the 
 destitute. The prison, the hospital, the sordid cabins of want, 
 the abodes (so frequent in Italy, that emporium of artists and 
 poets) where genius struggled against poverty and its own 
 improvidence all these were the spots to which his visits were 
 paid, and in which 'the very stones prated of his whereabout.' 
 It was a strange and striking contrast to compare the sickly 
 enthusiasm of those who flocked to Italy, to lavish their senti- 
 ments on statues, and their wealth on the modern impositions 
 palmed upon their taste as the masterpieces of ancient art it 
 was a noble contrast, I say, to compare that ludicrous and idle 
 enthusiasm with the quiet and wholesome energy of mind and
 
 2&2 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 heart which led Mordaunt, not to pour forth worship and homage 
 to the unconscious monuments of the dead, but to console, to 
 relieve, and to sustain the woes, the wants, the feebleness, of 
 the living. 
 
 "Yet, while he was thus employed in reducing the miseries 
 and enlarging the happiness of others, the most settled melan- 
 choly seemed to mark himself ' as her own.' Clad in the 
 deepest mourning, a stern and unbroken gloom sat for ever 
 upon his countenance. I have observed, that if in his walks 
 or rides any one, especially of the better classes, appeared to 
 approach, he would strike into a new path. He could not bear 
 even the scrutiny of a glance or the fellowship of a moment : 
 and his mien, high and haughty, seemed not only to repel 
 others, but to contradict the meekness and charity which his 
 own actions so invariably and unequivocally displayed. It 
 must, indeed, have been a powerful exertion of principle over 
 feeling, which induced him voluntarily to seek the abodes and 
 intercourse of the rude beings he blessed and relieved. 
 
 "We met at two or three places to which my weak and imper- 
 fect charity had led me, especially at the house of a sickly and 
 distressed artist ; for in former life 1 had intimately known one 
 of that profession ; and I have since attempted to transfer to 
 his brethren that debt of kindness which an early death for- 
 bade me to discharge to himself. It was thus that I first 
 became acquainted with Mordaunt' s occupations and pursuits : 
 for what ennobled his benevolence was the remarkable obscurity 
 in which it was veiled. It was in disguise and in secret that 
 his generosity flowed ; and so studiously did he conceal his 
 name, and hide even his features, during his brief visits to 'the 
 house of mourning," that only one, like myself, a close and 
 minute investigator of whatever has once become an object of 
 interest, could have traced his hand in the various works of 
 happiness it had aided or created. 
 
 " One day, among some old ruins, I met him with his young 
 daughter. By great good fortune I preserved the latter, who 
 had wandered away from her father, from a fall of loose stones, 
 which would inevitably have crushed her. I was myself much 
 hurt by my effort, having received upon my shoulder a frag- 
 ment of the falling stones; and thus our old acquaintance was 
 renewed, and gradually ripened into intimacy; not, I must own, 
 without great patience and constant endeavor on my part : for 
 his gloom and lonely habits rendered him utterly impracticable 
 of access to any (as Lord Aspeden would say) but a diplo- 
 matist. I saw a great deal of him during the six months I
 
 THE DISOWNED. 283 
 
 remained in Italy, and but you know already how warmly I 
 admire his extraordinary powers, and venerate his character. 
 Lord Aspeden's recall to England separated us. 
 
 "A general election ensued. I was returned for . I 
 
 entered eagerly into domestic politics your friendship, Lord 
 Aspeden's kindness, my own wealth and industry, made my 
 success almost unprecedentedly rapid. Engaged, heart and 
 hand, in those minute yet engrossing labors for which the 
 aspirant in parliamentary and state intrigue must unhappily 
 forego the more enlarged though abstruser speculations of 
 general philosophy, and of that morality which .may be termed 
 universal politics, I have necessarily been employed in very 
 different pursuits from those to which Mordaunt's contempla- 
 tions are devoted, yet have I often recalled his maxims, with 
 admiration at their depth, and obtained applause for opinions 
 which were only imperfectly filtered from the pure springs of 
 his own. 
 
 " It is about six months since he has returned to England, 
 and he has very lately obtained a seat in Parliament so that 
 we may trust soon to see his talents displayed upon a more 
 public and enlarged theatre than they hitherto have been ; 
 and, though I fear his politics will be opposed to ours, I anti- 
 cipate his public debut with that interest which genius, even 
 when adverse to one's self, always inspires. Yet I confess that 
 I am desirous to see and converse with him once more in the 
 familiarity and kindness of private intercourse. The rage of 
 party, the narrowness of sectarian zeal, soon exclude from oirr 
 friendshipall those who differ from our opinions; and it islike 
 sailors holding commune for the last time with each other, 
 before their several vessels are divided by the perilous and 
 uncertain sea, to confer in peace and retirement for a little 
 while with those who are about to be launched with us on that 
 same unquiet ocean, where any momentary caprice of the winds 
 may disjoin us forever, and where our very union is only a 
 sympathy in toil, and a fellowship in danger. 
 
 " Adieu, my dear Duke ! it is fortunate for me that our 
 public opinions are so closely allied, and that I may so reason- 
 ably calculate in private upon the happiness and honor of 
 subscribing myself your affectionate friend, C. L." 
 
 Such was the letter to which we shall leave the explanation 
 of much that has taken place within the last three years of our 
 tale, and which, in its tone, will serve to show the kindness 
 and generosity of heart and feeling that mingled (rather in-
 
 284 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 creased than abated by the time which brought wisdom) with 
 the hardy activity and resolute ambition that characterized the 
 mind of our "Disowned." We now consign him to such 
 repose as the best bed-room in the Golden Fleece can afford, 
 and conclude the chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER LX. 
 
 " Though the wilds of enchantment all vernal and bright, 
 
 In the days of delusion by fancy combined 
 With the vanishing phantoms of love and delight, 
 Abandon my soul like a dream of the night, 
 And leave but a desert behind. 
 
 Be hush'd, my dark spirit, for Wisdom condemns 
 
 When the faint and the feeble deplore ; 
 Be strong as the rock of the ocean that stems 
 
 A thousand wild waves on the shore ! " CAMPBELL. 
 
 " SHALL I order the carriage round, sir ? " said Harrison ; " it is 
 past one." 
 
 "Yes; yet stay ; the day is fine ; I will ride. Let the car- 
 riage come on in the evening ; see that my horse is saddled ; 
 you looked to his mash last night?" 
 
 " I did, sir. He seems wonderfully fresh ; would you please 
 to have me stay here with the carriage, sir, till the groom 
 comes on with the other horse ?" 
 
 " Ay ; do I don't know yet how far strange servants may 
 be welcome where I am going." 
 
 "Now, that's lucky!" said Harrison to himself as he shut 
 the door ; " I shall have a good five hours' opportunity of 
 making my court here. Miss Elizabeth is really a very pretty 
 girl, and might not be a bad match. I don't see any brothers; 
 who knows but she may succeed to the inn hem ! A servant 
 may be ambitious as well as his master, I suppose?" 
 
 So meditating, Harrison sauntered to the stables saw (for 
 he was an admirable servant, and could, at a pinch, dress a 
 horse as well as its master) that Clarence's beautiful steed re- 
 ceived the utmost nicety of grooming which the ostler could 
 bestow led it himself to the doorheld the stirrup for his 
 master, with the mingled humility and grace of his profession, 
 and then strutted away, " pride on his brow and glory in his 
 eye," to be the cynosure and oracle of the tap-room. 
 
 Meanwhile, Linden rode slowly onwards. As he passed that 
 turn of the town by which he had for the first time entered it,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 485 
 
 the recollection of the eccentric and would-be gipsy flashed 
 upon him. "I wonder," thought he, "where that singular man 
 is now whether he still preserves his itinerant and woodland 
 tastes : 
 
 " ' Si flumina sylvasque inglorius amet.' * 
 
 or whether, as his family increased in age or number, he has 
 turned from his wanderings, and at length found out 'the 
 peaceful hermitage.' How glowingly the whole scene of that 
 night comes across me the wild tents, their wilder habitants, 
 the mingled bluntness, poetry, honest good nature, and spirit 
 of enterprise which constituted the chief's nature the jovial 
 meal and mirth round the wood fire, and beneath the quiet 
 stars, and the eagerness and zest with which I then mingled in 
 the merriment. Alas ! how ill the fastidiousness and refine- 
 ment of after-days repay us for the elastic, buoyant, ready zeal 
 with which our first youth enters into whatever is joyous, with- 
 out pausing to ask if its cause and nature be congenial to our 
 habits or kindred to our tastes. After all, there really was 
 something philosophical in the romance of the jovial gypsy, 
 childish as it seemed; and I should like much to know if the 
 philosophy has got the better of the romance, or the romance, 
 growing into habit, become commonplace, and lost both its 
 philosophy and its enthusiasm. Well, after I leave Mordaunt, 
 I will try and find out my old friend." 
 
 With this resolution, Clarence's thoughts took a new channel, 
 and he soon entered upon Morclaunt's domain. As he rode 
 through the park, where brake and tree were glowing in the 
 yellow tints which Autumn, like Ambition, gilds ere it withers, 
 he paused for a moment to recall the scene as he last beheld 
 it. It was then Spring Spring in its first and flushest glory 
 when not a blade of grass but sent a perfume to the air 
 the happy air, 
 
 " Making sweet music while the young leaves danced ":. 
 
 when every cluster of the brown fern, that now lay dull and 
 motionless around him, and amidst which the melancholy deer 
 stood afar off, gazing upon the intruder, was vocal with the 
 blithe melodies of the infant year the sharp, yet sweet, voices 
 of birds and (heard at intervals) the chirp of the merry 
 grasshopper, or the hum of the awakened bee. He sighed, as 
 he now looked around, and recalled the change, both of time 
 and season : and with that fondness of heart which causes man 
 to knit his own little life to the varieties of Time, the signs 
 
 * If, unknown to fame, he love the streams and the vroodt.
 
 28d THE DISOWNEi). 
 
 of Heaven, or the revolutions of Nature, he recognized something 
 kindred in the change of scene to the change of thought and 
 feeling which years had wrought in the beholder. 
 
 Awaking from his reverie, he hastened his horse's pace, and 
 was soon within sight of the house. Vavasour, during the 
 few years he had possessed the place, had conducted and 
 carried through improvements and additions to the old man- 
 sion, upon a scale equally costly and judicious. The heavy 
 and motley magnificence of the architecture in which the 
 house had been built remained unaltered ; but a wing on 
 either side, though exactly corresponding in style with the 
 intermediate building, gave, by the long colonnade which ran 
 across the one, and the stately windows which adorned the 
 other, an air not only of grander extent, but more cheerful 
 lightness to the massy and antiquated pile. It was, assuredly, 
 in the point of view by which Clarence now approached it, a 
 structure which possessed few superiors in point of size and 
 effect ; and harmonized so well with the noble extent of the 
 park, the ancient woods, and the venerable avenues, that a very 
 slight effort of imagination might have poured from the 
 massive portals the pageantries of old days, and the gay gal- 
 liard of chivalric romance with which the scene was in such 
 accordance, and which in a former age it had so often 
 witnessed. 
 
 Ah, little could any one who looked upon that gorgeous 
 pile, and the broad lands which, beyond the boundaries of 
 the park, swelled on the hills of the distant landscape, studded 
 at frequent intervals with the spires and villages which 
 adorned the wide baronies of Mordaunt little could he who 
 thus gazed around have imagined that the owner of all he 
 surveyed had passed the glory and verdure of his manhood in 
 the bitterest struggles with gnawing want, and rebellious pride, 
 and urgent passion, without friend or aid but his own haughty 
 and supporting virtue, sentenced to bear yet in his wasted and 
 barren heart the sign of the storm he had resisted, and the 
 scathed token of the lightning he had braved. None but 
 Crauford, who had his own reasons for taciturnity, and the 
 itinerant broker, easily bribed into silence, had ever known of 
 the extreme poverty from which Mordaunt had passed to his 
 rightful possessions. It was whispered, indeed, that he had 
 been reduced to narrow and straitened circumstances ; but 
 the whisper had been only the breath of rumor, and the imag- 
 ined poverty far short of the reality : for the pride of Mor- 
 daunt (the great, almost the sole failing in his character) could
 
 THE DISOWNED. 287 
 
 not endure that all he had borne and baffled should be bared 
 to the vulgar eye ; and by a rare anomaly of mind, indifferent 
 as he was to renown, he was morbidly susceptible of shame. 
 
 When Clarence rung at the ivy-covered porch, and made 
 inquiry for Mordaunt, he was informed that the latter was in 
 the park, by the river, where most of his hours, during the 
 daytime, were spent. 
 
 "Shall I send to acquaint him that you are come, sir?" 
 said the servant. 
 
 "No," answered Clarence, "I will leave my horse to one of 
 the grooms, and stroll down to the river in search of your 
 master." 
 
 Suiting the action to the word, he dismounted, consigned 
 his steed to the groom, and, following the direction indicated 
 to him, bent his way to the "river." 
 
 As he descended the hill, the brook (for it did not deserve, 
 though it received, a higher name) opened enchantingly upon 
 his view. Amidst the fragrant reed and the wild flower, still 
 sweet, though fading, and tufts of tedded grass, all of which, 
 when crushed beneath the foot, sent a mingled tribute to its 
 sparkling waves, the wild stream took its gladsome course, now 
 contracted by gloomy firs, which, bending over the water, cast 
 somewhat of their own sadness upon its surface now glancing 
 forth from the shade, as it "broke into dimples and laughed 
 in the sun," now washing the gnarled and spreading roots of 
 some lonely ash, which, hanging over it, still and droopingly, 
 seemed, the hermit of the scene, to moralize on its noisy and 
 various wanderings now winding round the hill, and losing 
 itself at last amidst thick copses, where day did never more 
 than wink and glimmer, and where, at night, its waters, brawl- 
 ing through their stony channel, seemed like a spirit's wail, 
 and harmonized well with the scream of the gray owl, wheeling 
 from her dim retreat, or the moaning and rare sound of some 
 solitary deer. 
 
 As Clarence's eyes roved admiringly over the scene before 
 him, it dwelt at last upon a small building situated on the 
 wildest part of the opposite bank : it was entirely overgrown 
 with ivy, and the outline only remained to show the gothic 
 antiquity of the architecture. It was a single square tower, 
 built none knew when or wherefore, and, consequently, the 
 spot of many vagrant guesses and wild legends among the 
 surrounding gossips. On approaching yet nearer, he per- 
 ceived, alone and seated on a little mound beside the tower, 
 the object of his search.
 
 288 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 Mordaunt was gazing with vacant yet earnest eye upon the 
 waters beneath ; and so intent was either his mood or look, 
 that he was unaware of Clarence's approach. Tears fast and 
 large were rolling from those haughty eyes, which men who 
 shrunk from their indifferent glance little deemed were capable 
 of such weak and feminine emotion. Far, far through the 
 aching void of time were the thoughts of the reft and solitary 
 mourner ; they were dwelling, in all the vivid and keen inten- 
 sity of grief which dies not, upon the day when, about that 
 hour and on that spot, he sate, with Isabel's young cheek upon 
 his bosom, and listened to a voice now only heard in dreams. 
 He recalled the moment when the fatal letter, charged with 
 change and poverty, was given to him, and the pang which 
 had rent his heart as he looked around upon a scene over 
 which spring had just then breathed, and which he was about 
 to leave to a fresh summer and a new lord ; and then that 
 deep, fond, half-fearful gaze with which Isabel had met his 
 eye, and the feeling, proud even in its melancholy, with which 
 he had drawn towards his breast all that earth had left to 
 him, and thanked God in his heart of hearts that she was 
 spared. 
 
 "And I am once more master," (thought he) "not only of 
 all I then held, but all which my wealthier forefathers possessed. 
 But she who was the sharer of my sorrows and want oh, where 
 is she ? Rather, ah ! rather a hundredfold that her hand was 
 still clasped in mine, and her spirit supporting me through 
 poverty and trial, and her soft voice murmuring the comfort 
 that steals away care, than to be thus heaped with wealth and 
 honor, and alone alone, where never more can come love, or 
 hope, or the yearnings of affection, or the sweet fulness of a 
 heart that seems fathomless in its tenderness, yet overflows ! 
 Had my lot. when she left me, been still the steepings of bitter- 
 ness, the stings of penury, the moody silence of hope, the damp 
 and chill of sunless and aidless years, which rust the very iron 
 of the soul away : had my lot been thus, as it had been, I could 
 have borne her death, I could have looked upon her grave, and 
 wept not nay, I could have comforted my own struggles with 
 the memory of her escape ; but thus, at the very moment of 
 prosperity, to leave the altered and promising earth, ' to house 
 with darkness and with death '; no little gleam of sunshine, 
 no brief recompense for the agonizing past, no momentary res- 
 pite between tears and the tomb. Oh, Heaven ! what what 
 avail is a wealth which comes too late, when she, who could 
 alone have made wealth bliss, is dust ; and the light that should
 
 THE DISOWNED. 289 
 
 have gilded many and happy days, flings only a ghastly glare 
 upon the tomb ? " 
 
 Starting from these reflections, Mordaunt half-unconsciously 
 rose, and, dashing the tears from his eyes, was about to plunge 
 into the neighboring thicket, when looking up, he beheld 
 Clarence, now within a few paces of him. He started, and 
 seemed for one moment irresolute whether to meet or shun his 
 advance, but probably deeming it too late for the latter, he 
 banished, by one of those violent efforts with which men of 
 proud and strong minds vanquish emotion, all outward sign of 
 the past agony ; and hastening towards his guest, greeted him 
 with a welcome which, though from ordinary hosts it might have 
 seemed cold, appeared to Clarence, who knew his temper, more 
 cordial than he had ventured to anticipate. 
 
 CHAPTER LXI. 
 
 * My father urged me sair, 
 
 But my mither did na speak, 
 Though she looked into my face, 
 
 Till my heart war like to break." Auld Robin Gray. 
 
 " IT is rather singular," said Lady Westborough to her 
 daughter, as they sate alone one afternoon in the music-room 
 at Westborough Park, " it is rather singular that Lord Ulswater 
 should not have come yet. He said he should certainly be 
 here before three o'clock." 
 
 " You know, mamma, that he has some military duties to 
 
 detain him at W ," answered Lady Flora, bending over a 
 
 drawing, in which she appeared to be earnestly engaged. 
 
 " True, my dear, and it was very kind in Lord to quarter 
 
 the troop he commands in his native county ; and very fortu- 
 nate that W , being his headquarters, should also be so near 
 
 us. But I cannot conceive that any duty can be sufficiently 
 strong to detain him from you," added Lady Westborough, 
 who had been accustomed all her life to a devotion unparalleled 
 in this age. "You seem very indulgent, Flora." 
 
 " Alas ! she should rather say very indifferent," thought 
 Lady Flora ; but she did not give her thought utterance she 
 only looked up at her mother for a moment, and smiled faintly. 
 
 Whether there was something in that smile, or in the pale 
 cheek of her daughter, that touched her, we know not, but 
 Lady Westborough was touched ; she threw her arms round
 
 290 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 Lady Flora's neck, kissed her fondly, and said, "You do not 
 seem well to-day, my love are you ? " 
 
 "Oh ! very very well," answered Lady Flora, returning 
 her mother's caress, and hiding her eyes, to which the tears 
 had started. 
 
 "My child," said Lady Westborough, "you know that both 
 myself and your father are very desirous to see you married to 
 Lord Ulswater of high and ancient birth, of great wealth, 
 young, unexceptional in person and character, and warmly 
 attached to you it would be impossible even for the sanguine 
 heart of a parent to ask for you a more eligible match. But 
 if the thought really does make you wretched and yet, how 
 can it ?" 
 
 " I have consented, "said Flora gently : " all I ask is, do not 
 speak to me more of the the event than you can avoid." 
 
 Lady Weslborough pressed her hand, sighed, and replied not. 
 
 The door opened, and the marquis, who had within the last 
 year become a cripple, with the great man's malady, dira 
 podagra, was wheeled in on his easy-chair : close behind him 
 followed Lord Ulswater. 
 
 " I have brought you," said the marquis, who piqued himself 
 on a vein of dry humor, " I have brought you, young lady, a 
 consolation for my ill humors. Few gouty old fathers make 
 themselves as welcome as I do eh, Ulswater ! " 
 
 "Dare I apply to myself Lord Westborough's compliment?" 
 said the young nobleman, advancing towards Lady Flora ; and 
 drawing his seat near her, he entered into that whispered con- 
 versation so significant of courtship. But there was little in 
 Lady Flora's manner, by which an experienced eye would have 
 detected the bride elect : no sudden blush, no downcast yet 
 sidelong look, no trembling of the hand, no indistinct confusion 
 of the voice, struggling with unanalyzed emotions. No all 
 was calm, cold, listless ; her cheek changed not tint nor hue, 
 and her words, clear and collected, seemed to contradict what- 
 ever the low murmurs of her betrothed might well be supposed 
 to insinuate. But, even in his behavior, there was something 
 which, had Lady Westborough been less contented than she 
 was with the externals and surface of manner, would have 
 alarmed her for her daughter. A cloud, sullen and gloomy, 
 sate upon his brow, and his lip alternately quivered with some- 
 thing like scorn, or was compressed with a kind of stifled 
 passion. Even in the exultation that sparkled in his eye, when 
 he alluded to their approaching marriage, there was an expression 
 that almost might have been termed fierce, and certainly was
 
 THE DISOWNED. 2Q1 
 
 as little like the true orthodox ardor of " gentle swain," as 
 Lady Flora's sad and half unconscious coldness resembled the 
 diffident passion of the " blushing maiden." 
 
 "You have considerably passed the time in which we expected 
 you, my lord," said Lady Westborough, who, as a beauty her- 
 self, was a little jealous of the deference due to the beauty of 
 her daughter. 
 
 " It is true," said Lord Ulswater, glancing towards the op- 
 posite glass and smoothing his right eyebrow with his fore- 
 finger "it is true, but I could not help it. I had a great deal 
 of business to do with my troop I have put them, into a new 
 manoeuvre. Do you know, my Lord (turning to the marquis) 
 I think it very likely the soldiers may have some work on the 
 of this month." 
 
 " Where, and wherefore ? " asked Lord Westborough, whom a 
 sudden twinge forced into the laconic. 
 
 " At W . Some idle fellows hold a meeting there jon 
 
 that day; and if I may judge by bills and advertisements, 
 chalkings on the walls, and, more than all, popular rumor, I 
 have no doubt but what riot and sedition are intended the 
 magistrates are terribly frightened. I hope we shall have some 
 cutting and hewing I have no patience with the rebellious 
 dogs." 
 
 " Foi shame for shame!" cried Lady Westborough, who, 
 though a worldly, was by no means an unfeeling, woman; "the 
 people are misguided they mean no harm." 
 
 Lord Ulswater smiled scornfully. " I never dispute upon 
 politics, but at the head of my men," said he, and turned the 
 conversation. 
 
 Shortly afterwards Lady Flora, complaining of indisposition, 
 rose, left the apartment, and retired to her own room. There 
 she sat, motionless and white as death, for more than an hour. 
 A day or two afterwards Miss Trevanion received the following 
 letter from her : 
 
 " Most heartily, most truly do I congratulate you, my dearest 
 Eleanor, upon your approaching marriage. You may reason- 
 ably hope for all that happiness can afford : and though you do 
 affect (for I do not think you feel) a fear lest you should not 
 be able to fix a character, volatile and light, like your lover's; 
 yet when I recollect his warmth of heart, and high sense, and 
 your beauty, gentleness, charms of conversation, and purely 
 disinterested love for one whose great worldly advantages might 
 so easily bias or adulterate affection, I own that I have no 
 dread for your future fate ; no feeling that can at all darken
 
 2Q2 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 the brightness of anticipation. Thank you, dearest, for the 
 delicate kindness with which you allude to my destiny me, 
 indeed, you cannot congratulate as I can you. But do not 
 grieve for me, my own generous Eleanor : if not happy, I 
 shall, I trust, be at least contented. My poor father implored 
 me with tears in his eyes my mother pressed my hand, but 
 spoke not ; and I I whose affections were withered, and hopes 
 strewn, should I not have been hard-hearted indeed, if they 
 had not wrung from me a consent ? And, oh ! should I not 
 be utterly lost if, in that consent which blessed them, I did 
 not find something of peace and consolation ? 
 
 " Yes, dearest, in two months, only two months, I shall be Lord 
 Ulswater's wife ; and when we meet, you shall look narrowly 
 at me, and see if he or you have any right to complain of me. 
 
 " Have you seen Mr. Linden lately ? Yet, do not answer 
 the question ; I ought not to cherish still that fatal clinging 
 interest for one who has so utterly forgotten me. But I do 
 rejoice in his prosperity : and when I hear his praises, and 
 watch his career, I feel proud that I should once have loved 
 him ! Oh, how could he be so false, so cruel, in the very midst 
 of his professions of undying, unswerving faith to me, at the 
 very moment when I was ill, miserable, wasting my very heart, 
 for anxiety on his account and such a woman too ! And had 
 he loved me, even though his letter was returned, would not 
 his conscience have told him he deserved it, and would he not 
 have sought me out in person, and endeavored to win from my 
 folly his forgiveness. But without attempting to see me, or 
 speak to me, or soothe a displeasure so natural, to leave the 
 country in silence, almost in disdain ; and when we met again, 
 to greet me with coldness, and hauteur, and never betray by 
 word, sign, or look, that he had ever been to me more than the 
 merest stranger ! Fool, fool, that I am, to waste another 
 thought upon him ; but I will not, and ought not to do so. In 
 two months I shall not even have the privilege of remem- 
 brance. 
 
 "I wish, Eleanor for I assure you that I have tried and 
 tried that I could find anything to like and esteem (since love 
 is out of the question) in this man, who seems so great, and, to 
 me, so unaccountable a favorite with my parents. His coun- 
 tenance and voice are so harsh and stern ; his manner at once 
 so self-complacent and gloomy ; his sentiments so narrow, 
 even in their notions of honor ; his very courage so savage, 
 and his pride so constant and offensive, that I in vain endeavor 
 to persuade myself of his virtues, and recur, at least, to the
 
 THE DISOWNED, 2<)$ 
 
 unwearying affection for me which he professes. It is true 
 that he has been three times refused ; that I have told him 
 that I cannot love him ; that I have even owned former love to 
 another : he still continues his suit, and by dint of long hope 
 has at length succeeded. But at times I could almost think 
 that he married me from very hate, rather than love, there is 
 such an artificial smoothness in his stern voice, such a latent 
 meaning in his eye ; and when he thinks I have not noticed 
 him, I have, on suddenly turning towards him, perceived so 
 dark and lowering an expression upon his countenance that my 
 heart has died within me for very fear. 
 
 " Had my mother been the least less kind, my father the 
 least less urgent, I think, nay, I know, I could not have gained 
 such a victory over myself as I have done in consenting to the 
 day. But enough of this. I did not think I should have run 
 on so long and so foolishly ; but we, dearest, have been children, 
 and girls, and women together : we have loved each other with 
 such fondness and unreserve that opening my heart to you 
 seems, only another phrase for thinking aloud. 
 
 "However, in two months I shall have no right even to 
 thoughts perhaps I may not even love you. Till then, dearest 
 Eleanor, I am, as ever, your affectionate and faithful friend, 
 
 "F. A." 
 
 Had Lord Westborough, indeed, been " less urgent," or her 
 mother "less kind," nothing could ever have wrung from 
 Lady Flora her consent to a marriage so ungenial and ill- 
 omened. 
 
 Thrice had Lord Ulswater (then Lord Borodaile) been re- 
 fused, before finally accepted ; and those who judge only from 
 the ordinary effects of pride, would be astonished that he 
 should have still persevered. But his pride was that deep-rooted 
 feeling which, so far from being repelled by a single blow, 
 fights stubbornly and doggedly onward, till the battle is over 
 and its object gained. From the moment he had resolved to 
 address Lady Flora Ardenne, he had also resolved to win her. 
 For three years, despite of a refusal, first gently, then more 
 peremptorily, urged, he fixed himself in her train. He gave 
 out that he was her affianced. In all parties, in all places, he 
 forced himself near her, unheeded alike of her frowns or indif- 
 ference ; and his rank, his hauteur, his fierceness of mien, and ac- 
 knowledged courage, kept aloof all the less arrogant and hardy 
 pretenders to Lady Flora's favor. For this, indeed, she rather 
 thanked than blamed him ; and it was the only thing which in
 
 294 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 the least reconciled her modesty to his advances or her pride 
 to his presumption. 
 
 He had been prudent as well as bold. The father he had 
 served, and the mother he had won. Lord Westborough, ad- 
 dicted a little to politics, a good deal to show, and devotedly 
 to gaming, was often greatly and seriously embarrassed. Lord 
 Ulswater, even during the life of his father (who was lavishly 
 generous to him), was provided with the means of relieving 
 his intended father-in-law's necessities ; and caring little for 
 money in comparison to a desired object, he was willing enough, 
 we do not say to bribe, but to influence Lord Westborough's 
 consent. These matters of arrangement were by no means 
 concealed from the marchioness, who, herself ostentatious and 
 profuse, was in no small degree benefited by them ; and 
 though they did not solely procure, yet they certainly contri- 
 buted, to conciliate her favor. 
 
 Few people are designedly and systematically wicked ; even 
 the worst find good motives for bad deeds ; and are as intent 
 upon discovering glosses for conduct, to deceive themselves as 
 to delude others. What wonder, then, that poor Lady West- 
 borough, never too rigidly addicted to self-examination, and 
 viewing all things through a very worldly medium, saw only in 
 the alternate art and urgency employed against her daughter's 
 real happiness, the various praiseworthy motives of permanently 
 disentangling Lady Flora from an unworthy attachment, of 
 procuring for her an establishment proportioned to her rank, 
 and a husband whose attachment, already shown by such 
 singular perseverance, was so likely to afford her everything 
 which, in Lady Westborough's eyes, constituted felicity. 
 
 All our friends, perhaps, desire our happiness ; but, then, 
 it must invariably be in their own way. What a pity that they 
 do not employ the same zeal in making us happy in ours! 
 
 CHAPTER LXII. 
 
 " If thou criest after Knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding ; 
 If thou seekest her as silver , : and searchest for her as for hid treasures ; 
 Then shall thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge 
 of God." 
 
 Proz't-rbs, ch. ii., ver. 3,4, 5. 
 
 WHILE Clarence was thus misjudged by one whose af- 
 fections and conduct he, in turn, naturally misinterpreted 
 while Lady Flora was alternately struggling against arid sub-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 295 
 
 milling to the fate which Lady Westborough saw approach 
 with gladness the father with indifference, and the bridegroom 
 with a pride that partook less of rapture than. revenge, our un- 
 fortunate .lover was endeavoring to glean, from Mordaunt's 
 conversation and example, somewhat of that philosophy so rare 
 except in the theories of the civilized and the occasional 
 practice of the barbarian, which though it cannot give us a 
 charm against misfortune, bestows at least upon us the 
 energy to support it. 
 
 We have said already, that when the first impression pro- 
 duced by Mordaunt's apparent pride and coldness, wore away, 
 it required little penetration to discover the benevolence and 
 warmth of .his mind. But none ignorant of his original dispo- 
 sition, or the misfortunes of his life, could ever have pierced 
 the depth of his self-sacrificing nature, or measured the height 
 of his lofty and devoted virtue. Many men may, perhaps, be 
 found, who will give up to duty ,a cherished wish, or even a 
 darling vice, but few will ever renounce to it their rooted tastes, 
 or .the indulgence of those habits which have almost become, 
 by long use, their happiness itself. Naturally melancholy and 
 thoughtful, feeding the sensibilities of his heart upon fiction, 
 and though addicted to the cultivation of reason rather than 
 fancy, having perhaps more of the deeper and acuter charac- 
 teristics of the poet, than those calm and half-callous proper- 
 ties of nature supposed to belong to the metaphysician and 
 the calculating moralist, Mordaunt was above all men fondly 
 addicted to solitude, and inclined to contemplations less use- 
 ful than profound. 
 
 The untimely death of Isabel, whom he had loved with that 
 love which is the vent of hoarded and passionate musings, long 
 nourished upon romance, and lavishing the wealth of a soul 
 that overflows with secreted tenderness upon the first object 
 that can bring reality to fiction -that event had not only 
 darkened melancholy into gloom, but had made loneliness still 
 more dear to his habits by all the ties of memory, and all the 
 consecrations of regret. The companionless wanderings the 
 midnight closet the thoughts which, as Hume said of his own, 
 could not exist in the world, but were all busy with life in ser 
 elusion : these were, rendered sweeter than ever to a mind for 
 which the ordinary objects of the world were now utterly love- 
 less ; and the musings of solitude had become, as it were, a 
 rightful homage and offering to the dead ! We may form, then, 
 some idea of the extent to which, in Mordaunt's character, 
 principle predominated over inclination, and regard for others
 
 296 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 over the love of self, when we see him tearing his spirit from 
 its beloved retreats and abstracted contemplations, and devot- 
 ing it to duties from which its fastidious and refined character- 
 istics were particularly calculated to revolt. When we have 
 considered his attachment to the hermitage, we can appreciate 
 the virtue which made him among the most active citizens in 
 the great world ; when we have considered the natural selfish- 
 ness of grief, the pride of philosophy, the indolence of medi- 
 tation, the eloquence of wealth, which says, "rest and toil not," 
 and the temptation within, which says, "obey the voice"; 
 when we have considered these, we can perhaps do justice to 
 the man who, sometimes on foot and in the coarsest attire, 
 travelled from inn to inn, and from hut to hut ; who made 
 human misery the object of his search, and human happiness 
 of his desire ; who, breaking aside an aversion to rude contact, 
 almost feminine in its extreme, voluntarily sought the meanest 
 companions, and subjected himself to the coarsest infusions ; 
 for whom the wail of affliction, or the moan of hunger was as 
 a summons which allowed neither hesitation nor appeal ; who 
 seemed possessed of an ubiquity for the purposes of good, al- 
 most resembling that attributed to the wanderer in the magni- 
 ficent fable of " Melmoth," for the temptations to evil ; who, 
 by a zeal and labor that brought to habit and inclination a 
 thousand martyrdoms, made his life a very hour-glass, in which 
 each sand was a good deed or a virtuous design. 
 
 Many plunge into public affairs, to which they have had a 
 previous distaste, from the desire of losing the memory of a pri- 
 vate affliction ; but so far from wishing to heal the wounds of 
 remembrance by the anodynes which society can afford, it was 
 only in retirement that Mordaunt found the flowers from which 
 balm could be distilled. Many are through vanity magnani- 
 mous, and benevolent from the selfishness of fame ; but, so far 
 from seeking applause, where he bestowed favor, Mordaunt 
 had sedulously shrouded himself in darkness and disguise. 
 And by that increasing propensity to quiet, so often found 
 among those addicted to lofty or abstruse contemplation, he 
 had conquered the ambition of youth with the philosophy of a 
 manhood that had forestalled the affections of age. Many, in 
 short, have become great or good to the community by individ- 
 ual motives easily resolved into common and earthly elements 
 of desire ; but they who inquire diligently into human nature 
 have not often the exalted happiness to record a character like 
 Mordaunt's, actuated purely by a systematic principle of love, 
 which covered mankind, as heaven does earth, with an atmos-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 297 
 
 phere of light extending to the remotest corners, and penetrat- 
 ing the darkest recesses. 
 
 It was one of those violent and gusty evenings, which give 
 to an English autumn something rude, rather than gentle, in 
 its characteristics, that Mordaunt and Clarence sate together, 
 
 " And sowed the hoars with various seeds of talk." 
 
 The young Isabel, the only living relic of the departed one, sat 
 by her father's side, upon the floor ; and, though their dis- 
 course was far beyond the comprehension of her years, yet 
 did she seem to listen with a quiet and absorbed attention. 
 In truth, child as she was, she so loved, and almost wor- 
 shipped, her father, that the very tones of his voice had in 
 them a charm, which could always vibrate, as it were, to her 
 heart, and hush her into silence ; and that melancholy and 
 deep, though somewhat low voice, when it swelled or trembled 
 with thought which in Mordaunt was feeling made her sad, 
 she knew not why ; and when she heard it, she would creep 
 to his side, and put her little hand on his, and look up at him 
 with eyes in whose tender and glistening blue the spirit of her 
 mother seemed to float. She was serious, and thoughtful, and 
 loving, beyond the usual capacities of childhood ; perhaps 
 her solitary condition, and habits of constant intercourse with 
 one so grave as Mordaunt, and who always, when not absent 
 on his excursions of charity, loved her to be with him, had 
 given to her mind a precocity of feeling, and tinctured the sim- 
 plicity of infancy with what ought to have been the colors of 
 after-years. She was not inclined to the sports of her age 
 she loved, rather, and above all else, to sit by Mordaunt'sside, 
 and silently pore over some book, or feminine task, and to steal 
 her eyes every now and then away from her employment, in 
 order to watch his motions, or provide for whatever her vigi- 
 lant kindness of heart imagined he desired. And often, when 
 he saw her fairy form hovering about him, and attending on his 
 wants, or her beautiful countenance glow with pleasure, when 
 she fancied she supplied them, he almost believed that Isabel 
 yet lived, though in another form, and that a love so intense 
 and holy as hers had been might transmigrate, but could not 
 perish. 
 
 The young Isabel had displayed a passion for music so early, 
 that it almost seemed innate ; and as, from the mild and wise 
 education she received, her ardor had never been repelled on 
 the one hand or overstrained on the other, so, though she had 
 but just passed her seventh year, she had attained to a singular
 
 298 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 .proficiency in the art an art that suited well with her lovely 
 face, and fond feelings, and innocent heart ; and it was almost 
 heavenly, in the literal acceptation of the word, to hear her 
 sweet, though childish voice swell along the still pure airs of 
 summer, and her angelic countenance all rapt and brilliant 
 with the enthusiasm which her own melodies created. 
 
 Never had she borne the bitter breath of unkindness, nor 
 writhed beneath that customary injustice which punishes in 
 others the sins of our own temper, and the varied fretfulness 
 of caprice ; and so she had none of the fears and meannesses, 
 and acted untruths which so usually pollute and debase the in- 
 nocence of childhood. But the promise of her ingenuous 
 brow (over which the silken hair flowed, parted into two 
 streams of gold) and of the fearless but tender eyes, and of 
 the quiet smile which sat for ever upon the rosy mouth, like Joy 
 watching Love, was kept in its fullest extent by the mind, from 
 which all thoughts, pure, kind, and guileless flowed, like waters 
 from a well, which a spirit has made holy for its own dwell- 
 ing. 
 
 On this evening, we have said that she sat by her father's 
 side, and listened, though she only in part drank in its sense, 
 to his conversation with his guest. 
 
 The room was of great extent, and surrounded with books, 
 over which, at close intervals, the busts of the departed Great 
 and the immortal Wise looked down. There was the sublime 
 beauty of Plato, the harsher and more earthly countenance of 
 Tully, the only Roman (except Lucretius) who might have 
 been a Greek. There the mute marble gave the broad front of 
 Bacon (itself a world) and there the features of Locke showed 
 how the mind wears away the links of flesh with the file of 
 thought. And over other departments of those works which 
 remind us that man is made a little lower than the angels, the 
 stern face of the Florentine who sung of hell, contrasted with 
 the quiet grandeur enthroned on the fair brow of the English 
 poet " blind but bold," and there the glorious, but genial 
 countenance of him who has found in all humanity a friend, 
 conspicuous among sages and minstrels, claimed brotherhood 
 with all. 
 
 The fire burned clear and high, casting a rich twilight (for 
 there was no other light in the room) over that gothic chamber, 
 and shining cheerily upon the varying countenance of Clar- 
 ence, and the more contemplative features of his host. In the 
 latter might you see that care and thought had been harsh, but 
 not unhallowed companions. In the linesjwhich crossed his ex-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 299 
 
 panse of brow, time seemed to have buried many nopes ; but 
 his mien and air, if loftier, were gentler than in younger days ; 
 and though they had gained somewhat in dignity, had lost 
 greatly in reserve. 
 
 There was in the old chamber, with its fretted roof and 
 ancient "garniture," the various books which surrounded it, 
 walls that the learned built to serve themselves, and in the 
 marble likeness of those for whom thought had won eternity, 
 joined to the hour, the breathing quiet, and the hearth-light, by 
 whose solitary rays we love best in the eves of autumn to discourse 
 on graver or subtler themes there was in all this a spell 
 which seemed particularly to invite and to harmonize with that 
 tone of conversation, some portions of which we are now 
 about to relate. 
 
 " How loudly," said Clarence, " that last gust swept by 
 you remember that beautiful couplet in Tibullus : 
 
 " ' Quam juvat immites ventds audire cubantem, 
 Et dominam tenero detinuisse sinu.' " * 
 
 "Ay," answered Mordaunt, with a scarcely audible sigh, 
 " that is the feeling of the lover at the ' immites ventos,' but we 
 sages of the lamp make our mistress Wisdom, and when the 
 winds rage without, it is to her that we cling. See how from 
 the same object different conclusions are drawn ! the most 
 common externals of nature, the wind and the wave, the stars 
 and the heavens, the very earth on which we tread, never excite 
 in different bosoms the same ideas ; and it is from our own 
 hearts, and not from an outward source, that we draw the hues 
 which color the web of our existence." 
 
 "It is true," answered Clarence. "You remember that in 
 two specks of the moon the enamored maiden perceived two 
 unfortunate lovers, while the ambitious curate conjectured that 
 they were the spires of a cathedral ? But it is not only to our 
 feelings, but also to our reasonings, that we give the colors 
 which they wear. The moral, for instance, which to one man 
 seems atrocious, to another is divine. On the tendency of the 
 same work what three people will agree ? And how shall the 
 most sanguine moralist hope to benefit mankind when he finds 
 that, by the multitude, his wisest endeavors to instruct are 
 often considered but as instruments to pervert ?" 
 
 " I believe," answered Mordaunt, " that it is from our ignor- 
 ance that our contentions flow ; we debate with strife and with 
 
 * Sweet on our couch to hear the winds above, 
 And cling with closer heart to her we love.
 
 3OO THE DISOWNED. 
 
 wrath, with bickering and with hatred, but of the thing debated 
 upon we remain in the profoundest darkness. Like the laborers 
 of Babel, while we endeavor in vain to express our meaning to 
 each other, the fabric by which, for a common end, we would 
 have ascended to heaven from the ills of earth remains for ever 
 unadvanced and incomplete. Let us hope that knowledge is 
 the universal language which shall reunite us. As, in their 
 sublime allegory, the Ancients signified that only through 
 virtue we arrive at honor, so let us believe that only through 
 knowledge can we arrive at virtue ! " 
 
 "And yet," said Clarence, " that seems a melancholy truth 
 for the mass of the people who have no time for the researches 
 of wisdom." 
 
 <f Not so much so as at first we might imagine," answered 
 Mordaunt ; " the few smooth all paths for the many. The 
 precepts of knowledge it is difficult to extricate from error ; 
 but, once discovered, they gradually pass into maxims ; and 
 thus what the sage's life was consumed in acquiring become 
 acquisition of a moment to posterity. Knowledge is like the 
 atmosphere, in order to dispel the vapor and dislodge the 
 frost, our ancestors felled the forest, drained the marsh, and 
 cultivated the waste, and we now breathe without an effort in 
 the purified air and the chastened climate, the result of the 
 labor of generations and the progress of ages ! As to-day, the 
 common mechanic may equal in science, however inferior in 
 genius, the friar * whom his contemporaries feared as a ma- 
 gician, so the opinions which now startle as well as astonish 
 may be received hereafter as acknowledged axioms, and pass 
 into ordinary practice. We cannot even tell how far the 
 sanguine f theories of certain philosophers deceive them when 
 they anticipate for future ages, a knowledge which shall bring 
 perfection to the mind, baffle the diseases of the body, and 
 even protract to a date now utterly unknown the final desti- 
 nation of life ; for Wisdom is a palace of which only the vesti- 
 bule has been entered ; nor can we guess what treasures are 
 hid in those chambers, of which the experience of the past can 
 afford us neither analogy nor clue." 
 
 "It was, then," said Clarence, who wished to draw his com- 
 panion into speaking of himself, "it was, then, from your 
 addiction to studies not ordinarily made the subject of acquisi- 
 
 * Roger Bacon. 
 
 t See Condorcet on the Progress of the Human Mind ; written some years after the sup- 
 posed date of this conversation, but in which there is a slight but eloquent and affecting 
 view of the philosophy to which Mordaunt refers.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 301 
 
 lion that you date (pardon me) your generosity, your devoted* 
 ness, your feeling for others, and your indifference to self ? " 
 
 " You flatter me," said Mordaunt modestly (and we may 
 be permitted to crave attention to his reply, since it unfolds 
 the secret springs of a character so singularly good and pure) ; 
 " you flatter me ; but I will answer you as if you had put 
 the question without the compliment ; nor, perhaps, will it be 
 wholly uninstructive, as it will certainly be new, to sketch, with- 
 out recurrence to events, or what I may call exterior facts, a 
 brief and progressive History of One Human Mind. 
 
 " Our first era of life is under the influence of the primitive 
 feelings ; we are pleased and we laugh ; hurt, and we weep ; 
 we vent our little passions the moment they are excited ; and 
 so much of novelty have we to perceive that we have little 
 leisure to reflect. By-and-by fear teaches us to restrain our 
 feelings ; when displeased, we seek to revenge the displeasure, 
 and are punished ; we find the excess of our joy, our sorrow, 
 our anger, alike considered criminal, and chidden into restraint. 
 From harshness we become acquainted with deceit ; the promise 
 made is not fulfilled, the threat not executed, the fear falsely 
 excited, and the hope wilfully disappointed : we are surrounded 
 by systematized delusion, and we imbibe the contagion. 
 
 " From being forced into concealing the thoughts which we 
 do conceive, we begin to affect those which we do not ; so 
 early do we learn the two main tasks of life, To Suppress and 
 To Feign, that our memory will not carry us beyond that 
 period of artifice to a state of nature when the twin principles 
 of veracity and belief were so strong as to lead the philoso- 
 phers of a modern school into the error of terming them innate.* 
 
 " It was with a mind restless and confused feelings which 
 were alternately chilled and counterfeited (the necessary results 
 of my first tuition), that I was driven to mix with others of my 
 age. They did not like me, nor do I blame them. Les 
 ma iriir es qtie Von neglige comme de petites choses, sont souvent ce 
 qui fait que ks homines dccidcnt de vous en bicn ou en mal.\ 
 Manner is acquired so imperceptibly that we have given its 
 origin to nature, as we do the origin of all else for which our 
 ignorance can find no other source. Mine was unprepossessing ; 
 I was disliked, and I returned the feeling ; I sought not, and I 
 was shunned. Then I thought that all were unjust to me, and 
 I grew bitter, and sullen, and morose : I cased myself in the 
 
 * Reid on the Human Mind. 
 
 t Those manners which one neglects as trifling, are often the cause of the opinion, good 
 or bad, formed of you by men.
 
 302 
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 stubbornness of pride, I pored over the books which spoke of 
 the worthlessness of man, and I indulged the discontent of my- 
 self by brooding over the frailties of my kind. 
 
 " My passions were strong, they told me to suppress them. 
 The precept was old, and seemed wise I attempted to enforce 
 it. I had already begun, in early infancy, the lesson : I had 
 now only to renew it. Fortunately I was diverted from this 
 task, or, my mind, in conquering its passions, would have con- 
 quered its powers. I learnt, in after-lessons, that the passions 
 are not to be suppressed they are to be directed ; and when 
 directed, rather to be strengthened than subdued. 
 
 "Observe how a word may influence a life ; a man whose 
 opinion I esteemed, made of me the casual and trite remark, 
 that ' my nature was one of which it was impossible to augur 
 evil or good, it might be extreme in either.' This observation 
 roused me into thought : could I indeed be all that was good 
 or evil ? had I the choice, and could I hesitate which to choose ? 
 but what was good and what was evil? that seemed the most 
 difficult inquiry. 
 
 " I asked and received no satisfactory reply ; in the words 
 of Erasmus totius negotii caput ac fontein ignorant, divinant, 
 ac delirant omnes :* so I resolved myself to inquire and to de- 
 cide. I subjected to my scrutiny the moralist and the philoso- 
 pher ; I saw that on all sides they disputed, but I saw that they 
 grew virtuous in the dispute ; they uttered much that was absurd 
 about the origin of good, but much more that was exalted in its 
 praise : and I never rose from any work which treated ably 
 upon morals, whatever were its peculiar opinions, but I felt my 
 breast enlightened, and my mind ennobled by my studies. The 
 professor of one sect commanded me to avoid the dogmatist of 
 another, as the propagator of moral poison ; and the dogma- 
 tist retaliated on the professor ; but I avoided neither: I read 
 both, and turned all 'into honey and fine gold.' No inquiry 
 into wisdom, however superficial, is undeserving attention. The 
 vagaries of the idlest fancy will often chance, as it were, upon 
 the most useful discoveries of truth, and serve as a guide to 
 after and to slower disciples of wisdom ; even as the peckings 
 of birds in an unknown country indicate to the adventurous 
 seaman the best and the safest fruits. 
 
 " From the works of men I looked into their lives, and I 
 found that there was a vast difference (though I am not aware 
 that it has before been remarked) between those who cultivate 
 a talent, and those who cultivate the mind j I found that the 
 
 * All ignore, guess, and rave about the head and fountain of the whole question at issue.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 303 
 
 mere men of genius were often erring or criminal in their lives ; 
 but that vice or crime in the disciples of philosophy was strik- 
 ingly unfrequent and rare. The extremest culture of reason 
 had not, it is true, been yet carried far enough to preserve the 
 laborer from follies of opinion, but a moderate culture had 
 been sufficient to deter him from the vices of life. And only 
 to the sons of Wisdom, as of old to the sages of the East, 
 seemed given the unerring star, which, through the travail of 
 Earth and the clouds of Heaven, led them at the last to their 
 God! 
 
 " When I gleaned this fact from biography, I paused, and 
 said ' Then must there be something excellent in Wisdom, if 
 it can, even in its most imperfect disciples, be thus beneficial 
 to morality.' Pursuing this sentiment I redoubled my re- 
 searches, and behold the object of my quest was won ! I had 
 before sought a satisfactory answer to the question, 'What is 
 Virtue ?' from men of a thousand tenets, and my heart had re- 
 jected all I had received. 'Virtue,' said some, and my soul 
 bowed reverently to the dictate, ' Virtue is religion.' I heard and 
 humbled myself before the Divine Book. Let me trust that I 
 did not humble myself in vain ! But the dictate satisfied less 
 than it awed ; for either it limited Virtue to the mere belief, or, 
 by extending it to the practice, of Religion, it extended also in- 
 quiry to the method in which the practice should be applied. But 
 with the first interpretation of the dictate, who could rest con- 
 tented? for, while in the perfect enforcement of the tenets of 
 our faith all virtue may be found, so in the passive and the 
 mere belief in its divinity, we find only an engine as applicable 
 to evil as to good : the torch which should illumine the 
 altar has also lighted the stake, and the zeal of the persecutor 
 has been no less sincere than the heroism of the martyr. Re- 
 jecting, therefore, this interpretation, I accepted the other: 
 I felt in my heart, and I rejoiced as I felt it, that 
 in the practice of Religion the body of all virtue could 
 be found. Bift in that conviction, had I at once an answer to 
 my inquiries? Could the mere desire of good be sufficient to 
 attain it and was the attempt at virtue synonymous with suc- 
 cess? On the contrary, have-not those most desirous of obey- 
 ing the precepts of God often sinned the most against their 
 spirit, and has not zeal been frequently the most ardent when 
 crime was the most rife.* But what, if neither sincerity nor 
 
 * There can be no doubt that they who exterminated the Albigenses, established the 
 Inquisition, lighted the fires at Smithfield, were actuated, not by a desire to do evil, but 
 (monstrous as it may seem) to do good ; not to counteract, but to enforce what they be 
 Ucved the wishes of the Almighty ; so that a good intention, without the enlightenment
 
 304 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 zeal was sufficient to constitute goodness what, if in the 
 breasts of the best intentioned, crime had been fostered, the 
 more dangerously because the more disguised what ensued? 
 That the religion which they professed, they believed, they adored, 
 t/uy had also misunderstood; and that the precepts to be drawn 
 from the Holy Book, they had darkened by their ignorance, or 
 perverted by their passions ! Here, then, at once my enigma 
 was solved : here then, at once, I was led to the goal of my in- 
 quiry ! Ignorance, and the perversion of passion, are but the 
 same thing though under different names ; for, only by our 
 ignorance are our passions perverted. Therefore, what fol- 
 lowed ? that, if by ignorance the greatest of God's gifts had 
 been turned to evil, Knowledge alone was the light by which 
 even the pages of Religion should be read. It followed that 
 the Providence that knew that the nature it had created should 
 be constantly in exercise, and that only through labor comes 
 improvement, had wisely ordained that we should toil even for 
 the blessing of its holiest and clearest laws. It had given us, in 
 Religion, as in this magnificent world, treasures and harvests 
 which might be called forth in incalculable abundance ; but 
 had decreed that through our exertions only should they be 
 called forth ; a palace more gorgeous that the palace of en- 
 chantment was before us, but its chambers were a labyrinth 
 which required a clue. 
 
 " What was that clue ? Was it to be sought for in the corners 
 of earth, or was it not beneficently centred in ourselves ? Was 
 it not the exercise of a power easy for us to use, if we would 
 dare to do so ? Was it not the simple exertion of the discern- 
 ment granted to us for all else ? Was it not the exercise of GUI' 
 reason ? ' Reason ! ' cried the Zealot, ' pernicious and hateful 
 instrument, it is fraught with peril to yourself and to others ; 
 do not think for a moment of employing an engine so fallacious 
 and so dangerous. ' But I listened not to the Zealot : could 
 the steady and bright torch which, even where the Star of Beth- 
 lehem had withheld its diviner light, had guided some patient 
 and unwearied steps to the very throne of Virtue, become but 
 a deceitful meteor to him who kindled \ifor the aid of Religion, 
 and in an eternal cause ! Could- it be perilous to task our 
 reason, even to the utmost, in the investigation of the true 
 utility and hidden wisdom of the works of God, when God him- 
 self had ordained that only through some exertion of our reason 
 
 to direct it to a fitting ot>ject, may be as pernicious to human happiness as one of the most 
 fiendish. We are told of a whole people who used to murder their guests, not from feroc- 
 ity or interest, hut from the pure and praiseworthy motive of obtaining the good qualities^ 
 which they believed, by the murder of the deceased, devolved upon them.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 3o<J 
 
 should we know either from Nature or Revelation that He 
 himself existed? 'But,' cried the Zealot again, 'but mere 
 mortal wisdom teaches men presumption, and presumption, 
 doubt.' 'Pardon me,' I answered, 'it is not Wisdom, but 
 Ignorance, which teaches men presumption ; Genius may be 
 sometimes arrogant, but nothing is so diffident as Knowledge.' 
 ' But,' resumed the Zealot, ' those accustomed to subtle inquiries 
 may dwell only on the minutiae of faith inexplicable, because 
 useless to explain, and argue from those minutiae against the 
 grand and universal truth.' 'Pardon me again : it is the petty, 
 not the enlarged, mind, which prefers casuistry to conviction ; 
 it is the confined and short sight of Ignorance which, unable 
 to comprehend the great bearings of truth, pries only into its 
 narrow and obscure corners, occupying itself in scrutinizing 
 the atoms of apart, while the eagle eye of Wisdom contemplates, 
 in its widest scale, the luminous majesty of the whole. Survey 
 our faults, our errors, our vices fearful and fertile field ; trace 
 them to their causes all those causes resolve themselves into 
 one Ignorance ! For, as we have already seen, that from this 
 source flow the abuses of Religion, so, also, from this source 
 flow the abuses of all other blessings of talents, of riches, of 
 power ; for we abuse things, either because we know not their 
 real use, or because, with an equal blindness, we imagine the 
 abuse more adapted to our happiness. But as ignorance, then, 
 is the sole spring of evil so, as the antidote to ignorance is 
 knowledge, it necessarily follows that, were we consummate in 
 knowledge, we should be perfect in good. He therefore who 
 retards the progress of intellect countenances crime nay, to 
 a state, is the greatest of criminals ; while he who circulates 
 that mental light more precious than the visual, is the holiest 
 improver, and the surest benefactor, of his race ! Nor let us 
 believe, with the dupes of a shallow policy, that there exists 
 upon the earth one prejudice that can be called salutary, or one 
 error beneficial to perpetuate. As the petty fish, which is 
 fabled to possess the property of arresting the progress of the 
 largest vessel to which it clings, even so may a single prejudice, 
 unnoticed or despised, more than the adverse blast, or the 
 dead calm, delay the barque of Knowledge in the vast seas of 
 Time.' 
 
 "It is true that the sanguineness of philanthropistsmay have 
 carried them too far ; it is true (for the experiment has not yet 
 been made) that God may have denied to us, in this state, the 
 consummation of knowledge, and the consequent perfection in 
 good ; but because we cannot be perfect, are we to resolve we
 
 306 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 will be evil ? One step in Knowledge is one step from sin: 
 one step from sin is one step nearer to Heaven. Oh ! never 
 let us be deluded by those, who, for political motives, would 
 adulterate the divinity of religious truths : never let us believe 
 that our Father in Heaven rewards most the one talent unem- 
 ployed, or that prejudice, and indolence, and folly, find the 
 most favor in His sight ! The very heathen has bequeathed 
 to us a nobler estimate of his nature ; and the same sentence 
 which so sublimely declares ' TRUTH is THE BODY OF GOD,' de- 
 clares also 'AND LIGHT is HIS SHADOW.' * 
 
 "Persuaded, then, that knowledge contained the key to 
 virtue, it was to knowledge that I applied. The first grand 
 lesson which it taught me was the solution of a phrase most 
 hackneyed, least understood, viz., ' common sense.' \ It is in the 
 Portico of the Greek sage that that phrase has received its 
 legitimate explanation ; it is there we are taught that 'common 
 sense ' signifies ' the sense of the common interest.' Yes ! it 
 is the most beautiful truth in morals that we have no such 
 thing as a distinct or divided interest from our race. In their 
 welfare is ours ; and, by choosing the broadest paths to effect 
 their happiness, we choose the surest and the shortest to our 
 own. As I read and pondered over these truths, I was sen- 
 sible that a great change was working a fresh world out of 
 the former materials of my mind. My passions, which before 
 I had checked into uselessness, or exerted to destruction, now 
 started forth in a nobler shape, and prepared for a new direc- 
 tion : instead of urging me to individual aggrandizement, they 
 panted for universal good, and coveted the reward of Ambition, 
 only for the triumphs of Benevolence. 
 
 " This is one stage of virtue I cannot resist the belief that 
 there is a higher : it is when we begin to love virtue, not for 
 its objects, but itself. For there are in knowledge these two 
 excellences : first, that it offers to every man, the most selfish 
 and the most exalted, his peculiar inducement to good. It says 
 to the former 'Serve mankind, and you serve yourself '; to the 
 latter, ' In choosing the best means to secure your own happi- 
 ness, you will have the sublime inducement of promoting the 
 happiness of mankind.' 
 
 " The second excellence of Knowledge is that even the selfish 
 man, when he has once begun to love Virtue from little motives, 
 loses the motives as he increases the love ; and at last wor- 
 ships the deity, where before he only coveted the gold upon 
 
 *Plato. 
 J- Koivovoqunarvy Scnsus communis.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 307 
 
 its altar. And thus I learned to love Virtue solely for its own 
 beauty. I said with one who, among much dross, has many 
 particles of ore, ' If it be not estimable in itself, I can see 
 nothing estimable in following it for the sake of a bargain.'* 
 
 " I looked round the world, and saw often Virtue in rags, and 
 Vice in purple : the former conduces to happiness, it is true, 
 but the happiness \\Qswithin, and not in externals. I contemned 
 the deceitful folly with which writers have termed it poetical 
 justice to make the good ultimately prosperous in wealth, 
 honor, fortunate love, or successful desires. Nothing false, 
 even in poetry, can be just ; and that pretended moral is, of 
 all, the falsest. Virtue is not more exempt than Vice from the 
 ills of fate, but it contains within itself always an energy to re- 
 sist them, and sometimes an anodyne to soothe to repay your 
 quotation from Tibullus : 
 
 " ' Crura sonant ferro sed canit inter opus ! ' \ 
 
 " When in the depths of my soul I set up that divinity of this 
 nether earth, which Brutus never really understood, if, 
 because unsuccessful in its efforts, he doubted its existence, I 
 said in the proud prayer with which I worshipped it : ' Poverty 
 may humble my lot, but it shall not debase thee ; Tempta- 
 tion may shake my nature, but not the rock on which thy tem- 
 ple is based ; Misfortune may wither all the hopes that have 
 blossomed around thine altar, but I will sacrifice dead leaves 
 when the flowers are no more. Though all that I have 
 loved perish all that I have coveted fade away, I may murmur 
 at fate, but I will have no voice but that of homage for thee! 
 Nor, while thou smilest upon my way, would I exchange with 
 the loftiest and happiest of thy foes ! ' More bitter than aught 
 of what I then dreamed have been my trials, but 2 have fulfilled 
 my vow ! 
 
 " I believe that alone to be a true description of Virtue, 
 which makes it all-sufficient to itself that alone a just portrait- 
 ure of its excellence, which does not lessen its internal power 
 by exaggerating its outward advantages, nor degrade its nobili- 
 ty by dwelling only on its rewards. The grandest moral of an- 
 cient lore has ever seemed to me that which the picture of 
 Prometheus affords : in whom neither the shaking earth, nor 
 the rending heaven, nor the rock without, nor the vulture within, 
 could cause regret for past benevolence, or terror for future 
 evil, or envy, even amidst tortures, for the dishonorable 
 
 *Lord Shaftesbury. 
 t Th? chains clank on its limbs, but it sings amidst its tasks.
 
 308 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 prosperity of his insulter !* Who that has glowed over this 
 exalted picture will tell us that we must make Virtue prosper- 
 ous in order to allure to it, or clothe Vice with misery in order 
 to revolt us from its image ! Oh ! who, on the contrary, would 
 not learn to adore Virtue, from the bitterest sufferings of such 
 a votary, a hundred-fold more than he would learn to love Vice 
 from the gaudiest triumphs of its most fortunate disciples ? " 
 
 Something there was in Mordaunt's voice and air, and the 
 impassioned glow of his countenance, that, long after he had 
 ceased, thrilled in Clarence's heart, " like the remembered 
 tone of a mute lyre." And when a subsequent event led him 
 at rash moments to doubt whether Virtue was indeed the chief 
 good, Linden recalled the words of that night, and the enthu- 
 siasm with which they were uttered, repented that in his doubt 
 he had wronged the truth, and felt that there is a power in the 
 deep heart of man to which even Destiny is submitted ! 
 
 CHAPTER LXIII. 
 
 Will you hear the letter ? 
 * * * * 
 
 This is the motley-minded gentleman that I have before met in the forest. 
 
 As You Like It. 
 
 A MORNING or two after the conversation with which our last 
 chapter concluded, Clarence received the following letter from 
 the Duke of Haverfield : 
 
 "Your letter, my dear Linden, would have been answered 
 before, but for an occurrence which is generally supposed to 
 engross the whole attention of the persons concerned in it. 
 Let me see ay, three yes, I have been exactly three days 
 married ! Upon my honor, there is much less in the event 
 than one would imagine ; and the next time it happens I will 
 not put myself to such amazing trouble and inconvenience 
 about it. But one buys wisdom only by experience. Now, 
 however, that I have communicated to you the fact, I expect 
 you, in the first place, to excuse my negligence for not writing 
 before ; for (as I know you are fond of the litcrcz humam'ores, 
 I will give the sentiment the dignity of a quotation) 
 
 " ' Un veritable amant ne connait point d'amis ; ' f 
 and though I have been three clnys married, I am still a lover 
 
 * Mercury. See the Prometheus of ./Eschylus. 
 t A true lover recognizes no friends. CORNEILLS.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 309 
 
 Iff the second place, I expect you to be very grateful that, all 
 things considered, I write to you so soon ; it would indeed not 
 be an ordinary inducement that could make me 'put pen to 
 paper ' (Is not that the true vulgar, commercial, academical, 
 metaphorical epistolary style ?) so shortly after the fatal cere- 
 mony. So, had I nothing to say but in reply to your com- 
 ments on state affairs (hang them !) or in applause of your 
 Italian friend, of whom I say, as Charles II. said of the honest 
 yeoman 'I can admire virtue, though I can't imitate it ! ' I 
 think it highly probable that your letter might still remain in a 
 certain box of tortoise-shell and gold (formerly belonging to 
 the great Richelieu, and now in my possession), in which I at 
 this instant descry, 'with many a glance of woe and boding 
 dire,' sundry epistles in manifold handwritings, all classed 
 under the one fearful denomination ' unanswered.' 
 
 "No, my good Linden, my heart is inditing of a better 
 matter than this. Listen to me, and then stay at your host's or 
 order your swiftest steed, as seems most meet to you. 
 
 " You said rightly that Miss Trevanion, now her Grace of 
 Haverfield, was the intimate friend of Lady Flora Ardenne. 
 I have often talked to her viz., Eleanor, not Lady Flora 
 about you, and was renewing the conversation yesterday, when 
 your letter, accidentally lying before me, reminded me of you. 
 Sundry little secrets passe,d in due conjugal course, from her 
 possession into mine. I find that you have been believed, by 
 Lady Flora, to have played the perfidious with La Meronville 
 that she never knew of your application to her father, and 
 his reply that, on the contrary, she accused you of indifference 
 in going abroad without attempting to obtain an interview, or 
 excuse your supposed infidelity that her heart is utterly averse 
 to an union with that odious Lord Boro Bah I mean Lord 
 Ulswater ; and that prepare, Linden she still cherishes your 
 memory, even through time, change, and fancied desertion, 
 with a tenderness which which deuce take it, I never 
 could write sentiment but you understand me ; so I will not 
 conclude the phrase. ' Nothing in oratory,' said my cousin 
 
 D , who was, entre nous, more honest than eloquent, ' like 
 
 a break ! ' 'down! you should have added,' said I. 
 
 "I now, my dear Linden, leave you to your fate. For my 
 part, though I own Lord Ulswater is a lord whom ladies in 
 love with the etceteras of married pomp might well desire, 
 yet I do think it would be no difficult matter for you to eclipse 
 him ! I cannot, it is true, advise you to run away with Lady 
 Flora. Gentlemen don't run away with the daughters of gentle*
 
 310 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 Aien ; but, without running away, you may win your betrothed 
 and Lord Ulswater's intended. A distinguished member of 
 the House of Commons, owner of Scarsdale, and representa- 
 tive of the most ancient branch of the Talbots mon Dieu ! 
 you might marry a queen dowager and decline settlements ! 
 
 "And so, committing thee to the guidance of that winged 
 god, who, if three days afford any experience, has made thy 
 friend to forsake pleasure only to find happiness, I bid thee, 
 most gentle Linden, farewell. HAVERFIELD." 
 
 Upon reading this letter, Clarence felt as a man suddenly 
 transformed ! From an exterior of calm and apathy, at the 
 bottom of which lay one bitter and corroding recollection, he 
 passed at once into a state of emotion, wild, agitated, and con- 
 fused ; yet, amidst all, was foremost a burning and intense 
 hope, which for long years he had not permitted himself to 
 form. 
 
 He descended into the breakfast parlor. Mordaunt, whose 
 hours of appearing, though not of rising, were much later than 
 Clarence's, was not yet down ; and our lover had full leisure 
 to form his plans, before his host made his entree. 
 
 " Will you ride to-day ? " said Mordaunt : " there are some 
 old ruins in the neighborhood well worth the trouble of a 
 visit." 
 
 " I grieve to say," answered Clarence, " that I must take my 
 leave of you. I have received intelligence, this morning, which 
 may greatly influence my future life, and by which I am obliged 
 to make an excursion to another part of the country, nearly a 
 day's journey, on horseback." 
 
 Mordaunt looked at his guest, and conjectured by his height- 
 ened color, and an embarrassment which he in vain endeavored 
 to conceal, that the journey might have some cause for its 
 suddenness and dispatch which the young senator had his 
 peculiar reasons for concealing. Algernon contented himself, 
 therefore, with expressing his regret at Linden's abrupt depar- 
 ture, without incurring the indiscreet hospitality of pressing a 
 longer sojourn beneath his roof. 
 
 Immediately after breakfast, Clarence's horse was brought to 
 the door, and Harrison received orders to wait with the carriage 
 
 at W , until his master returned. Not a little surprised, 
 
 we trow, was the worthy valet at his master's sudden attach- 
 ment to equestrian excursions. Mordaunt accompanied his 
 visitor through the park, and took leave of him with a warmth 
 which sensibly touched Clarence, in spite of the absence and
 
 TttE DISOWNED. 31 1 
 
 excitement of his thoughts ; indeed, the unaffected and simple 
 character of Linden, joined to his acute, bold, and cultivated 
 mind, had taken strong hold of Mordaunt's interest and 
 esteem. 
 
 It was a mild autumnal morning, but thick clouds in the rear 
 prognosticated rain ; and the stillness of the wind, the low 
 flight of the swallows, and the lowing of the cattle, slowly 
 gathering towards the nearest shelter within their appointed 
 boundaries, confirmed the inauspicious omen. Clarence had 
 passed the town of W , and was entering into a road singu- 
 larly hilly, when he " was aware," as the quaint old writers of 
 former days expressed themselves, of a tall stranger, mounted 
 on a neat, well trimmed galloway, who had for the last two 
 minutes been advancing towards a closely parallel line with 
 Clarence, and had, by sundry glances and hems, denoted a 
 desire of commencing acquaintance and conversation with his 
 fellow traveller. 
 
 At last he summoned courage, and said, with a respectful, 
 though somewhat free, air, "That is a very fine horse of yours, 
 sir I have seldom seen so fast a walker: if all his other paces 
 are equally good, he must be quite a treasure." 
 
 All men have their vanities. Clarence's was as much in his 
 horse's excellences as his own ; and gratified even with the 
 compliment of a stranger, he replied to it by joining in the 
 praise, though with a modest and measured forbearance, which 
 the stranger, if gifted with penetration, could easily have dis- 
 cerned was more affected than sincere. 
 
 "And yet, sir," resumed Clarence's new companion, " my 
 little palfrey might perhaps keep pace with your steed ; look 
 I lay the rein on his neck and, you see, he rivals by heaven, 
 he outwalks yours ! " 
 
 Not a little piqued and incensed, Linden also relaxed his 
 rein, and urged his horse to a quicker step; but the lesser 
 competitor not only sustained, but increased his superiority ; 
 and it was only by breaking into a trot that Linden's impatient 
 and spirited steed could overtake him. Hitherto Clarence had 
 not honored his hew companion with more than a rapid and 
 slight glance ; but rivalry, even in trifles, begets respect, and 
 our defeated hero now examined him with a more curious eye. 
 
 The stranger was between forty and fifty an age in which, 
 generally, very little of the boy has survived the advance of 
 manhood ; yet there was a hearty and frank exhilaration in the 
 manner and look of the person we describe which is rarely 
 found beyond the first stage of youth. His features were
 
 3 12 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 comely and clearly cut, and his air and appearance indicative 
 of a man who might equally have belonged to the middle or 
 the upper orders. But Clarence's memory, as well as attention, 
 was employed in his survey of the stranger ; and he recognized, 
 in a countenance on which time had passed very lightly, an 
 old and oft-times recalled acquaintance. However, he did not 
 immediately make himself known. " I will first see," thought 
 he, " whether he can remember his young guest in the bronzed 
 stranger, after eight years' absence." 
 
 "Well," said Clarence, as he approached the owner of the 
 palfrey, who was laughing with childish glee at his conquest 
 " well, you have won, sir : but the tortoise might beat the hare 
 in walking, and I content myself with thinking that at a trot or 
 a gallop the result of a race would have been very different." 
 
 " I am not so sure of that, sir," said the sturdy stranger, 
 patting the arched neck of his little favorite; "if you would 
 like to try either, I should have no objection to venture a 
 trifling wager on the event." 
 
 "You are very good," said Clarence, with a smile in which 
 urbanity was a little mingled with contemptuous incredulity ; 
 " but I am not now at leisure to win your money : I have a long 
 day's journey before me, and must not tire a faithful servant ; yet 
 I do candidly confess that I think" (and Clarence's recollection 
 of the person he addressed made him introduce the quotation), 
 " that my horse 
 
 ' Excels a common one 
 In shape, in courage, color, pace, and bone.' " 
 
 "Eh, sir," cried our stranger, as his eyes sparkled at the 
 verses : " I would own that your horse were worth all the 
 horses in the kingdom, if you brought Will Shakspeare to 
 prove it. And I am also willing to confess that your steed does 
 fairly merit the splendid praise which follows the lines you 
 have quoted : 
 
 ' Round hoofed, short jointed, fetlocks shag and long, 
 Broad breast, full eyes, small head, and nostril wide, 
 High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong, 
 Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttock, tender hide.' " 
 
 w Come," said Clarence, " your memory has atoned for your 
 horse's victory, and I quite forgive your conquest, in return 
 for your compliment ; but suffer me to ask how long you have 
 commenced cavalier. The Arab's tent is, if I err not, more a 
 badge of your profession than the Arab's steed. " 
 
 King Cole (for the stranger was no less a person) looked at
 
 THE DISOWNED. 313 
 
 his companion in surprise. "So, you know me, then, sir 
 Well^ it is a hard thing for a man to turn honest, when people 
 have so much readier a recollection of his sins than his 
 reform." 
 
 " Reform ! " quoth Clarence, " am I then to understand that 
 your majesty has abdicated your dominions under the green- 
 wood tree ? " 
 
 "You are," said Cole, eyeing his acquaintance inquisitively; 
 "you are. 
 
 " ' I fear no more the heat of the sun 
 Nor the furious winter's rages ; 
 I my worldly task have done, 
 
 Home am gone and ta'en my wages." " 
 
 " I congratulate you," said Clarence ; " but only in part 
 for I have often envied your past state, and do not know 
 enough of your present to say whether I should equally envy 
 that." 
 
 " Why," answered Cole, " after all, we commit a great error 
 in imagining that it is the living wood or the dead wall which 
 makes happiness. ' My mind to me a kingdom is ' and it is 
 that which you must envy, if you honor anything belonging to 
 me with that feeling." 
 
 " The precept is both good and old," answered Clarence ; 
 "yet I think it was not a very favorite maxim of yours some 
 years ago. I remember a time when you thought no happi- 
 ness could exist out of ' dingle and bosky dell.' If not very 
 intrusive on your secrets, may I know how long you have 
 changed your sentiments and manner of life ! The reason of 
 the change I dare not presume to ask." 
 
 " Certainly," said the quondam gypsy, musingly " certainly 
 I have seen your face before, and even the tone of your voice 
 strikes me as not wholly unfamiliar ; yet I cannot, for the life 
 of me, guess whom I have the honor of addressing. However, 
 sir, I have no hesitation in answering your questions. It was 
 just five years ago, last summer, when I left the Tents of Ke- 
 dar. I now reside about a mile hence. It is but a hundred 
 yards off the high road, and if you would not object to step 
 aside and suffer a rasher, or aught else, to be ' the shoeing- 
 horn to draw on a cup of ale,' as our plain forefathers were 
 wont wittily to say, why, I shall be very happy to show you my 
 habitation. You will have a double welcome, from the cir- 
 cumstance of my having been absent from home for the last 
 three days." 
 
 Clarence, mindful of his journey, was about to decline the
 
 314 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 invitation, when a few heavy drops falling, began to fulfil the 
 cloudy promise of the morning. " Trust," said Cole, "one 
 who has been for years a watcher of the signs and menaces of 
 the weather we shall have a violent shower immediately. 
 You have now no choice but to accompany me home." 
 
 "Well," said Clarence, yielding with a good grace, " I am 
 glad of so good an excuse for intruding on your hospitality ; 
 
 " 'O sky ! 
 
 Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day, 
 And make me travel forth without my cloak ! ' " 
 
 " Bravo ! " cried the ex-chief, too delighted to find a com- 
 rade so well acquainted with Shakspeare's sonnets, to heed 
 the little injustice Clarence had done the sky, in accusing it of 
 a treachery its black clouds had by no means deserved. 
 " Bravo, sir ; and now, my palfrey against your steed trot 
 eh or gallop ? " 
 
 " Trot, if it must be so," said Clarence superciliously ; "but 
 I am a few paces before you." 
 
 " So much the better," cried the jovial chief. " Little John's 
 mettle will be the more up on with you, sir he who breaks 
 into a canter loses on ! " 
 
 And Clarence slightly touching his beautiful steed, the race 
 was begun. At first his horse, which was a remarkable stepper, 
 as the modern Messrs. Anderson and Dyson would say, greatly 
 gained the advantage. " To the right," cried the ci-devant 
 gypsy, as Linden had nearly passed a narrow lane which led to 
 the domain of the ex-king. The turn gave " Little John " an 
 opportunity which he seized to advantage ; and, to Clarence's 
 indignant surprise, he beheld Cole no\v close behind now be- 
 side and now now before ! In the heat of the moment he 
 put spurs rather too sharply to his horse, and the spirited ani- 
 mal immediately passed his competitor but in a canter ! 
 
 "Victoria," cried Cole, keeping back his own steed "Vic- 
 toriaconfess it ! " 
 
 "Pshaw," said Clarence, petulantly. 
 
 " Nay, sir, never mind it," quoth the retired sovereign ; 
 "perhaps it was but a venial transgression of your horse and 
 on other ground I should not have beat you." 
 
 It is very easy to be generous when one is quite sure one is 
 the victor. Clarence felt this, and, muttering out something 
 about the sharp angle in the road, turned abruptly from all 
 farther comment on the subject by saying, "We are now, I 
 suppose, entering your territory. Does not this white gate 
 lead to your new (at least new to me) abode ? "
 
 THE DISOWNED. 315 
 
 "It does," said Cole, opening the said gate, and pausing as 
 if to suffer his guest and rival to look around and admire. 
 
 The house, in full view, was of red brick, small and square, 
 faced with stone copings, and adorned in the centre with a 
 gable roof, on which was a ball of glittering metal. A flight of 
 stone steps led to the porch, which was of fair size and stately, 
 considering the proportions of the mansion over the door was 
 a stone shield of arms, surmounted by a stag's head ; and 
 above this heraldic ornament was a window of great breadth, 
 compared to the other conveniences of a similar nature. On 
 either side of the house ran a slight iron fence, the protection 
 of sundry plots of gay flowers and garden shrubs, while two 
 peacocks were seen slowly stalking towards the enclosure to 
 seek a shelter from the increasing shower. At the back of the 
 building, thick trees and a rising hill gave a meet defence from 
 the winds of winter ; and in front, a sloping and small lawn 
 afforded pasture for a few sheep, and two pet deer. Towards 
 the end of this lawn were two large fishponds, shaded by rows 
 of feathered trees. On the margin of each of these, as if em- 
 blematic of ancient customs, was a common tent ; and in the 
 intermediate space was a rustic pleasure-house, fenced from 
 the encroaching cattle, and half hid by surrounding laurel, and 
 the parasite ivy. 
 
 All together there was a quiet and old-fashioned comfort, and 
 even luxury, about the place, which suited well with the eccen- 
 tric character of the abdicated chief ; and Clarence, as he gazed 
 around, really felt that he might, perhaps, deem the last state of 
 the owner not worse than the first. 
 
 Unmindful of the rain, which now began to pour fast and full, 
 Cole suffered " Little John's " rein to fall over his neck, and the 
 spoiled favorite to pluck the smooth grass beneath, while he 
 pointed out to Clarence the various beauties of his seat. 
 
 "There, sir," said he, "by those ponds in which, I assure 
 you, old Isaac might have fished with delight, I pass many a 
 summer's day. I was always a lover of the angle, and the far- 
 thest pool is the most beautiful bathing place imaginable ; as 
 Geoffrey Chaucer says : 
 
 ' The gravel's gold ; the water pure as glass, 
 The bankes round the well environing ; 
 And softe as velvet the younge grass 
 That thereupon lustily come springing.' 
 
 " And in that arbor, Lucy that is, my wife sits in the sum- 
 mer evenings with her father and our children ; and then ah ! 
 gee our pets come to welcome me " pointing to the deer, who
 
 316 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 had advanced within a few yards of him, but intimidated by the 
 stranger, would not venture within reach "Lucy loved choos- 
 ing her favorites among animals which had formerly been wild, 
 and faith I loved it too. But you observe the house, sir it was 
 built in the reign of Queen Anne : it belonged to my mother's 
 family, but my father sold it, and his son five years ago re- 
 bought it. Those arms belong to my maternal ancestry. Look 
 look at the peacocks creeping along poor pride theirs that 
 can't stand the shower ! But, egad, that reminds me of the 
 rain. Come, sir, let us make for shelter." And, resuming their 
 progress, a minute more brought them to the old-fashioned 
 porch. Cole's ring summoned a man, not decked in "livery 
 gay," but, " clad in serving frock," who took the horses with a 
 nod, half familiar, half respectful, at his master's injunctions of 
 attention and hospitality to the stranger's beast ; and then our 
 old acquaintance, striking through a small, low hall, ushered 
 Clarence into the chief sitting-room of the mansion. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIV. 
 
 " We are not poor ; although we have 
 No roofs of cedar, nor our brave 
 
 Baise, nor keep 
 Account of such a flock of sheep, 
 
 Nor bullocks fed 
 
 To lard the shambles ; barbies bred 
 To kiss our hands ; nor do we wish 
 For Pollio's lampries in our dish. 
 
 " If we can meet and so confer 
 Both by a shining salt-cellar, 
 
 And have our roof, 
 Although not arch'd, yet weather-proof : 
 
 And ceiling free 
 
 From that cheap candle-bawdery ; 
 We'll eat our bean with that full mirth 
 As we were lords of all the earth." 
 
 HERRICK, from HORACE. 
 
 ON entering the room, Clarence recognized Lucy, whom eight 
 years had converted into a sleek and portly matron of about 
 thirty two, without stealing from her countenance its original 
 expression of mingled modesty and good nature. She hastened 
 to meet her husband, with an eager and joyous air of welcome 
 seldom seen on matrimonial faces after so many years of 
 wedlock.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 317 
 
 A fine stout boy, of about eleven years old, left a cross-bow, 
 which, on his father's entrance, he had appeared earnestly em- 
 ployed in mending, to share with his mother the salutations of 
 the Returned. An old man sate in an armchair by the fire, 
 gazing on the three with an affectionate and gladdening eye, 
 and playfully detaining a child of about four years old, who was 
 struggling to escape to dear "papa !" 
 
 The room was of oak wainscot, and the furniture plain, solid, 
 and strong, and cast in the fashion still frequently found in 
 those country houses which have remained unaltered by inno- 
 vation since the days of George II. 
 
 Three rough-coated dogs, of a breed that would have puzzled 
 a connoisseur, gave themselves the rousing shake, and, desert- 
 ing the luxurious hearth, came in various welcome to their mas- 
 ter. One rubbed himself against Cole's sturdy legs, murmur- 
 ing soft rejoicings : he was the grandsire of the canine race, 
 and his wick of life burnt low in the socket. Another sprung 
 up, almost to the face of his master, and yelled his very heart 
 out with joy : that was the son, exulting in the vigor of ma- 
 tured doghood! and the third scrambled and tumbled over the 
 others, uttering his paeans in a shrill treble, and chiding most 
 snappishly at his two progenitors for interfering with his preten- 
 sions to notice: that was the infant dog, the little reveller in puppy 
 childishness ! Clarence stood by the door, with his fine counte- 
 nance smiling benevolently at the happiness he beheld, and con- 
 gratulating himself that for one moment, the group had forgot 
 that he was a stranger. 
 
 As soon as our gypsy friend had kissed his wife, shaken hands 
 with his eldest hope, shaken his head at his youngest, smiled his 
 salutation at the father-in-law, and patted into silence the ca- 
 nine claimants of his favor, he turned to Clarence, and saying, 
 half bashfully, half good-humoredly, " See what a troublesome 
 thing it is to return home, even after three days' absence. Lucy, 
 dearest, welcome a new friend ! " he placed a chair by the fire- 
 side for his guest, and motioned him to be seated. 
 
 The chief expression of Clarence's open and bold counte- 
 nance was centred in the eyes and forehead ; and as he now 
 doffed his hat, which had hitherto concealed that expression, 
 Lucy and her husband recognized him simultaneously. 
 
 "I am sure, sir," cried the former, "that I am glad to see 
 you once more ! " 
 
 " Ah ! my young guest under the gypsy-awning ! " exclaimed 
 the latter, shaking him heartily by the hand : "where were my 
 eyes, that they did not recognize you before ? "
 
 318 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 "Eight years," answered Clarence, "have worked more 
 change with me and my friend here " (pointing to the boy 
 whom he had left last so mere a child), "than they have with 
 you and his blooming mother. The wonder is, not that you 
 did not remember me before, but that you remember me now ! " 
 
 " You are altered, sir, certainly," said the frank chief. " Your 
 face is thinner, and far graver : and the smooth cheeks of the 
 boy (for, craving your pardon, you were little more then) are 
 somewhat darkened by the bronzed complexion with which time 
 honors the man." 
 
 And the good Cole sighed, as he contrasted Linden's ardent 
 countenance and elastic figure, when he had last beheld him, 
 with the serious and thoughtful face of the person now before 
 him : yet did he inly own that years, if they had in some things 
 deteriorated from, had in others improved, the effect of Clar- 
 ence's appearance: they had brought decision to his mien, and 
 command to his brow, and had enlarged, to an ampler meas- 
 ure of dignity and power the proportions of his form. Some- 
 thing too there was in his look, like that of a man who had 
 stemmed fate, and won success ; and the omen of future 
 triumph, which our fortune-telling chief had drawn from his 
 features when first beheld, seemed already, in no small degree, 
 to have been fulfilled. 
 
 Having seen her guest stationed in the seat of honor oppo- 
 site her father, Lucy withdrew for a few moments, and when she 
 reappeared, was followed by a neat-handed sort of Phillis for a 
 country-maiden, bearing such kind of " savory messes " as the 
 house might be supposed to afford. 
 
 "At all events, mine host," said Clarence, "you did not de- 
 sert the flesh-pots of Egypt when you forsook its tents." 
 
 " Nay," quoth the worthy Cole, seating himself at the table, 
 "either under the roof or the awning, we may say in the words 
 of the old epilogue: * 
 
 ' We can but bring you meat and set you stools, 
 And to our best cheer say, You all are welcome.' 
 
 We are plain people still ; but if you can stay till dinner, you 
 shall have a bottle of such wine as our fathers' honest souls 
 would have rejoiced in." 
 
 "I am truly sorry that I cannot tarry with you, after so fair 
 a promise," replied Clarence ; " but before night I must be 
 many miles hence." 
 
 Lucy came forward timidly. "Do you remember this ring, 
 
 * To the play of " AH Fools," by Chapman.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 319 
 
 sir ? " said she (presenting one), " you dropt it in my boy's 
 frock, when we saw you last." 
 
 "I did so," answered Clarence. " I trust that he will not now 
 disdain a stranger's offering May it be as ominous of good 
 luck to him as my night in your caravan has proved to me." 
 
 "I am heartily glad to hear that you have prospered," said 
 Cole " now, let us fall to." 
 
 CHAPTER LXV. 
 
 " Out of these convertites 
 There is much matter to be heard and learned." SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 " IF you are bent upon leaving us so soon, "said the honest Cole, 
 as Clarence, refusing all farther solicitation to stay, seized the 
 opportunity which the cessation of the rain afforded him, and 
 rose to depart : "if you are bent upon leaving us so soon, I 
 will accompany you back again into the main road, as in duty 
 bound." 
 
 "What, immediately on your return ? " said Clarence "no, 
 no not a step. What would my fair hostess say to me if I 
 suffered it ? " 
 
 " Rather what would she say to me if I neglected such a 
 courtesy? Why, sir, when I meet one who knows Shakspeare's 
 sonnets, to say nothing of the lights of the lesser stars, as well 
 as you, only once in eight years, do you not think I would make 
 the most of him? Besides, it is but a quarter of a mile to 
 the road, and I love walking after a shower." 
 
 "I am afraid, Mrs. Cole," said Clarence, "that I must be sel- 
 fish enough to accept the offer." And Mrs. Cole blushing and 
 smiling her assent and adieu, Clarence shook hands with the 
 whole party, grandfather and child included, and took his de- 
 parture. 
 
 As Cole was now a pedestrian, Linden threw the rein over 
 his arm, and walked on foot by his host's side. 
 
 " So," said he, smiling, "I must not inquire into the reasons 
 of your retirement ? " 
 
 ''On the contrary," replied Cole; "I have walked with you 
 the more gladly from my desire of telling them to you, for we 
 all love to seem consistent, even in our chimeras. About six 
 years ago, I confess that I began to^wax a little weary of my 
 wandering life ; my child, in growing up, required playmates ;
 
 320 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 shall I own that I did not like him to find them among the 
 children of my own comrades? The old scamps were good 
 enough for me, but the young ones were a little too bad for my 
 son. Between you and me only be it said, my juvenile hope 
 was already a little corrupted. The dog Mini you remem- 
 ber Mini, sir, secretly taught him to filch as well as if he had 
 been a bantling of his own ; and, faith, our smaller goods and 
 chattels, especially of an edible nature, began to disappear, 
 with a rapidity and secrecy that our itinerant palace could very 
 ill sustain. Among us (i.e., gypsies) there is a law by which no 
 member of the gang may steal from another ; but my little 
 heaven-instructed youth would by no means abide by that dis- 
 tinction ; and so boldly designed and well executed were his 
 rogueries that my paternal anxiety saw nothing before him but 
 Botany Bay on the one hand, and Newgate Courtyard on the 
 other." 
 
 " A sad prospect for the heir apparent ! " quoth Clarence. 
 
 " It was so ! " answered Cole, " and it made me deliberate. 
 Then, as one gets older one's romance oozes out a little in 
 rheums and catarrhs. I began to perceive that, though I had 
 been bred, I had not been educated, as a gypsy ; and, what 
 was worse, Lucy, though she never complained, felt that the 
 walls of our palace were not exempt from the damps of winter, 
 nor our royal state from the Caliban curses of 
 
 ' Cramps and 
 Side stitches that do pen our breath up.' 
 
 She fell ill ; and during her illness I had sundry bright visions 
 of warm rooms and coal fires, a friend with whom I could 
 converse upon Chaucer, and a tutor for my son, who would 
 teach him other arts than those of picking pockets and pilfer- 
 ing larders. Nevertheless, I was a little ashamed of my own 
 thoughts ; and I do not know whether they would have been 
 yet put into practice, but for a trifling circumstance which con- 
 verted doubt and longing into certainty. 
 
 "Our crank cuffins had for some time looked upon me with 
 suspicion and coldness; my superior privileges and comforts they 
 had at first forgiven, on account of my birth and my gener- 
 osity to them ; but by degrees they lost respect for the one and 
 gratitude for the other ; and as I had in a great measure ceased 
 from participating in their adventures, or, during Lucy's ill- 
 ness, which lasted several months, joining in their festivities, 
 they at length considered me as a drone in a hive, by no means 
 compensating by my services as an ally for my admittance
 
 THE DISOWNED. 32! 
 
 into their horde as a stranger. You will easily conceive, when 
 this once became the state of their feelings towards me, with 
 how ill a temper they brooked the lordship of my stately cara- 
 van, and my assumption of superior command. Above all, the 
 women, who were very much incensed at Lucy's constant se- 
 clusion from their orgies, fanned the increasing discontent ; 
 and, at last, I verily believe that no eyesore could have been 
 more grievous to the Egyptians than my wooden habitation 
 and the smoke of its single chimney. 
 
 " From ill-will, the rascals proceeded to ill-acts ; and one 
 dark night, when we were encamped on the very same ground as 
 that which we occupied when we received you, three of them, 
 Mini at their head, attacked me in mine own habitation. I 
 verily believe, if they had mastered me, they would have 
 robbed and murdered us all except perhaps my son, whom 
 they thought I ill-used, by depriving him of Mini's instructive 
 society. Howbeit, I was still stirring when they invaded me, 
 and by the help of the poker, and a tolerably strong arm, I re- 
 pelled the assailants ; but that very night I passed from the 
 land of Egypt, and made with all possible expedition to the 
 nearest town, which was, as you may remember, W . 
 
 " Here the very next day, I learnt that the house I now in- 
 habit was to be sold. It had (as I before said) belonged to 
 my mother's family, and my father had sold it a little before 
 his death. It was the home from which I had been stolen, 
 and to which I had been returned : often in my star-lit wander- 
 ings had I flown to it in thought ; and now it seemed as if 
 Providence itself, in offering to my age the asylum I had above 
 all others coveted for it, was interested in my retirement from 
 the empire of an ungrateful people, and my atonement, in rest 
 for my past sins in migration. 
 
 "Well, sir, in short, I became the purchaser of the place you 
 have just seen, and I now think that, after all, there is more 
 happiness in reality than romance ; like the laverock, here will 
 I build my nest : 
 
 ' Here give my weary spirit rest, 
 And raise my low-pitched thoughts above 
 Earth, or what poor mortals love.' " 
 
 "And your son," said Clarence, "has he reformed?" 
 
 "Oh, yes," answered Cole. "For my part I believe the 
 
 mind is less evil than people say it is ; its great characteristic 
 
 is imitation, and it will imitate the good as well as the bad, if 
 
 we will set the example* I thank Heaven, sir, that my boy
 
 322 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 now might go from Dan to Beersheba, and not filch a groat by 
 the way." 
 
 "What do you intend him for?" said Clarence 
 
 "Why, he loves adventure, and, faith, I can't break him of 
 that, for I love it, too, so I think I shall get him a commission 
 in the army, in order to give him a fitting and legitimate 
 sphere wherein to indulge his propensities." 
 
 "You could not do better," said Clarence. "But your fine 
 sister, what says she to your amendment?" 
 
 " Oh ! she wrote me along letter of congratulation upon it ; 
 and every other summer, she is graciously pleased to pay me a 
 visit of three months long ; at which time, I observe, that poor 
 Lucy is unusually smart and uncomfortable. We sit in the 
 best room, and turn out the dogs ; my father-in-law smokes his 
 pipe in the arbor, instead of the drawing-room ; and I receive 
 sundry hints, all in vain-, on the propriety of dressing for 
 dinner. In return for these attentions on our part, my sister 
 invariably brings my boy a present of a pair of white gloves, 
 and my wife a French ribbon of the newest pattern ; in the 
 evening, instead of my reading Shakspeare, she tells us anec- 
 dotes of high life, and, when she goes away, she gives us, in 
 return for our hospitality, a very general and very gingerly in- 
 vitation to her house. Lucy sometimes talks to me about 
 accepting it ; but I turn a deaf ear to all such overtures, and 
 so we continue much better friends than we should be if we 
 saw more of each other." 
 
 "And how long has your father-in-law been with you ?" 
 
 "Ever since we have been here. He gave up his farm, and 
 cultivates mine for me ; for I know nothing of those 
 agricultural matters. I made his coming a little surprise, in 
 order to please Lucy ; you should have witnessed their meet- 
 ing." 
 
 " I think I have now learned all particulars," said Clarence ; 
 "it only remains for me to congratulate you ; but are you, in 
 truth, never tired of the monotony and sameness of domestic 
 life?" 
 
 "Yes! and then I do, as I have just done saddle Little 
 John, and go on an excursion of three or four days, or even 
 weeks, just as the whim seizes me ; for I never return till I 
 am driven back by the yearning for home, and the feeling 
 that, after all one's wanderings, there is no place like it 
 Whether in private life, or public, sir, in parting with a little 
 of one's liberty one gets a great deal of comfort in exchange." 
 
 " I thank you truly for your frankness," said Clarence ; " it
 
 THE DISOWNED. 323 
 
 has solved many doubts with respect to you, that have often 
 occurred to me. And now we are in the main road, and I 
 must bid you farewell ; we part, but our paths lead to the same 
 object you return to happiness, and I seek it." 
 
 " May you find it, and / not lose it, sir," said the wanderer 
 reclaimed ; and shaking hands, the pair parted. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVI. 
 
 " Quicquid agit Rufus, nihil est, nisi Naevia Rufo, 
 Si gaudet, si flet, si tacet, hanc, loquitur ; 
 Ccenat, propinat, poscit, negat, annuit, una est 
 Naevia ; si non sit Nsevia, mutus erit. 
 Scriberet hesterna patri cum luce salutem 
 Nsevia lux, inquit, Nsevia numen, ave."* MART. 
 
 "THE last time," said Clarence to himself, "that I travelled 
 this road, on exactly the same errand that I travel now, I do 
 remember that I was honored by the company of one, in all 
 respects the opposite to mine honest host ; for, whereas in the 
 latter there is a luxuriant and wild eccentricity, an open and 
 blunt simplicity, and a shrewd sense, which looks not after 
 pence, but peace ; so in the mind of the friend of the late Lady 
 Waddilove, there was a flat and wedged-in primness and nar- 
 rowness of thought an enclosure of bargains and profits of 
 all species, mustard-pots, rings, monkeys, chains, jars, and 
 plum-colored velvet inexpressibles, his ideas, with the true al- 
 chemy of trade, turned them all into gold ; yet was he also as 
 shrewd and acute as he with whose character he contrasts 
 equally with him seeking comfort and gladness, and an asylum 
 for his old age. Strange that all tempers should have a com- 
 mon object, and never a common road to it. But, since I have 
 begun the contrast, let me hope that it may be extended in its 
 omen unto me ; let me hope that, as my encountering with the 
 mercantile Brown brought me ill-luck in my enterprise, there- 
 by signifying the crosses and vexations of those who labor in 
 the cheateries and over-reachings which constitute the vocation 
 of the world ; so my meeting with the philosophical Cole, who 
 has, both in vagrancy and rest, found cause to boast of happi- 
 ness, authorities from his studies to favor his inclination to 
 
 Whatever Rufus does is nothing, except Nasvia be at his elbow. Be he joyful or 
 sorrowful, be he even silent, he is still harping upon her. He eats, he drinks, he asks, he 
 denies, he assents. Nsevia is his sole theme; no Nsevia, and he's dumb. Yesterday at 
 daybreak, he would fain write a letter of salutation to his father ; " Hail, Nsevia, light f 
 my eyes," quoth he ; " hail, N.-evia, my divine one."
 
 324 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 each, and reason to despise what he, with Sir Kenelm Digby, 
 would wisely call, 
 
 ' The fading blossoms of the earth ' ; 
 
 so my meeting with him may prove a token of good speed to 
 mine errand, and thereby denote prosperity to one who 
 seeks not riches, nor honor, nor the conquest of knaves, nor 
 the good word of fools, but happy love, and the bourne of its 
 quiet home." 
 
 Thus, half meditating, half moralizing, and drawing, like a 
 true lover, an omen of fear or hope from occurrences in which 
 plain reason could have perceived neither type nor token, Clar- 
 ence continued, and concluded, his day's journey. He put up 
 at the same little inn he had visited three years ago, and 
 watched his opportunity of seeing Lady Flora alone. More 
 fortunate in that respect, than he had been before, such oppor- 
 tunity the very next day presented to him. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVII. 
 
 Duke. Sir Valentine I 
 
 Thur. Yonder is Silvia, and Silvia's mine. 
 
 Val. Thurio, give back. 7^ Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 
 " I THINK mamma," said Lady Flora to her mother," that, as 
 the morning is so beautiful, I will go into the pavilion to finish 
 my drawing." 
 
 " But Lord Ulswater will be here in an hour, or perhaps 
 less may I tell him where you are, and suffer him to join 
 you." 
 
 " If you will accompany him," answered Lady Flora coldly, 
 as she took up her portefenille and withdrew. 
 
 Now the pavilion was a small summer-house of stone, situa- 
 ted in the most retired part of the grounds belonging to West- 
 borough Park. It was a favorite retreat with Lady Flora, even 
 in the winter months, for warm carpeting, a sheltered site, and 
 a fireplace, constructed more for comfort than economy, made 
 it scarcely less adapted to that season than to the more genial 
 suns of summer. 
 
 The morning was so bright and mild that Lady Flora left 
 open the door as she entered ; she seated herself at the table, 
 and, unmindful of her pretended employment, suffered the 
 portefenille to remain unopened. Leaning her check upon her
 
 THE DISOWNED. 325 
 
 hand, she gazed vacantly on the ground, and scarcely felt the 
 tears which gathered slowly to her eyes, but, falling not, re- 
 mained within the fair lids, chill and motionless, as if the 
 thought which drew them there was born of a sorrow less agi- 
 tated than fixed and silent. 
 
 The shadow of a man darkened the threshold, and there 
 paused. 
 
 Slowly did Flora raise her eyes, and the next moment Clar- 
 ence Linden was by her side, and at her feet. 
 
 " Flora," said he, in a tone trembling with its own emotions 
 " Flora, have years indeed separated us forever or dare I 
 hope that we have misconstrued each other's hearts, and that 
 at this moment they yearn to be united with more than the 
 fondness and fidelity of old ? Speak to me, Flora, one word." 
 
 But she had sunk on the chair overpowered, surprised, and 
 almost insensible ; and it was not for some moments that she 
 could utter words, rather rung from, than dictated by, her 
 thoughts. 
 
 " Cruel and insulting for what have you come ? is it at 
 such a time that you taunt me with the remembrance of my 
 past folly, or your your," (she paused for a moment, confused 
 and hesitating, but presently recovering herself, rose and added, 
 in a calmer tone) " Surely, you have no excuse for this intru- 
 sion you will suffer me to leave you." 
 
 "No!" exclaimed Clarence, violently agitated "no! 
 Have you not wronged me, stung me, wounded me to the core 
 by your injustice ! and will you not hear now how differently 
 I have deserved from you ? On a bed of fever and pain I 
 thought only of you ; I rose from it animated by the hope of 
 winning you ! Though, during the danger of my wound, and 
 my consequent illness, your parents alone, of all my intimate 
 acquaintances, neglected to honor with an inquiry the man 
 whom you professed to consecrate with your regard, yet scarce- 
 ly could my hand trace a single sentence before I wrote to you 
 requesting an interview, in order to disclose my birth, and 
 claim your plighted faith ! That letter was returned to me un- 
 answered, unopened. My friend and benefactor, whose for- 
 tune I now inherit, promised to call upon your father and ad- 
 vocate my cause. Death anticipated his kindness. As soon as 
 my sorrow for his loss permitted me, I came to this very spot. 
 For three days I hovered about your house, seeking the meet- 
 ing that you would fain deny me now. I could not any longer 
 bear the torturing suspense I endured 1 wrote to you your 
 father answered the letter. Here here I have it still : read !
 
 326 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 note well the cool, the damning insult of each line ! I see that 
 you knew not of this : I rejoice at it ! Can you wonder that, 
 on receiving it, I subjected myself no more to such affronts? 
 I hastened abroad. On my return I met you ! Where ? In 
 crowds in the glitter of midnight assemblies in the whirl of 
 what the vain call pleasure ! I observed your countenance, 
 your manner ; was there in either a single token of endearing 
 or regretful remembrance ? None ! I strove to harden my 
 heart ; I entered into politics, business, intrigue I hoped, I 
 longed, I burned to forget you, but in vain ! 
 
 " At last I heard that Rumor, though it had long preceded, 
 had not belied, the truth, and that you were to be married 
 married to Lord Ulswater ! I will not say what I suffered, or 
 how idly I summoned pride to resist affection ! But I would 
 not have come now to molest you, Flora to trouble your nup- 
 tial rejoicings with one thought of me, if, forgive me, I had 
 not suddenly dreamt that I had cause to hope you had mis- 
 taken, not rejected, my heart ; that you turn away, Flora ! 
 you blush ! you weep ! Oh, tell me, by one word, one look, 
 that I was not deceived ! " 
 
 "No, no, Clarence," said Flora, struggling with her tears; 
 "it is too late, too late now ! Why, why did I not know this 
 before? I have promised, I am pledged? in less than two 
 months I shall be the wife of another ! " 
 
 "Never," cried Clarence, "never! You promised on a false 
 belief ; they will not bind you to such a promise. Who is he 
 that claims you ? I am his equal in birth in the world's 
 name and oh, by what worlds his superior in love ! I will 
 advance my claim to you in his very teeth nay, I will not stir 
 from these domains till you, your father, and my rival, have 
 repaired my wrongs." 
 
 "Be it so, sir!" cried a voice behind, and Clarence turned 
 and beheld Lord Ulswater ! His dark countenance was flushed 
 with rage, which he in vain endeavored to conceal ; and the 
 smile of scorn that he strove to summon to his lip made a 
 ghastly and unnatural contrast with the lowering of his brow, 
 and the fire of his eyes "Be it so, sir," he said, slowly ad- 
 vancing, and confronting Clarence. "You will dispute my 
 claims to the hand Lady Flora Ardenne has long promised to 
 one who, however unworthy of the gift, knows, at least, how 
 to defend it. It is well ; let us finish the dispute elsewhere. It 
 is not the first time we shall have met, if not as rivals, as foes." 
 
 Clarence turned from him without reply, for he saw Lady 
 Westborough had just entered the pavilion, and stood mute
 
 THE DISOWNED. 327 
 
 And transfixed at the door, with surprise, fear, and anger de- 
 picted upon her regal and beautiful countenance. 
 
 "It is to you, madam," said Clarence, approaching towards 
 her, " that I venture to appeal. Your daughter and I, four 
 long years ago, exchanged our vows ; you flattered me with 
 the hope that those vows were not displeasing to you ; since 
 then, a misunderstanding, deadly to my happiness and to hers, 
 divided us. I come now to explain it. My birth may have 
 seemed obscure; I come to clear it: my conduct doubtful; I 
 come to vindicate it. I find Lord Ulswater my rival. I am 
 willing to compare my pretensions to his. I acknowledge that 
 he has titles which I have not, that he has wealth, to which 
 mine is but competence but titles and wealth, as the means 
 of happiness, are to be referred to your daughter, to none else. 
 You have only, in an alliance with me, to consider my char- 
 acter and my lineage : the latter flows from blood as pure as 
 that which warms the veins of rny rival ; the former stands 
 already upon an eminence to which Lord Ulswater, in his 
 loftiest visions, could never aspire. For the rest, madam, I 
 adjure you, solemnly, as you value your peace of mind, your 
 daughter's happiness, your freedom from the agonies of future 
 remorse, and unavailing regret I adjure you not to divorce 
 those whom God, who speaks in the deep heart, and the 
 plighted vow, has already joined. This is a question in which 
 your daughter's permanent woe or lasting happiness, from this 
 present hour to the last sand of life, is concerned. It is to 
 her that I refer it let her be the judge." 
 
 And Clarence moved from Lady Westborough, who, agi- 
 tated, confused, awed by the spell of a power and a nature of 
 which she had not dreamed, stood pale and speechless, vainly 
 endeavoring to reply he moved from her towards Lord Flora, 
 who leant, sobbing and convulsed with contending emotions, 
 against the wall : but Lord Ulswater, whose fiery blood was 
 boiling with passion, placed himself between Clarence and the 
 unfortunate object of the contention. 
 
 "Touch her not, approach her not !" he said, with a fierce 
 and menacing tone. "Till you have proved your pretensions 
 superior to mine, unknown, presuming, and probably base-born, 
 as you are, you will only pass over my body to your claims." 
 
 Clarence stood still for one moment, evidently striving to 
 master the wrath which literally swelled his form beyond its 
 ordinary proportions ; and Lady Westborough, recovering her- 
 self in the brief pause, passed between the two, and, taking 
 her daughter's arm, led her from the pavilion.
 
 328 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " Stay, madam, for one instant ! " cried Clarence, and he 
 caught hold of her robe. 
 
 Lady Westborough stood quite erect and still, and drawing 
 her stately figure to its full height, said with that quiet dignity 
 by which a woman so often stills the angrier passions of men, 
 " I lay the prayer and command of a mother upon you, Lord 
 Ulswater, and on you, sir, whatever be your real rank and 
 name, not to make mine and my daughter's presence the scene 
 of a contest which dishonors both. Still farther, if Lady 
 Flora's hand and my approval be an object of desire to either, 
 I make it a peremptory condition, with both of you, that a 
 dispute already degrading to her name pass not from word to 
 act. For you, Mr. Linden, if so I may call you, I promise 
 that my daughter shall be left free and unbiased to give 
 that reply to your singular -conduct which I doubt not her 
 own dignity and sense will suggest ! " 
 
 "By Heaven!" exclaimed Lord Ulswater, utterly beside 
 himself with rage which, suppressed at the beginning of Lady 
 Westborough's speech, had been kindled into double fury by 
 its conclusion, " you will not suffer Lady Flora, no, nor any 
 one but her affianced bridegroom, her only legitimate defender, 
 to answer this arrogant intruder ! You cannot think that her 
 hand, the hand of my future wife, shall trace line or word to 
 one who has so insulted her with his addresses arid me with 
 his rivalry." 
 
 " Man ! " cried Clarence, abruptly, and seizing Lord Ulswater 
 fiercely by the arm, " there are some causes which will draw 
 fire from ice beware beware how you incense me to pollute 
 my soul with the blood of a " 
 
 "What ! " exclaimed Lord Ulswater. 
 
 Clarence bent down and whispered one word in his ear. 
 
 Had that word been the spell with which the sorcerers of old 
 disarmed the fiend, it could not have wrought a greater change 
 upon Lord Ulswater's mien and face. He staggered back sev- 
 eral paces ; the glow of his swarthy cheek faded into a death- 
 like paleness ; the word which passion had conjured to his 
 tongue died there in silence ; and he stood with eyes dilated 
 and fixed on Clarence's face, on which their gaze seemed to 
 force some unwilling certainty. 
 
 But Linden did not wait for him to recover his self-posses- 
 sion ; he hurried after Lady Westborough, who, with her 
 daughter, was hastening home. 
 
 " Pardon me, Lady Westborough," he said (as he approached), 
 with a tone and air of deep respect, "pardon me but will
 
 THE DISOWNED. 329 
 
 you suffer me to hope that Lady Flora and yourself will, in a 
 moment of greater calmness, consider over all I have said ! 
 and that she that you, Lady Flora (added he, changing the 
 object of his address), will vouchsafe one line of unprejudiced, 
 unbiased reply, to a love which, however misrepresented and 
 calumniated, has in it, I dare to say, nothing that can disgrace 
 her to whom, with an enduring constancy, and undimmed, 
 though unhoping, ardor, it has been inviolably dedicated." 
 
 Lady Flora, though she spoke not, lifted her eyes to his, and 
 in that glance was a magic which made his heart burn with a 
 sudden and flashing joy that atoned for the darkness of years. 
 
 "I assure you, sir," said Lady Westborough, touched, in spite 
 of herself, with the sincerity and respect of Clarence's bearing, 
 " that Lady Flora will reply to any letter of explanation or pro- 
 posal ; for myself, I will not even see her answer. Where shall 
 it be sent to you?" 
 
 " I have taken my lodgings at the inn, by your park gates. 
 I shall remain there till till " 
 
 Clarence paused, for his heart was full ; and, leaving the 
 sentence to be concluded as his listeners pleased, he drew him- 
 self aside from their path, and suffered them to proceed. 
 
 As he was feeding his eyes with the last glimpse of their 
 forms, ere a turn in the ground snatched them from his view, 
 he heard a rapid step behind, and Lord Ulswater, approaching, 
 laid his hand upon Linden's shoulder, and said calmly : 
 
 " Are you furnished with proof to support the word you ut- 
 tered ? " 
 
 ' I am ! " replied Clarence haughtily. 
 
 'And will you favor me with it?" 
 
 ' At your leisure, my lord," rejoined Clarence. 
 
 ' Enough ! name your time, and I will attend you." 
 
 'On Tuesday : I require till then to produce my witnesses." 
 
 'So be it yet stay: on Tuesday I have military business at 
 
 W , some miles hence the next day let it be the place of 
 
 meeting where you please." 
 
 "Here, then, my lord," answered Clarence; "you have in- 
 sulted me grossly before Lady Westborough and your affianced 
 bride, and before them my vindication and answer should be 
 given." 
 
 "You are right," said Lord Ulswater; "be it here, at the 
 hour of twelve." Clarence bowed his assent, and withdrew. 
 
 Lord Ulswater remained on the spot, with downcast eyes, and 
 a brow on which thought had succeeded passion. 
 
 ''If true." said he aloud, though unconsciously, " if this be
 
 330 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 true, why then I owe him reparation, and he shall have it at 
 my hands. I owe it to him on my account, and that of one 
 now no more. Till we meet, I will not again see Lady Flora j 
 after that meeting perhaps I may resign her forever." 
 
 And with these words the young nobleman, who, in despite of 
 many evil and overbearing qualities, had, as we have said, his 
 redeeming virtues, in which a capricious and unsteady gene- 
 rosity was one, walked slowly to the house wrote a brief note 
 to Lady Westborough, the purport of which the next chapter 
 will disclose ; and then, summoning his horse, flung himself 
 on its back, and rode hastily away. 
 
 CHAPTER LXVIII. 
 
 * " We will examine if those accidents, 
 
 Which common fame call injuries, happen to him 
 Deservedly or no." 7'he New Inn. 
 
 FROM LORD ULSWATER TO LADY WESTBOROUGH. 
 
 " FORGIVE me, dearest Lady Westborough, for my violence 
 you know and will allow for the infirmities of my temper. I 
 have to make you and Lady Flora one request, which I trust 
 you will not refuse me. 
 
 " Do not see, or receive any communication from, Mr. Lin- 
 den till Wednesday; and on that day, at the hour of twelve, 
 suffer me to meet him at your house. I will then either prove 
 him to be the basest of impostors, or, if I fail in this, and Lady 
 Flora honors my rival with one sentiment of preference, I will, 
 without a murmur, submit to her decree and my rejection. 
 Dare I trust that this petition will be accorded to one who is, 
 with great regard and esteem, Etc., etc., etc." 
 
 " This is fortunate," said Lady Westborough gently to her 
 daughter, who, leaning her head on her mother's bosom, suffered 
 hopes, the sweeter for their long sleep, to divide, if not wholly 
 to possess, her heart. " We shall have now time well and care- 
 fully to reflect over what will be best for your future happiness. 
 We owe this delay to one to whom you have been affianced. 
 Let us, therefore, now merely write to Mr. Linden, to inform 
 him of Lord Ulswater's request ; and to say that if he will meet 
 his lordship at the time appointed, we, that is /, shall be happy 
 to see him."
 
 THE DISOWNED. 33! 
 
 Lady Flora sighed, but she saw the reasonableness of her 
 mother's proposal, and, pressing Lady Westborough's hand, 
 murmured her assent. 
 
 "At all events," thought Lady Westborough, as she wrote to 
 Clarence, "the affair can but terminate to advantage. If Lord 
 Ulswater proves Mr. Linden's unvvorthiness, the suit of the 
 latter is, of course, at rest for ever ; if not, and Mr. Linden be 
 indeed all that he asserts, my daughter's choice cannot be an 
 election of reproach ; Lord Ulswater promises peaceably to 
 withdraw his pretensions ; and though Mr. Linden may not 
 possess his rank or fortune, he is certainly one with whom, if of 
 ancient blood, any family would be proud of an alliance." 
 
 Blending with these reflections a considerable share of curi- 
 osity and interest in a secret which partook so strongly of ro- 
 mance, Lady Westborough dispatched her note to Clarence. 
 The answer returned was brief, respectful, and not only acqui- 
 escent in, but grateful for, the proposal. 
 
 With this arrangement both Lady Westborough and Lady 
 Flora were compelled, though with very different feelings, to be 
 satisfied ; and an agr -ement was established between them, to 
 the effect that if Linden's name passed unblemished through 
 the appointed ordeal, Lady Flora was to be left to, and favored 
 in, her own election ; while, on the contrary, if Lord Ulswater 
 succeeded in the proof he had spoken of, his former footing in 
 the family was to be fully re-established, and our unfortunate 
 adventurer forever discarded. 
 
 To this Lady Flora readily consented ; for with a sanguine 
 and certain trust in her lover's truth and honor, which was 
 tenfold more strong for her late suspicions, she would not allow 
 herself a doubt as to the result ; and with an impatience, 
 mingled with a rapturous exhilaration of spirit, which brought 
 back to her the freshness and radiancy of her youngest years, 
 she counted the hours and moments to the destined day. 
 
 While such was the state of affairs at Westborough Park, 
 Clarence was again on horseback, and on another excursion. 
 By the noon of the day following that which had seen his 
 eventful meeting with Lady Flora, he found himself approach- 
 ing the extreme boundaries of the county in which Mordaunt 
 
 Court, and the memorable town of W , were situated. The 
 
 characteristics of the country were now materially changed 
 from those which gave to the vicinity of Algernon's domains 
 its wild and uncultivated aspect. 
 
 As Clarence slowly descended a hill of considerable steep- 
 ness and length, a prospect of singular and luxurious beamy
 
 332 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 opened to his view. The noblest of England's rivers was seen 
 through "turfs and shades and flowers," pursuing "its silver- 
 winding way." On the opposite banks lay, embosomed in the 
 golden glades of autumn, the busy and populous town that 
 from the height seemed still and lifeless as an enchanted city, 
 over which the mid-day sun hung like a guardian spirit. Be- 
 hind, in sweeping diversity, stretched wood and dale, and fields 
 despoiled of their rich harvest, yet still presenting a yellow 
 surface to the eye ; and ever and anon some bright patch of 
 green, demanding the gaze as if by a lingering spell from the 
 past spring ; while, here and there, spire and hamlet studded 
 the landscape, or some lowly cot lay, backed by the rising 
 ground or the silent woods, white and solitary, and sending up 
 its faint tribute of smoke in spires to the altars of Heaven. 
 The river was more pregnant of life than its banks : barge and 
 boat were gliding gayly down the wave, and the glad oar of the 
 frequent and slender vessels consecrated to pleasure was seen 
 dimpling the water, made by distance smoother than glass. 
 
 On the right side of Clarence's road, as he descended the 
 hill, lay wide plantations of fir and oak, divided from the road 
 by a park paling, the uneven sides of which were covered with 
 brown moss, and which, at rare openings in the young wood, 
 gave glimpses of a park, seemingly extending over great space, 
 the theatre of many a stately copse and oaken grove, which 
 might have served the Druids with fane and temple meet for 
 the savage sublimity of their worship. 
 
 Upon these unfrequent views, Clarence checked his horse, 
 and gazed, with emotions sweet yet bitter, over the pales, along 
 the green expanse which they contained. And once, when 
 through the trees he caught a slight glimpse of the white walls 
 of the mansion they adorned, all the years of his childhood 
 seemed to rise on his heart, thrilling to its farthest depths 
 with a mighty and sorrowful, yet sweet, melody, and 
 
 " Singing of boyhood back the voices of his home." 
 
 Home ! yes, amidst those groves had the April of his life 
 lavished its mingled smiles and tears ! There was the spot 
 hallowed by his earliest joys ! and the scene of sorrows still 
 more sacred than joys ! and now, after many years, the exiled 
 boy came back, a prosperous and thoughtful man, to take but 
 one brief glance of that home which to him had been less hos- 
 pitable than a stranger's dwelling, and to find a witness, among 
 those who remembered him, of his very birth and identity ! 
 He wound the ascent at last, and entering a small town at
 
 THE DISOWNED. 333 
 
 the foot of the hill, which was exactly facing the larger one on 
 the opposite shore of the river, put up his horse at one of the 
 inns : and then, with a beating heart, remounted the hill, and, 
 entering the park by one of its lodges, found himself once 
 more in the haunts of his childhood. 
 
 CHAPTER LXIX. 
 
 " Oh, the steward, the steward I might have guessed as much." 
 
 Tales of the Crusaders. 
 
 THE evening was already beginning to close, and Clarence 
 was yet wandering in the park, and retracing, with his heart's 
 eye, each knoll, and tree, and tuft, once so familiar to his 
 wanderings. 
 
 At the time we shall again bring him personally before the 
 reader, he was leaning against an iron fence that, running 
 along the left wing of the house, separated the pleasure-grounds 
 from the park, and gazing, with folded arms and wistful eyes, 
 upon the scene on which the dusk of twilight was gradually 
 gathering. 
 
 The house was built originally in the reign of Charles II. : it 
 had since received alteration and additions, and now presented 
 to the eye a vast pile of Grecian, or rather Italian, architec- 
 ture, heterogeneously blended with the massive window, the 
 stiff coping, and the heavy roof which the age immediately 
 following the Revolution introduced. The extent of the build- 
 ing, and the grandeur of the circling demesnes, were sufficient 
 to render the mansion imposing in effect ; while, perhaps, the 
 style of the architecture was calculated to conjoin a stately 
 comfort with magnificence, and to atone in solidity for any de- 
 ficiency in grace. At a little distance from the house, and 
 placed on a much more commanding site, were some ancient 
 and ivy-grown ruins, now scanty indeed, and fast mouldering 
 into decay, but sufficient to show the antiquarian the remains 
 of what once had been a hold of no ordinary size and power. 
 These were the wrecks of the old mansion, which was recorded 
 by tradition to have been reduced to this state by accidental 
 fire, during the banishment of its loyal owner in the time of the 
 Protectorate. Upon his return the present house was erected. 
 
 As Clarence was thus stationed, he perceived an elderly man 
 approach towards him. "This is fortunate," said he to him-
 
 334 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 self " the very person I have been watching for. Well years 
 have passed lightly over old Wardour : still the same precise 
 garb the same sturdy and slow step the same upright form." 
 
 The person thus designated now drew near enough for par- 
 lance ; and in a tone a little authoritative, though very respect- 
 ful, inquired if Clarence had any business to transact with him. 
 
 "I beg pardon," said Clarence, slouching his hat over his 
 face, " for lingering so near the house at this hour : but I have 
 seen it many years ago, and indeed, been a guest within its 
 walls ; and it -is rather my interest for an old friend, than my 
 curiosity to examine a new one, which you are to blame for my 
 trespass." 
 
 " Oh, sir," answered Mr. Wardour, a short and rather stout 
 man, of about sixty-four, attired in a chocolate coat, gray 
 breeches, and silk stockings of the same dye, which, by the 
 waning light, took a sombrer and sadder hue " Oh, sir pray 
 make no apology. I am only sorry the hour is so late, that I 
 cannot offer to show you the interior of the house : perhaps, if 
 you are staying in the neighborhood, you would like to see it 
 to-morrow. You were here, I take it, sir, in my old lord's 
 time? " 
 
 " I was ! upon a visit to his second son we had been boys 
 together." 
 
 " What ! Master Clinton ?" cried the old man, with extreme 
 animation ; and then suddenly changing his voice, added, in a 
 subdued and saddened tone, " Ah ! poor young gentleman, I 
 wonder where he is now? " 
 
 " Why is he not in this country ? " asked Clarence. 
 
 "Yes no that is, I can't exactly say where he is I wish I 
 coul-d poor Master Clinton I loved him as my own son." 
 
 "You surprise me," said Clarence. "Is there anything in 
 the fate of Clinton L'Estrange that calls forth your pity ! If 
 so, you would gratify a much better feeling than curiosity if 
 you would inform me of it. The fact is, that I came here to 
 seek him ; for I have been absent from the country many years, 
 and on my return, my first inquiry was for my old friend and 
 schoolfellow. None knew anything of him in London, and I 
 imagined, therefore, that he might have settled down into a 
 country gentleman. I was fully prepared to find him marshall- 
 ing the fox-hounds or beating the preserves ; and you may con- 
 sequently imagine my mortification on learning, at my inn, 
 that he had not been residing here for many years ; further I 
 know not ! " 
 
 "Ay ay sir," said the old steward, who had listened
 
 TH DISOWNED. 335 
 
 very attentively to Clarence's detail, "had you pressed one of 
 the village gossips a little closer, you would doubtless have 
 learned more ! But 'tis a story I don't much love telling, al- 
 though formerly I could have talked of Master Clinton by the 
 hour together, to any one who would have had the patience to 
 listen to me." 
 
 " You have really created in me a very painful desire to learn 
 more," said Clarence ; " and if I am not intruding on any fam- 
 ily secrets, you would oblige me greatly by whatever informa- 
 tion you may think proper to afford to an early and attached 
 friend of the person in question." 
 
 " Well, sir, well," replied Mr. Wardour, who, without imputa- 
 tion on his discretion, loved talking as well as any other old 
 'gentleman of sixty-four, " if you will condescend to step up to 
 my house, I shall feel happy and proud to converse with a friend 
 of my dear young master's ; and you are heartily welcome to the 
 information I can give you." 
 
 " I thank you sincerely," said Clarence ; "but suffer me to 
 propose, as an amendment to your offer, that you accompany me 
 for an hour or two to my inn." 
 
 " Nay, sir," answered the old gentleman, in a piqued tone, " I 
 trust you will not disdain to honor me with your company. 
 Thank Heaven, I can afford to be hospitable now and then." 
 
 Clarence, who seemed to have his own reasons for the amend- 
 ment he had proposed, still struggled against this offer, but 
 was at last, from fear of offending the honest steward, obliged 
 to accede. 
 
 Striking across a path, which led through a corner of the 
 plantation, to a space of ground containing a small garden, 
 quaintly trimmed in the Dutch taste, and a brick house of mod- 
 erate dimensions, half overgrown with ivy and jessamine, Clar- 
 ence and his invitor paused at the door of the said mansion, and 
 the latter welcomed his guest to his abode. 
 
 " Pardon me," said Clarence, as a damsel in waiting opened 
 the door, "but a very severe attack of rheumatism obliges me 
 to keep on my hat ; you will, I hope, indulge me in my rude- 
 ness." 
 
 " To be sure to be sure, sir. I myself suffer terribly from 
 rheumatism in the winter though you look young, sir, very 
 young, to have an old man's complaint. Ah, the people of my 
 day were more careful of themselves, and that is the reason we 
 are such stout fellows, in our age." 
 
 And the worthy steward looked complacently down at legs 
 which very substantially filled their comely investments.
 
 336 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 "True, sir," said Clarence, laying his hand upon that of the 
 steward, who was just about to open the door of an apartment ; 
 " but suffer me at least to request you not to introduce me to 
 any of the ladies of your family. I could not, were my very 
 life at stake, think of affronting them by not doffing my hat. 
 I have the keenest sense of what is due to the sex, and I must 
 seriously entreat you, for the sake of my health during the whole 
 of the coming winter, to suffer our conversation not to take 
 place in their presence." 
 
 "Sir I honor your politeness," said the prim little steward : 
 " I, myself, like every true Briton, reverence the ladies ; we will, 
 therefore, retire to my study. Mary, girl," turning to the 
 attendant, "see that we have a nice chop for supper, in half an 
 hour : and tell your mistress that I have a gentleman of quality 
 with me upon particular business, and must not be disturbed." 
 
 With these injunctions, the steward led the way to the far- 
 ther end of the house, and, having ushered his guest into a 
 small parlor, adorned with sundry law-books, a great map of 
 the estate, a print of the late owner of it, a rusty gun slung 
 over the fireplace, two stuffed pheasants, and a little mahogany 
 buffet having, we say, led Clarence to this sanctuary of retir- 
 ing stewardship, he placed a seat for him and said : 
 
 "Between you and me, sir, be it respectfully said, I am not 
 sorry that our little confabulation should pass alone. Ladies 
 are very delightful very delightful, certainly ; but they won't 
 let one tell a story one's own way they are fidgetty, you 
 know, sir fidgetty nothing more ; tis a trifle, but it is unpleas- 
 ant ; besides, my wife was Master Clinton's foster-mother, and 
 she can't hear a word about him, without running on into a 
 long rigmarole of what he did as a baby, and so forth. I like 
 people to be chatty, sir, but not garrulous ; I can't bear garru- 
 lity at least in a female. But, suppose, sir, we defer our story 
 till after supper? A glass of wine or warm punch makes talk 
 glide more easily ; besides, sir, I want something to comfort me 
 when I talk about Master Clinton. Poor gentleman, he was so 
 comely, so handsome ! " 
 
 " Did you think so ? " said Clarence, turning towards the 
 fire. 
 
 "Think so?" ejaculated the steward, almost angrily; and 
 forthwith he launched out into an encomium on the perfections, 
 personal, moral, and mental, of Master Clinton, which lasted 
 till the gentle Mary entered to lay the cloth. This reminded 
 the old steward of the glass of wine which was so efficacious in 
 making talk glide easily ; and, going to the buffet before men-
 
 TH DISOWNED. 337 
 
 tfoned, he drew forth two bottles, both of port. Having care- 
 fully and warily decanted both, he changed the subject of his 
 praise ; and, assuring Clarence that the wine he was about to 
 taste was, at least, as old as Master Clinton, having been pur- 
 chased in joyous celebration of the young gentleman's birth- 
 day, he whiled away the minutes with a glowing eulogy on its 
 generous qualities, till Mary entered with the supper. 
 
 Clarence, with an appetite sharpened, despite his romance, 
 by a long fast, did ample justice to the fare ; and the old stew- 
 ard, warming into familiarity with the virtues of the far-famed 
 port, chatted and laughed in a strain half simple and half 
 shrewd. 
 
 The fire being stirred up to a free blaze, the hearth swept, 
 and all the tokens of supper, save and except the kingly bottle 
 and its subject glasses, being removed, the steward and his 
 guest drew closer to each other, and the former began his 
 story 
 
 CHAPTER LXX. 
 
 ** Ttie actors are at hand, and by their shew, 
 You shall know all that you are like to know." 
 
 Midsummer Nighfs Dream. 
 
 "You know, probably, sir, that my late lord was twice 
 married : by his first wife he had three children, only one of 
 whom, the youngest, though now the present earl, survived the 
 first period of infancy. When Master Francis, as we always 
 called him, in spite of his accession to the title of viscount, was 
 about six years old, my lady died, and a year afterwards my 
 lord married again. His second wife was uncommonly hand- 
 some : she was a Miss Talbot (a Catholic), daughter of Colonel 
 Talbot, and niece to the celebrated beau, Squire Talbot, of 
 Scarsdale Park. Poor lady ! they say that she married my lord 
 though a momentary pique against a former lover. However 
 that may be, she was a fine, high-spirited creature very violent 
 in temper, to be sure, but generous and kind when her passion 
 was over ; and, however haughty to her equals, charitable and 
 compassionate to the poor. 
 
 "She had but one son, Master Clinton. Never, sir, shall I 
 forget the rejoicings that were made at his birth ; for my lord 
 doted on his second wife, and had disliked his first, whom he 
 had married for her fortune ; and it was therefore natural that 
 he should prefer the child of the present wife to Master Francis.
 
 33& THE DISOWNED. 
 
 Ah, it is sad to think how love can change ! Well, sir, my lord 
 seemed literally to be wrapt up in the infant: he nursed it, and 
 fondled it, and hung over it, as if he had been its mother rather 
 than its father. My lady desired that it might be christened 
 by one of her family names ; and my lord consenting, it was 
 called Clinton. (The wine is with you, sir ! Do observe that 
 it has not changed color in the least, notwithstanding its age !) 
 
 "My lord was fond of a quiet, retired life ; indeed, he was a 
 great scholar, and spent the chief part of his time among his 
 books. Dr. Latinas, the young gentleman's tutor, said his lord- 
 ship made Greek verses better than Dr. Latinas could make 
 English ones, so you may judge of his learning. But my lady 
 went constantly to town, and was among the gayest of the gay ; 
 nor did she often come down here without bringing a whole 
 troop of guests. Lord help us, what goings on there used to be 
 at the great house ! such dancing and music, and dining, and 
 supping, and shooting-parties,jfishing-parties, gypsy-parties; you 
 would have thought all England was merry-making there. 
 
 " But my lord, though he indulged my lady in all her whims 
 and extravagance, seldom took much share in them himself. 
 He was constantly occupied with his library and children, nor 
 did he ever suffer either Master Francis or Master Clinton to 
 mix with the guests. He kept them very close at their studies, 
 and when the latter was six years old, I do assure you, sir, he 
 could say his Propria qua. maribus better than I can. (You 
 don't drink, sir.) When Master Francis was sixteen, and Mas- 
 ter Clinton eight, the former was sent abroad on his travels with 
 a German tutor, and did not return to England for many years 
 afterwards ; meanwhile Master Clinton grew up to the age of 
 fourteen, increasing in comeliness and goodness. He was very 
 fond of his studies, much more so than Master Francis had 
 been, and was astonishingly forward for his years. So my lord 
 loved him better and better, and would scarcely ever suffer him 
 to be out of his sight. 
 
 "When Master Clinton was about the age I mentioned, viz., 
 fourteen, a gentleman of the name of Sir Clinton Manners be- 
 came a constant visitor at the house. Report said that he was 
 always about my lady in London, at Ranelagh, and the ball- 
 rooms and routs, and all the fine places and certainly he was 
 scarcely ever from her side in the pleasure parties at the park. 
 But my lady said that he was a cousin of her's, and an old 
 playmate in childhood, and so he was and, unhappily for her, 
 something more too. My lord, however, shut up in his library, 
 did not pay any attention to my lady's intimacy with Sir Clinton ;
 
 THE DISOWNED. 339 
 
 on the contrary, as he was a cousin and friend of her's, his 
 lordship seemed always happy to see him, and was the only 
 person in the neighborhood who had no suspicion of what was 
 going on. 
 
 " Oh, sir, it is a melancholy story, and I can scarcely persuade 
 myself to tell it. (It is really delicious wine this six-and- 
 twenty years old last birthday to say nothing of its age before 
 I bought it Ah !) Well, sir, the blow came at last like a 
 thunder-clap my lady, finding disguise was in vain, went off 
 with Sir Clinton. Letters were discovered which showed that 
 they had corresponded for years that he was her lover before 
 marriage that she, in a momentary passion with him, had 
 accepted my lord's offer that she had always repented her 
 precipitation and that she had called her son after his name 
 all this, and much more, sir, did my lord learn, as it were, at a 
 single blow. 
 
 " He obtained a divorce, and Sir Clinton and my lady went 
 abroad. But from that time my lord was never the same man. 
 Always proud and gloomy, he now became intolerably violent 
 and morose. He shut himself up, saw no company of any de- 
 scription, rarely left the house, and never the park and, from 
 being one of the gayest places in the country, sir, the mansion 
 became as dreary and deserted as if it had been haunted. (It 
 is for you to begin the second bottle, sir.) 
 
 "But the most extraordinary change in my lord was in his 
 conduct to Master Clinton from dealing upon him, to a degree 
 that would have spoilt any temper less sweet than my poor 
 young master's, he took the most violent aversion to him. 
 From the circumstance of his name, and the long intimacy ex- 
 isting between my lady and her lover, his lordship would not 
 believe that Master Clinton was his own child : and indeed I 
 must confess there seemed good ground for his suspicions. 
 Besides this, Master Clinton took very much after his mother. 
 He had her eyes, hair, and beautiful features, so that my lord 
 could never see him without being reminded of his disgrace: 
 therefore whenever the poor young gentleman came into his 
 presence, he would drive him out, with oaths and threats which 
 rung through the whole house. He could not even bear that 
 he should have any attendance or respect from the servants, 
 for he considered him quite as an alien like, and worse than a 
 stranger ; and his lordship's only delight seemed to consist in 
 putting upon him every possible indignity and affront. But 
 Master Clinton was a high, spirited young gentleman, and after 
 having in vain endeavored to soothe my lord by compliance
 
 340 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 and respect, he at last utterly avoided his lordship's pres 
 ence. 
 
 He gave up his studies in a great measure, and wandered 
 about the park and woods all day, and sometimes even half the 
 night; hismother's conduct, and his father's unkindness seemed 
 to prey upon his health and mind, and, at last, he grew almost 
 as much altered as my lord. From being one of the merriest 
 boys possible, full of life and spirits, he became thoughtful and 
 downcast, his step lost its lightness, and his eye all the fire 
 which used once quite to warm one's heart when one looked at 
 it ; in short, sir, the sins of the mother were visited as much 
 upon the child as the husband. (Not the least tawny, sir, you 
 see, though it is so old !) 
 
 " My lord at first seemed to be glad that he now never saw 
 his son ; but, by degrees, I think, he missed the pleasure of 
 venting his spleen upon him ; and so he ordered my young 
 master not to stir out without his leave, and confined him 
 closer than ever to his studies. Well, sir (if it were not for 
 this port I could not get out another sentence !), there used 
 then to be sad scenes between them : my lord was a terribly 
 passionate man, and said things sharper than a two-edged 
 sword, as the psalms express it ; and though Master Clinton 
 was one of the mildest and best tempered boys imaginable, yet 
 he could not at all times curb his spirit ; and, to my mind, 
 when a man is perpetually declaring he is not your father, one 
 may now and then be forgiven in forgetting that you are to 
 behave as his son. 
 
 " Things went on in this way sadly enough for about three 
 years and a half, when Master Clinton was nearly eighteen. 
 One evening, after my lord had been unusually stormy, Mas- 
 ter Clinton's spirit warmed, I suppose, and, from word to word, 
 the dispute increased, till my lord, in a furious rage, ordered 
 in the servants, and told them to horsewhip his son. Imagine 
 sir, what a disgrace to that noble house ! But there was not 
 one of them who would not rather have cut off his right hand 
 than laid a finger upon Master Clinton, so greatly was he be- 
 loved ; and, at last, my lord summoned his own gentleman, a 
 German, six feet high, entirely devoted to his lordship, and 
 commanded him upon pain of instant dismissal, to make use, 
 in his presence, of a horsewhip which he put into his hand. 
 
 " The German did not dare refuse, so he approached Mas- 
 ter Clinton. The servants were still in the room, and perhaps 
 they would have been bold enough to rescue Master Clinton, 
 had there been any need of their assistance ; but he was a tall
 
 THE DISOWNED. 34 I 
 
 youth, as bold as a hero, and, when the German approached, 
 he caught him by the throat, threw him down, and very nearly 
 strangled him ; he then, while my lord was speechless with 
 rage, left the room, and did not return all night. (What a 
 body it has, sir Ah !) 
 
 " The next morning I was in a little room adjoining my lord's 
 study, looking over some papers and maps. His lordship did 
 not know of my presence, but was sitting alone at breakfast, when 
 Master Clinton suddenly entered the study ; the door leading to 
 my room was ajar, and I heard all the conversation that ensued. 
 
 " My lord asked him very angrily how he had dared absent 
 himself all night : but Master Clinton making no reply to this 
 question, said, in a very calm, loud voice, which I think I hear 
 now, ' My lord, after the insult you have offered to me, it is 
 perhaps unnecessary to observe that nothing could induce me 
 to remain under your roof, I come, therefore, to take my last 
 leave of you.' 
 
 " He paused, and my lord (probably, like me, being taken 
 by surprise) making no reply, he continued : ' You have often 
 told me, my lord, that I am not your son : if this be possible, 
 so much the more must you rejoice at the idea of ridding your 
 presence of an intruder.' 'And how, sir, do you expect to 
 live, except upon my bounty? ' exclaimed my lord. ' You re- 
 member,' answered my young master, 'that a humble depend- 
 ent of my mother's family, who had been our governess in 
 childhood, left me, at her death, the earnings of her life. I 
 believe they amount to nearly a thousand pounds I look to 
 your lordship's honor either for the principal or the yearly in- 
 terest as may please you best : farther I ask not from you.' 
 'And do you think, sir,' cried my lord, almost screaming with 
 passion, ' that upon that beggarly pittance you shall go forth 
 to dishonor, more than it is yet dishonored, the name of my 
 ancient house! Do you think, sir, that that name to which 
 you have no pretension, though the law iniquitously grants it 
 you, shall be sullied either with trade or robbery ? for to one 
 or the other you must necessarily be driven.' ' I foresaw your 
 speech, my lord, and am prepared with an answer. Far be it 
 from me to thrust myself into any family, the head of which 
 thinks proper to reject me far be it from me to honor my 
 humble fortunes with a name which I am as willing as yourself 
 to disown ; I purpose, therefore, to adopt a new one ; and 
 whatever may be my future fate, that name will screen me both 
 from your remembrance and the world's knowledge. Are you 
 satisfied now, my lord ? "
 
 342 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " His lordship did not answer for some minutes ; at last, he 
 said sneeringly : ' Go, boy, go ! I am delighted to hear you 
 have decided so well. Leave word with my steward where you 
 wish your clothes to be sent to you : Heaven forbid I should 
 rob you either of your wardrobe, or your princely fortune. 
 "VVardour will transmit to you the latter, even to the last penny, 
 by the same conveyance as that which is honored by the former. 
 And now good-morning, sir ; yet stay, and mark my words 
 never dare to re-enter my house, or to expect an iota more of 
 fortune or favor from me. And, hark you, sir if you dare 
 violate your word, if you dare, during my life, at least, assume 
 a name which you were born to sully, my curse, my deepest, 
 heartiest, eternal curse be upon your head in tins world and 
 the next ! ' ' Fear not, my lord, my word is pledged,' said the 
 young gentleman ; and the next moment I heard his parting 
 step in the hall. 
 
 "Sir, my heart was full (your glass is empty !), and my head 
 spun round as if I were on a precipice ; but I was determined 
 my young master should not go till I had caught another 
 glimpse of his dear face, so I gently left the room I was in, and 
 hastening out of the house by a private entrance, met Master 
 Clinton in the park, not very far from the spot where I saw 
 you, sir, just now. To my surprise, there was no sign of grief 
 or agitation upon his countenance ; I had never seen him look 
 so proud, or for years, so happy. 
 
 "' Wardour,' said he, in a gay tone, where he saw me, 'I 
 was going to your house : my father has at last resolved that 
 I should, like my brother, commence my travels, and I wish to 
 leave with you the address of the place to which my clothes 
 etc., will be sent.' 
 
 " I could not contain any longer when I heard this, sir ; I 
 burst into tears, confessed that I had accidentally heard his 
 conversation with my lord, and besought him not to depart so 
 hastily, and with so small a fortune ; but he shook his head, 
 and would not hear me. ' Believe me, my good Wardour,' 
 said he, ' that since my unhappy mother's flight, I have never 
 felt so elated or so happy as I do now : one should go through 
 what I have done, to learn the rapture of independence.' He 
 then told me to have his luggage sent to him, under his initials 
 of C. L., at the Golden Fleece, the principal inn in the town 
 
 of W , which, you know, sir, is at the other end of the 
 
 county, on the road to London ; and then, kindly shaking me 
 by the hand, he broke away from me ; but he turned back 
 before he had got three paces, and said (and then, for the first
 
 THE DISOWNED. 43 
 
 time, the pride of his countenance fell, and the tears stood in 
 his eyes), ' Wardour, do not divulge what you have heard : put 
 as good a face upon my departure as you can, and let the 
 blame, if any, fall upon me, not upon your lord : after all, he 
 is to be pitied, not blamed, and I can never forget that he 
 once loved me.' He did not wait for my answer, perhaps he 
 did not like to show me how much he was affected, but hurried 
 down the park, and I soon lost sight of him. My lord that 
 very morning sent for me, demanded what address his son had 
 left, and gave me a letter, enclosing, I suppose, a bill for my 
 poor young master's fortune, ordering it to be sent with the 
 clothes immediately. 
 
 " Sir, I have never seen or heard aught of the dear gentle- 
 man since ; you must forgive me, I cannot help tears, sir 
 (the wine is with you.)" 
 
 "But the mother, the mother!" said Clarence earnestly, 
 " what became of her ? she died abroad, two years since, did 
 she not ?" 
 
 " She did, sir," answered the honest steward, refilling his 
 glass. " They say that she lived very unhappily with Sir. 
 Clinton, who did not marry her ; till all of a sudden she disap- 
 peared, none knew whither." 
 
 Clarence redoubled his attention, 
 
 " At last," resumed the steward, " two years ago a letter 
 came from her to my lord ; she was a nun in some convent 
 (in Italy, I think), to which she had, at the time of her dis- 
 appearance, secretly retired. The letter was written on her 
 death-bed, and so affectingly, I suppose, that even my stern 
 lord was in tears for several days after he received it. But 
 the principal passage in it was relative to her son : it assured 
 my lord (for so with his own lips he told me just before he 
 died, some months ago), that Master Clinton was in truth his 
 son, and that it was not till she had been tempted many years 
 after her 'marriage, that she had fallen ; she implored my lord 
 to believe this 'on the word of one for whom earth and earth's 
 objects were no more'; those were her words. 
 
 "Six months ago, when my lord lay on the bed from which 
 he never rose, he called me to him, and said : ' Wardour, you 
 have always been the faithful servant of our house, and warmly 
 attached to my second son ; tell my poor boy, if ever you see 
 him, that I did at last open my eyes to my error, and acknowl- 
 edge him as my child ; tell him that I have desired his brother 
 (who was then, sir, kneeling by my lord's side), as he values 
 my blessing, to seek him out and repair the wrong I have done
 
 344 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 him ; and add that my best comfort in death was the hope of 
 his forgiveness.' " 
 
 " Did he, did he say that?" exclaimed Clarence, who had 
 been violently agitated during the latter part of this recital, 
 and now sprung from his seat " My father, my father ! would 
 that I had borne with thee more ! mine mine was the fault 
 from thee should have come the forgiveness ! " 
 
 The old steward sate silent and aghast. At that instant his 
 wife entered, with a message of chiding at the lateness of the 
 hour upon her lip, but she started back, when she saw Clarence's 
 profile, as he stood leaning against the wall ; " Good Heavens ! " 
 cried she, " is it, is it yes, it is my young master, my own 
 foster-son ! " 
 
 Hightly had Clarence conjectured, when he had shunned her 
 presence. Years had, indeed, wrought a change in his figure 
 and face : acquaintance, servant, friend, relation, the remem- 
 brance of his features had passed from all ; but she who had 
 nursed him as an infant on her lap, and fed him from her 
 breast, she who had joined the devotion of clanship to the fond- 
 ness of a mother, knew him at a glance. 
 
 " Yes," cried he, as he threw himself into her withered and 
 aged arms, " it is I, the child you reared, come, after many 
 years, to find too late, when a father is no more, that he had 
 a right to a father's home." 
 
 CHAPTER LXXI. 
 
 " Let us go in, 
 And charge us there upon interrogatories." SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 "Bur did not anyone recognize you in your change o* 
 name ! " said the old foster mother, looking fondly upon 
 Clarence, as he sate the next morning by her side. " How 
 could any one forget so winsome a face who had once 
 seen it ? " 
 
 " You don't remember," said Clarence (as we will yet con- 
 tinue to call our hero), smiling, " that your husband had for- 
 gotten it." 
 
 " Ay, sir," cried the piqued steward," but that was because 
 you wore your hat slouched over your eyes ; if you had taken 
 off that, I should have known you directly." 
 
 " However that mav be," said Clarence, unwilling to dwell
 
 THE DISOWNED. 345 
 
 longer on an occurrence which he saw hurt the feelings of the 
 kind Mr. Wardour, "it is very easy to explain how I preserved 
 my incognito. You recollect that my father never suffered me 
 to mix with my mother's guests : so I had no chance of their 
 remembering me, especially as, during the last three years and 
 a half, no stranger had ever entered our walls. Add to this, 
 that I was in the very time of life in which a few years work 
 the greatest change, and on going to London, I was thrown en- 
 tirely among people who could never have seen me before. 
 Fortunately for me, I became acquainted with my mother's 
 uncle circumstances subsequently led me to disclose my birth 
 to him, upon a promise that he would never call me by any 
 oiher name than that which I had assumed. He, who was the 
 best, the kindest, the most generous of human beings, took a 
 liking to me. He insisted not only upon his relationship to 
 me, as my grand uncle, but upon the justice of repairing to 
 me the wrongs his unhappy niece had caused me. The delica- 
 cy of his kindness the ties of blood and an accident which 
 had enabled me to be of some service to him, all prevented my 
 resisting the weight of obligation with which he afterwards 
 oppressed me. He procured me an appointment abroad : 
 I remained there four years. When I returned, I en- 
 tered, it is true, into very general society; but four years had, as 
 you may perceive, altered me greatly ; and even had there pre- 
 viously existed any chance of my being recognized, that altera- 
 tion would, probably, have been sufficient to ensure my secret." 
 
 " But your brother my present lord did you never meet him, 
 sir?" 
 
 " Often, my good mother ; but you remember that I was a 
 little more than six years old when he left England, and when 
 he next saw me I was about two-and twenty : it would have 
 been a miracle, or at least, would have required the eyes of 
 love like yours to have recalled me to memory after such an 
 absence. 
 
 "Well to return to my story I succeeded, partly as his 
 nearest relation, but principally from an affection dearer than 
 blood, to the fortune of my grand uncle, Mr. Talbot. Fate 
 prospered with me : I rose in the world's esteem and honor, 
 and soon became prouder of my borrowed appellation than of 
 all the titles of my lordly line. Circumstances occurring within 
 the last week, which it will be needless to relate, but which may 
 have the greatest influence over my future life, made it necessary 
 to do what I had once resolved I would never do prove my 
 identity and origin. Accordingly I came here to seek you."
 
 34^ THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " But why did not my honored young master disclose himself 
 last night ? " asked the stev-ard. 
 
 ' I might say," answerer Clarence, "because I anticipated 
 great pleasure in a surprise ; but I had another reason it was 
 this : I had heard of my poor father's death, and I was pain- 
 fully anxious to learn if at the last he had testified any relent- 
 ing towards me and yet more so to ascertain the manner ol 
 my unfortunate mother's fate. Both abroad and in England, 1 
 had sought tidings of her everywhere, but in vain : in men- 
 tioning my mother's retiring into a convent, you have explained 
 the reasoti why my efforts were so fruitless. With these 
 two objects in view, I thought myself more likely to learn the 
 whole truth as a stranger than in my proper person ; for in the 
 latter case I deemed it probable that your delicacy and kindness 
 might tempt you to conceal whatever was calculated to wound 
 my feelings, and to exaggerate anything that might tend to 
 flatter or to soothe them. Thank Heaven, I now learn that 
 I have aright to the name my boyhood bore, that my birth is 
 not branded with the foulest of private crimes, and that in 
 death my father's heart yearned to his too hasty but repentant 
 son. Enough of this I have now only to request you, my 
 friend, to accompany me, before daybreak, on Wednesday 
 morning, to a place several miles hence. Your presence there 
 will be necessary to substantiate the proof for which I came 
 hither." 
 
 " With all my heart, sir," cried the honest steward: "and 
 after Wednesday you will, I trust, resume your rightful name ? " 
 
 "Certainly," replied Clarence ; " since I am no longer 'the 
 Disowned.' " 
 
 Leaving Clarence now for a brief while to renew his ac- 
 quaintance with the scenes of his childhood, and to offer the 
 tribute of his filial tears to the ashes of a father whose injustice 
 had been but " the stinging of a heart the world had stung " 
 we return to some old acquaintances in the various conduct of 
 our drama.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 347 
 
 CHAPTER LXXII. 
 
 " Upon his couch the veil'd Mokanna lay." The Veiled Prophet. 
 
 THE autumn sun broke through an apartment in a villa in 
 the neighborhood of London, furnished with the most prodigal, 
 yet not tasteless, attention to luxury and show, within which, 
 beside a table strewed with newspapers, letters, and accounts, 
 lay Richard Crauford, extended carelessly upon a sofa which 
 might almost have contented the Sybarite, who quarrelled with 
 a rose-leaf. At his elbow was a bottle half-emptied, and a wine- 
 glass just filled. An expression of triumph and enjoyment was 
 visible upon his handsome, but usually inexpressive,countenance. 
 
 "Well," said he, taking up a newspaper, "let us read this 
 paragraph again. What a beautiful sensation it is to see one's 
 name in print! 'We understand that Richard Crauford, Esq. 
 
 M.P. for , is to be raised to the dignity of the peerage. 
 
 There does not, perhaps, exist in the country a gentleman more 
 universally beloved and esteemed.' (mark that, Dicky Crau- 
 ford) 'The invariable generosity with which his immense 
 wealth has been employed his high professional honor the 
 undeviating and consistent integrity of his political career ' 
 (Ay, to be sure, it is only your honest fools who are inconsist- 
 ent : no man can deviate who has one firm principle, self-inter- 
 est) 'his manly and energetic attention to the welfare of 
 religion ' (he he he !), 'conjoined to a fortune almost incal- 
 culable, render this condescension of our gracious sovereign 
 no less judicious than deserved ! We hear that the title pro- 
 posed for the new peer is that of Viscount Innisdale, which, 
 we believe, was formerly in the noble family of which Mr. 
 Crauford is a distant branch.' 
 
 " He ! he ! he ! Bravo ! bravo ! Viscount Innisdale ! noble 
 family distant branch the devil I am ! What an ignoramus 
 my father was, not to know that ! Why, rest his soul, he never 
 knew who his grandfather was ; but the world shall not be 
 equally ignorant of that important point. Let me see, who 
 shall be Viscount Innisdale's great-grandfather ? Well, well, 
 whoever he is, here's long life to his great-grandson ! 'Incalcu- 
 lable fortune ! ' Ay, ay, I hope, at all events, it will never be 
 calculated. But now for my letters. Bah this wine is a 
 thought too acid for the cellars of Viscount Innisdale ! What, 
 
 another from mother H ! Dark eyes, small mouth sings 
 
 like an angel eighteen ! Pish ! I am too old for such follies
 
 348 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 now ; 'tis not pretty for Viscount Innisdale. Humph ! Lis- 
 bon seven hundred pounds five shillings and seven pence 
 halfpenny, is it, or farthing ? I must note that down. Loan 
 for King of Prussia. Well, must negotiate that to-morrow. 
 Ah, Hockit, the wine-merchant pipe of claret in the docks 
 vintage of 17 . Bravo! all goes smooth for Viscount Innis- 
 dale ! Pish ! from my damnable wife ! What a pill for my 
 lordship ! What says she ? 
 
 :i ' Dawlish, Devonshire. 
 
 14 You have not, my dearest Richard, answered my letters 
 for months. I do not, however, presume to complain of your 
 silence : I know well that you have a great deal to occupy your 
 time, both in business and pleasure. But one little line, dear 
 Richard one little line, surely, that is not too much now and 
 then. I am most truly sorry to trouble you again about money ; 
 and you must know that I strive to be as saving as possible ; ' 
 [Pish ! curse the woman sent her twenty pounds three 
 months ago !] ' but I really am so distressed, and the people 
 here are so pressing ; and at all events, I cannot bear the 
 thought of your wife being disgraced. Pray, forgive me, 
 Richard, and believe how painful it is in me to say so much. 
 I know you will answer this! and, oh, do, do tell me how 
 you are. 
 
 " ' Ever your affectionate wife, 
 
 '"CAROLINE CRAUFORD. 
 
 "Was there ever poor man so plagued? Where's my note- 
 book ? Mem. Send Car. to-morrow 20 to last her the rest 
 
 of the year. Mem. Send Mother H ;io. Mem. Pay 
 
 Hockit's bill ^830. Bless me, what shall I do with Viscount- 
 ess Innisdale? Now, if I were not married, I would be son-in- 
 law to a duke. Mem. Go down to Dawlish, and see if she 
 won't die soon. Healthy situation, I fear devilish unlucky 
 must be changed. Mem. Swamps in Essex. Who's that ? " . 
 
 A knock at the door disturbed Mr. Crauford in his medita- 
 tions. He started up, hurried the bottle and glass under the 
 sofa, where the descending drapery completely hid them ; and, 
 taking up a newspaper, said in a gentle tone, "Come in." A 
 small, thin man, bowing at every step, entered. 
 
 "Ah ! Bradley, is it you, my good fellow ?" said Crauford 
 " glad to see you a fine morning ; but what brings you from 
 town so early ?" 
 
 "Why, sir," answered Mr. Bradley, very obsequiously, 
 " something unpleasant has "
 
 THE DISOWNED. 349 
 
 " Merciful Heaven ! " cried Crauford, blanched into the 
 whiteness of death, and starting up from the sofa with a vio- 
 lence which frightened the timid Mr. Bradley to the other end 
 of the room "the counting house the books all safe?" 
 
 " Yes, sir, yes, at present but " 
 
 "But what, man?" 
 
 " Why, honored sir," resumed Mr. Bradley, bowing to the 
 ground, "your partner, Mr. Jessopp, has been very inquisitive 
 about the accounts. He says, Mr. Da Costa, the Spanish mer- 
 chant, has been insinuating very unpleasant hints, and that he 
 must have a conversation with you at your earliest convenience ; 
 and when, sir, I ventured to remonstrate about the unreason- 
 ableness of attending to what Mr. Da Costa said, Mr. Jessopp 
 was quite abusive, and declared that there seemed some very 
 mysterious communication between you (begging your pardon, 
 sir) and me, and that he did not know whac business I, who 
 had no share in the firm, had to interfere." 
 
 " But," said Crauford, "you were civil to him did not reply 
 hotly eh my good Bradley ! " 
 
 " Lord forbid, sir Lord forbid, that I should not know my 
 place better, or that I should give an unbecoming word to the 
 partner of my honored benefactor. But, sir, if I dare venture 
 to say so, I think Mr. Jessopp is a little jealous, or so, of you ; 
 he seemed quite in a passion at a paragraph in the paper, about 
 my honored master's becoming a lord." 
 
 " Right, honest Bradley, right ; he is jealous we must soothe 
 him. Go, my good fellow go to him with my compliments, 
 and say, that I will be with him by one. Never fear, this busi- 
 ness will be easily settled." 
 
 And bowing himself out of the room, Bradley withdrew. 
 
 Left alone, a dark cloud gathered over the brow of Mr. 
 Crauford. 
 
 "I am on a precipice," thought he; "but if my own brain 
 does not turn giddy with the prospect, all yet may be safe. 
 Cruel necessity, that obliged me to admit another into the 
 business, that foiled me of Mordaunt, and drove me upon this 
 fawning rascal. So, so I almost think there is a Providence, 
 now that Mordaunt has grown rich ; but then his wife died 
 ay ay God saved him, but the devil killed her* He he 
 he ! But, seriously seriously, there is danger in the very air 
 I breathe ! I must away to that envious Jessopp instantly ; 
 but first let me finish the bottle." 
 
 * Voltaire, " Dieu a puni ce fripon, le diable a noy les autres." Candid.
 
 35O THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIII. 
 
 " A strange harmonious inclination 
 Of all degrees to reformation." Hudibras. 
 
 ABOUT seven miles from W , on the main road from 
 
 -, there was in 17 a solitary public-house, which, by- 
 
 the-by, is now a magnificent hotel. Like many of its brethren 
 in the more courtly vicinity of the metropolis, this amcenum 
 hospitum peregrines gentis then had its peculiar renown for 
 certain dainties of the palate ; and various in degree and 
 character were the numerous parties from the neighboring 
 towns and farms, which upon every legitimate holiday were 
 wont to assemble at the mansion of mine host of " the Jolly 
 Angler," in order to feast upon eel-pie, and grow merry over the 
 true Herefordshire cider. 
 
 But upon that especial day on which we are about to intro- 
 duce our reader into the narrow confines of its common parlor, 
 the said hostelry was crowded with persons of a very different 
 description from the peaceable idlers who were ordinarily wont 
 to empty mine host's larder, and forget the price of corn over 
 the divine inspirations of pomarial nectar. Instead of the in- 
 dolent satisfied air of the saturnalian merry-maker, the vagrant 
 angler, or the gentleman farmer, with his comely dame who 
 " walked in silk attire, and siller had to spare"; instead of the 
 quiet yet glad countenances of such hunters of pleasure and 
 eaters of eel-pie, or the more obstreperous joy of urchins let 
 loose from school to taste some brief and perennial recreation, 
 and mine host's delicacies at the same time ; instead of these, 
 the little parlor presented a various and perturbed group, upon 
 whose features neither eel-pie nor Herefordshire cider had 
 wrought the relaxation of a holiday, or the serenity of a moment- 
 ary content. 
 
 The day to which we now refer was the one immediately 
 
 preceding that appointed for the far-famed meeting at W ; 
 
 and many of the patriots, false or real, who journeyed from a 
 distance to attend that rendezvous, had halted at our host's of 
 the Jolly Angler ; both as being within a convenient space 
 from the appointed spot, and as a tabernacle where promiscu- 
 ous intrusion, and (haply) immoderate charges, were less likely 
 to occur than at the bustling and somewhat extortionary hotels 
 and inns of the town of W . 
 
 The times in which this meeting was held were those of great
 
 THE DISOWNED. 351 
 
 popular excitement and discontent ; and the purport of the 
 meeting proposed was to petition Parliament against the con- 
 tinuance of the American war, and the king against the con- 
 tinuance of his ministers. 
 
 Placards of an unusually inflammatory and imprudent na- 
 ture had given great alarm to the more sober and well-disposed 
 
 persons in the neighborhood of W ; and so much fear was 
 
 felt or assumed upon the occasion, that a new detachment of 
 Lord Ulswater's regiment had been especially ordered into the 
 town ; and it was generally rumored that the legal authorities 
 would interfere, even by force, for the dispersion of the meet- 
 ing in question. These circumstances had given the measure a 
 degree of general and anxious interest which it would not other- 
 wise have excited ; and while everybody talked of the danger 
 of attending the assembly, everybody resolved to thrust him- 
 self into it. 
 
 It was about the goodly hour of noon, and the persons as- 
 sembled were six in number, all members of the most violent 
 party, and generally considered by friend and foe as embracers 
 of republican tenets. One of these, a little, oily, corpulent 
 personage, would have appeared far too sleek and well fed for 
 a disturber of things existing, had not a freckled, pimpled, and 
 fiery face, a knit brow, and a small black eye of intolerable 
 fierceness, belied the steady and contented appearance of his 
 frame and girth. This gentleman, by name Christopher Cul- 
 pepper, spoke in a quick, muffled, shuffling sort of tone, like 
 the pace of a Welsh pony, somewhat lame, perfectly broken- 
 winded, but an exemplary ambler for all that. 
 
 Next to him sate, with hands clasped over his knees, a thin, 
 small man, with a countenance prematurely wrinkled, and an 
 air of great dejection. Poor Castleton ! his had been indeed 
 the bitter lot of a man, honest but weak, who attaches himself, 
 heart and soul, to a public cause which, in his life at least, is 
 hopeless. Three other men were sitting by the open window, 
 disputing with the most vehement gestures upon the character 
 of Wilkes ; and at the other window, alone, silent, and absorbed, 
 sat a man whose appearance and features were singularly cal- 
 culated to arrest and to concentrate attention. His raven hair, 
 grizzled with the first advance of age, still preserved its strong, 
 wiry curl and luxuriant thickness. His brows, large, bushy, 
 and indicative of great determination, met over eyes which, al 
 that moment, were fixed upon vacancy with a look of thought 
 and calmness very unusual to their ordinary restless and rapid 
 glances. His mouth, that great seat of character, was firmly and
 
 352 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 obstinately shut ; and though, at the first observation, its down- 
 ward curve and iron severity wore the appearance of unmiti- 
 gated harshness, disdain, and resolve, yet a more attentive 
 deducer of signs from features would not have been able to 
 detect in its expression anything resembling selfishness or sensu- 
 ality, and in thatabsence would have found sufficient to redeem 
 the more repellent indications of mind which it betrayed. 
 
 Presently the door was opened, and the landlord, making 
 some apology to both parties for having no other apartment 
 unoccupied, introduced a personage whose dress and air, as 
 well as a kind of saddle-bag, which he would not entrust to 
 any other bearer than himself, appeared to denote him as one 
 rather addicted to mercantile than political speculations. Cer- 
 tainly he did not seem much at home among the patriotic 
 reformers, who, having glared upon him for a single moment, 
 renewed, without remark, their several attitudes or occupations. 
 
 The stranger, after a brief pause, approached the solitary 
 reformer whom we last described ; and making a salutation, 
 half timorous and half familiar, thus accosted him : 
 
 "Your servant, Mr. Wolfe, your servant. I think I had the 
 pleasure of hearing you a long time ago at the Westminster 
 election : very eloquent you were, sir, very ! " 
 
 Wolfe looked up for an instant at the face of the speaker, 
 and, not recognizing it, turned abruptly away, threw open the 
 window, and, leaning out, appeared desirous of escaping from 
 all further intrusion on the part of the stranger : but that gen- 
 tleman was by no means of a nature easily abashed. 
 
 " Fine day, sir, for the time of year very fine day, indeed. 
 October is a charming month, as my lamented friend and cus- 
 tomer, the late Lady Waddilove, was accustomed to say. 
 Talking of that sir, as the winter is now approaching, do you 
 not think it would be prudent, Mr. Wolfe, to provide yourself 
 with an umbrella ? I have an admirable one which I might 
 dispose of : it is from the effects of the late Lady Waddilove. 
 ' Brown,' said her ladyship, a short time before her death 
 'Brown, you are a good creature; but you ask too much for 
 the Dresden vase. We have known each other for a long 
 time you must take fourteen pounds ten shillings, and you 
 may have that umbrella, in the corner, into the bargain.' Mr. 
 Wolfe, the bargain was completed, and the umbrella became 
 mine it may now be yours." 
 
 And so saying, Mr. Brown, depositing his saddle-bag on the 
 ground, proceeded to unfold an umbrella of singular antiquity 
 and form a very long stick, tipped with ivory, being sur-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 353 
 
 mounted with about a quarter of a yard of sea-green silk, 
 somewhat discolored by time and wear. 
 
 "It is a beautiful article, sir," said Mr. Brown, admiringly 
 surveying it "is it not?" 
 
 "Pshaw!" said Wolfe impatiently "what have I to do 
 with your goods and chattels go and palm the cheatings and 
 impositions of your pitiful trade upon some easier gull." 
 
 "Cheatings and impositions, Mr. Wolfe!" cried the slan- 
 dered Brown, perfectly aghast: "I would have you to know, 
 sir, that I have served the first families in the country, ay, and 
 in this county too. and never had such words applied to me 
 before. Sir, there was the late Lady Waddilove, and the 
 respected Mrs. Minden, and her nephew the ambassador, and 
 the Duchess of Pugadale, and Mr. Mordaunt of Mordaunt 
 Court, poor gentleman though he is poor no more," and 
 Mr. Brown proceeded to enumerate the long list of his 
 customers. 
 
 Now, we have stated that Wolfe, though he had never known 
 the rank of Mordaunt, was acquainted with his real name ; 
 and, as the sound caught his ear, he muttered "Mordaunt 
 Mordaunt ay, but not my former acquaintance not him who 
 was called Glendower. No, no the man cannot: mean him." 
 
 "Yes, sir, but I do mean him," cried Brown, in a rage. "I 
 do mean that Mr. Glendower, who afterwards took another 
 name, but whose real appellation is Mr. Algernon Mordaunt, of 
 Mordaunt Court, in this county, sir." 
 
 "What description of man is he?" said Wolfe; "rather 
 tall, slender, with an air and mien like a king's, I was going to 
 say but better than a king's like a free man's?" 
 
 "Ay, ay, the same," answered Mr. Brown sullenly; "but 
 why should I tell you 'cheating and imposition,' indeed ! I 
 am sure my word can be of no avail to you and I shant stay 
 here any longer to be insulted, Mr. Wolfe which, I am sure, 
 talking of freemen, no freeman ought to submit to ; but as the 
 late Lady Waddilove once very wisely said to me, 'Brown, 
 never have anything to do with those republicans, they are the 
 worst tyrants of all.' Good morning, Mr. Wolfe gentlemen, 
 your servant 'cheating and imposition,' indeed !" and Mr. 
 Brown banged the door as he departed. 
 
 "Wolfe," said Mr. Christopher Culpepper, "who is that 
 man ?" 
 
 " I know not," answered the republican laconically, and 
 gazing on the ground, apparently in thought. 
 
 " He has the air of a slave," quoth the free Culpepper ; "and
 
 354 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 slaves cannot bear the company of freemen ; therefore he did 
 right to go whe-w ! Had we a proper, and thorough, 
 and efficient reform, human nature would not be thus de- 
 based by trades, and callings, and barters, and exchange, for 
 all professions are injurious to the character and the dignity of 
 men whe-w ! but as I shall prove upon the hustings to- 
 morrow, it is in vain to hope for any amendment in the 
 wretched state of things until the people of these realms are 
 fully, freely, and fairly represented whe-w ! Gentlemen, it 
 is past two, and we have not ordered dinner whe-w ! " 
 (N. B. This ejaculation denotes the kind of snuffle which 
 lent peculiar energy to the dicta of Mr. Culpepper.) 
 
 " Ring the bell, then, and summon the landlord," said, very 
 pertinently, one of the three disputants upon the character of 
 Wilkes. 
 
 The landlord appeared ; dinner was ordered. 
 
 "Pray," said Wolfe, "has that man, Mr. Brown, I think he 
 called himself, left the inn ! " 
 
 "He has, sir, for he was mightily offended at something 
 which " 
 
 "And," interrupted Wolfe, "how far hence does Mr. Mor- 
 daunt live ?" 
 
 "About five miles on the other side of W ," answered 
 
 mine host. 
 
 Wolfe rose, seized his hat, and was about to depart. 
 
 "Stay, stay," cried citizen Christopher Culpepper; "you 
 will not leave us till after dinner?" 
 
 "I shall dine at W ," answered Wolfe, quitting the room. 
 
 "Then our reckoning will be heavier," said Culpepper. "It 
 is not handsome in Wolfe to leave us whe-w ! Really I 
 think that our brother in the great cause has of late relaxed 
 in his attentions and zeal to the goddess of our devotions 
 whe-w ! " 
 
 "It is human nature!" cried one of the three disputants 
 upon the character of Wilkes. 
 
 "It is not human nature!" cried the second disputant, 
 folding his arms doggedly, in preparation for a discussion. 
 
 "Contemptible human nature!" exclaimed the third dis- 
 putant, soliloquizing with a supercilious expression of hateful 
 disdain. 
 
 "Poor human nature!" murmured Castleton, looking up- 
 ward, with a sigh; and though we have not given to that, 
 gentleman other words than these, we think they are almost 
 sufficient to let our readers into his character.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 355 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIV. 
 
 " Silvis, ubi passim 
 Palantcs error certo de tramite pellit, 
 Ille smistrorsum hie dextrorsum abit ; unus utrique 
 Error, sed variis illudit partibus." * HORAT. 
 
 As Wolfe strode away from the inn, he muttered to himself 
 
 "Can it be that Mordaunt has suddenly grown rich? If so, 
 I rejoice at it. True, that he was not for our cause, but he 
 had the spirit and the heart which belonged to it. Had he not 
 been bred among the prejudices of birth, or had he lived in 
 stormier times, he might have been the foremost champion of 
 freedom. As it is, I rather lament than condemn. Yet I 
 would fain see him once more. Perhaps prosperity may have 
 altered his philosophy. But can he, indeed, be the same Mor- 
 daunt of whom that trading itinerant spoke? Can he have 
 risen to the pernicious eminence of a landed aristocrat ? 
 Well, it is worth the journey ; for if he have power in 
 the neighborhood, I am certain that he will exert it for our pro- 
 tection ; and at the worst, I shall escape from the idle words 
 of my compatriots. Oh ! if it were possible that the advocates 
 could debase the glory of the cause, how long since should 
 I have flinched from the hardship and the service to which my 
 life is devoted ! Self-interest, Envy, that snarls at all above 
 it, without even the beast's courage to bite Folly, that knows 
 not the substance of freedom, but loves the glitter of its name 
 Fear, that falters Crime, that seeks in licentiousness an ex- 
 cuse Disappointment, only craving occasion to rail Hatred 
 Sourness, boasting of zeal, but only venting the blackness of 
 rancor and evil passion all these make our adherents, and 
 give our foes the handle and the privilege to scorn and to 
 despise. But man chooses the object, and Fate only furnishes 
 the tools. Happy for our posterity, that when the object is 
 once gained, the frailty of the tools will be no more ! " 
 
 Thus soliloquizing, the republican walked rapidly onwards, 
 till a turn of the road brought before his eye the form of Mr. 
 Brown, seated upon a little rough pony, and " whistling as he 
 went, for want of thought." 
 
 Wolfe quickened his pace, and soon overtook him. 
 
 "You must forgive me, my good man," said he soothingly, 
 " I meant not to impeach your honesty or your calling. Per- 
 
 * Wandering in those woods where error evermore forces life's stragglers from the bealen 
 pnih this one deflects to the left his fellow chooses the exact contrary- The fault is jill 
 'he same in each, but it excuses itself by a thousand different reasons.
 
 35<5 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 haps I was hasty and peevish ; and, in sad earnest, I have 
 much to tease and distract me." 
 
 "Well, sir, well," answered Mr. Brown, greatly mollified: 
 " I am sure no Christian can be more forgiving than I am ; 
 and, since you are sorry for what you were pleased to say, let 
 us think no more about it. But touching the umbrella, Mr. 
 Wolfe have you a mind for that interesting and useful relic 
 of the late Lady Waddilove ? " 
 
 " Not at present, I thank you," said Wolfe mildly : "I care 
 little for the inclemencies of the heavens, and you may find 
 many to whom your proffered defence from them may be more 
 acceptable. But tell me if the Mr. Mordaunt you mentioned 
 was ever residing in town, and in very indifferent circum- 
 stances?" 
 
 " Probably he was, " said the cautious Brown, who, as we 
 before said, had been bribed into silence, and who now griev- 
 ously repented that passion had betrayed him into the im- 
 prudence of candor ; " but I really do not busy myself about 
 other people's affairs. 'Brown,' said the late Lady Waddilove 
 to me 'Brown, you are a good creature, and never talk of 
 what does not concern you.' Those, Mr. Wolfe, were her 
 Ladyship's own words !" 
 
 " As you please," said the reformer, who did not want shrewd- 
 ness, and saw that his point was already sufficiently gained ; 
 " as you please. And now, to change the subject, I suppose 
 we shall have your attendance at the meeting at W to- 
 morrow? " 
 
 " Ay," replied the worthy Brown ; " I thought it likely I 
 should meet many of my old customers in the town on such a 
 busy occasion ; so I went a little out of my way home to Lon- 
 don, in order to spend a night or two there. Indeed, I have 
 some valuable articles for Mr. Glumford, the magistrate, who 
 will be in attendance to-morrow." 
 
 " They say," observed Wolfe, " that the magistrates, against 
 all law, right, and custom, will dare to interfere with, and re- 
 sist the meeting. Think you report says true? " 
 
 " Nay," returned Brown prudently, " I cannot exactly pretend 
 to decide the question ! All I know is that Squire Glumford 
 said to me, at his own house, five days ago, as he was drawing 
 on his boots 'Brown, 'said he, 'Brown, mark my words, we 
 shall do for those rebellious dogs ! ' ' 
 
 " Did he say so ?" muttered Wolfe between his teeth. "Oh, 
 for the old times, or those yet to come, when our answer would 
 have been, or shall be the sword ' "
 
 THE DISOWNED. 357 
 
 <c And you know," pursued Mr. Brown, " that Lord Ulswater 
 and his regiment are in the town, and have even made great 
 preparations against the meeting a week ago. " 
 
 " I have heard this," said Wolfe ; "but I cannot think that 
 any body of armed men dare interrupt or attack a convocation 
 of peaceable subjects, met solely to petition Parliament against 
 famine for themselves and slavery for their children." 
 
 " Famine ! " quoth Mr. Brown. " Indeed it is very true 
 very ! times are dreadfully bad. I can scarcely get my own 
 living Parliament certainly ought to do something ; but you 
 must forgive me, Mr. Wolfe, it may be dangerous to talk with 
 you on these matters : and, now I think of it, the sooner I get 
 
 to W the better good morning a shower's coming on : 
 
 You won't have the umbrella, then?" 
 
 "They dare not," said Wolfe to himself, "no, no, they dare 
 not attack us they dare not "; and clenching his fist, he 
 pursued, with a quicker step, and a more erect mien, his soli- 
 tary way. 
 
 When he was about the distance of three miles from W , 
 
 he was overtaken by a middle-aged man, of a frank air and a 
 respectable appearance. " Good day, sir,"said he ; "we seem 
 to be journeying the same way will it be against your wishes 
 to join company ? " 
 
 Wolfe assented, and the stranger resumed : 
 
 " I suppose, sir, you intend to be present at the meeting at 
 
 W to-morrow. There will be an immense concourse, and 
 
 the entrance of a new detachment of soldiers, and the various 
 reports of the likelihood of their interference with the assembly, 
 make it an object of some interest and anxiety to look for- 
 ward to." 
 
 " True true," said Wolfe slowly, eyeing his new acquaint- 
 ance with a deliberate and scrutinizing attention. "It will, in- 
 deed, be interesting to see how far an evil and hardy govern- 
 ment will venture to encroach upon the rights of the people, 
 which it ruins while it pretends to rule." 
 
 "Of a truth," rejoined the other, "I rejoice that I am no 
 politician. I believe my spirit is as free as any cooped in the 
 narrow dungeon of earth's clay can well be ; yet I confess that 
 it has drawn none of its liberty from book, pamphlet, speech, 
 or newspaper, of modern times." 
 
 "So much the worse for you, sir," said Wolfe sourly: "the 
 man who has health and education can find no excuse for 
 supineness or indifference to that form of legislation by which 
 his country decays or prospers."
 
 358 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 "Why," said the other gayly, "I willingly confess myself 
 less of a patriot than a philosopher ; and as long as I am harm 
 less, I strive very little to be useful, in a public capacity ; in a 
 private one, as a father, a husband, and a neighbor, I trust I 
 am not utterly without my value." 
 
 " Pish ! " cried Wolfe ; " let no man who forgets his public 
 duties, prate of his private merits. I tell you, man, that he 
 who can advance by a single hair's-breadththe happiness or the 
 freedom of mankind has done more to save his own soul than 
 if he had paced every step of the narrow circle of his domestic 
 life with the regularity of clock-work." 
 
 "You may be right," quoth the stranger carelessly; "but I 
 look on things in the mass, and perhaps see only the super- 
 ficies, while you, I perceive already, are a lover of the abstract. 
 For my part, Harry Fielding's two definitions seem to me ex- 
 cellent. ' Patriot a candidate for a place ! ' ' Politics the 
 art of getting such a place ! ' Perhaps, sir, as you seem a man 
 of education, you remember the words of our great novelist." 
 
 "No !" answered Wolfe, a little contemptuously "I cannot 
 say that I burthen my memory with the deleterious witticisms 
 and shallow remarks of writers of fancy. It has been a mighty 
 and spreading evil to the world, that the vain fictions of the 
 poets or the exaggerations of novelists have been hitherto so 
 welcomed and extolled. Better had it been for us if the de- 
 struction of the lettered wealth at Alexandria had included all 
 the lighter works which have floated, from their very levity, 
 down the stream of time, an example and a corruption to the 
 degraded geniuses of later days." 
 
 The eyes of the stranger sparkled. "Why, you outgoth the 
 Goth ! " exclaimed he sharply. " But you surely preach 
 against what you have not studied. Confess that you are but 
 slightly acquainted with Shakspeare, and Spenser, and noble 
 Dan Chaucer. Ay, if you knew them as well as I do, you 
 would, like me, give 
 
 ' To hem faith and full credence, 
 And in your heart have hem in reverence.' " 
 
 " Pish ! " again muttered Wolfe ; and then rejoined aloud, 
 " It grieves me to see time so wasted, and judgment so per- 
 verted, as yours appears to have been ; but it fills me with pity 
 and surprise, as well as grief, to find that, so far from shame at 
 the effeminacy of your studies, you appear to glory and exult 
 m them." 
 
 " May the Lord help me, and lighten thee," said Cole for it 
 was he. "You are at le^st not a novelty in human wisdom,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 359 
 
 whatever you may be in character ; for you are far from being 
 the only one proud of being ignorant, and pitying those who 
 are not so." 
 
 Wolfe darted one of his looks of fire at the speaker, who 
 nothing abashed, met the glance with an eye, if not as fiery, at 
 least as bold. 
 
 "I see," said the republican, "that we shall not agree upon 
 the topics you have started. If you still intrude your 
 society upon me, you will, at least, choose some other subject 
 of conversation." 
 
 " Pardon me," said Cole, whose very studies, while they had 
 excited, in their self-defence, his momentary warmth, made him 
 habitually courteous and urbane " pardon me for my hasti- 
 ness of expression. I own myself in fault." And, with this 
 apology, our ex-king slid into the new topics which the scenery 
 and weather afforded him. 
 
 Wolfe, bent upon the object of his present mission, made some 
 inquiries respecting Mordaunt ; and though Cole only shared 
 the uncertain information of the country gossips, as to the past 
 history of that person, yet the little he did know was sufficient 
 to confirm the republican in his belief of Algernon's identity ; 
 while the ex-gypsy's account of his rank and reputation in the 
 country made Wolfe doubly anxious to secure, if possible, his 
 good offices and interference on behalf of the meeting. But 
 the conversation was not always restricted to neutral and indif- 
 ferent ground, but, ever and anon, wandered into various allu- 
 sions or opinions, from the one, certain to beget retort or con- 
 troversy in the other. 
 
 Had we time, and our reader patience, it would have been 
 a rare and fine contrast to have noted more at large the differ- 
 ences of thought and opinion between the companions ; each 
 in his several way so ardent for liberty, and so impatient of the 
 control and customs of society; each so enthusiastic for the 
 same object, yet so coldly contemptuous to the enthusiasm of 
 the other. The one guided only by his poetical and erratic 
 tastes, the other solely by dreams, seeming to the world no less 
 baseless, yet, to his own mind, bearing the name of stern judg- 
 ment and inflexible truth. Both men of active and adventur- 
 ous spirits, to whom forms were fetters, and ceremonies odious ; 
 yet, deriving from that mutual similarity only pity for mutual 
 perversion, they were memorable instances of the great differ- 
 ences congeniality itself will occasion, and of the never-end- 
 ing varieties which minds rather under the influence of imag- 
 ination than judgment will create.
 
 360 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXV. 
 "Gratis anhelans, multa agendo, nihil agens."* 
 
 UPON entering the town, the streets displayed all the bustle 
 and excitement which the approaching meeting was eminently 
 calculated to create in a place ordinarily quiescent and undis- 
 turbed ; groups of men were scattered in different parts 
 conversing with great eagerness ; while here and there, 
 some Demosthenes of the town, impatient of the coming strife, 
 was haranguing his little knot of admiring friends, and prepar- 
 ing his oratorical organs by petty skirmishing for the grand 
 battle of the morrow. Now and then the eye roved upon the 
 gaunt forms of Lord Ulswater's troopers, as they strolled idly 
 along the streets, in pairs, perfectly uninterested by the great 
 event which set all the more peaceable inmates of the town in 
 a ferment, and returning, with a slighting and supercilious 
 glance, the angry looks and muttered anathemas which, ever 
 and anon, the hardier spirits of the petitioning party liberally 
 bestowed upon them. 
 
 As Wolfe and his comrade entered the main street, the for- 
 mer was accosted by some one of his compatriots, who, seiz- 
 ing him by the arm, was about to apprise the neighboring idlers, 
 by a sudden exclamation, of the welcome entrance of the elo- 
 quent and noted republican. But Wolfe perceived, and 
 thwarted his design. 
 
 " Hush ! " said he, in a low voice ; " I am only now on my 
 way to an old friend, who seems a man of influence in these 
 parts, and may be of avail to us on the morrow ; keep silence, 
 therefore, with regard to my coming till I return. I would not 
 have my errand interrupted." 
 
 "As you will," said the brother-spirit ; "but whom have you 
 here a fellow laborer?" and the reformer pointed to Cole, 
 who, with an expression of shrewd humor, blended with a sort 
 of philosophical compassion, stood at a little distance waiting 
 for W'olfe, and eyeing the motley groups assembled before him. 
 
 "No," answered Wolfe ; " he is some vain and idle sower of 
 unprofitable flowers ; a thing who loves poetry, and, for aught 
 I know, writes it ; but that reminds me that I must rid myself 
 of his company ; yet stay do you know this neighborhood 
 sufficiently to serve me as a guide ?" 
 
 " Ah," quoth the other ; " I was born within three miles of 
 the town." 
 
 * Panting and laboring in vain ; doing much effecting nothing.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 361 
 
 y Indeed ! " rejoined Wolfe ; " then, perhaps you can tell me 
 it there is any way of reaching a place called Mordaunt Court, 
 without passing through the more public and crowded thorough- 
 fares." 
 
 '"To be sure," rejoined the brother-spirit; "you have only 
 to turn to the right up yon hill, and you will in an instant be 
 smt of the purlieus and precincts of W , and on your short- 
 est road to Mordaunt Court ; but surely it is not to its owner 
 that you are bound ? " 
 
 ''And why not?" said Wolfe. 
 
 "Because," replied the other, "he is the wealthiest, thehigh- 
 jst, and, as report says, the haughtiest aristocrat of these 
 parts." 
 
 " So much the better, then," said Wolfe, " can he aid us in 
 obtaining a quiet hearing to-morrow, undisturbed by those liv- 
 eried varlets of hire, who are termed, in sooth, Britain's de- 
 fence ! Much better, when we think of all they cost us to pam- 
 per and 'to clothe, should they be termed Britain's ruin; but 
 farewell for the present ; we shall meet to-night ; your lodg- 
 ings ?" 
 
 " Yonder," said the other, pointing to a small inn opposite ; 
 and Wolfe, nodding his adieu, returned to Cole, whose viva- 
 cious and restless nature had already made him impatient of 
 his companion's delay. 
 
 ''I must take my leave of you now," said Wolfe, "which I 
 do with a hearty exhortation that you will change your studies, 
 fit only for effeminate and enslaved minds." 
 
 "And I return the exhortation," answered Cole. "Your 
 studies seem to me ten-fold more crippling than mine : mine 
 takes all this earth's restraint from me, and yours seem only to 
 remind you that all earth is restraint: mine show me whatever 
 worlds the fondest fancy could desire ; yours only the follies 
 and chains of this. In short, while 'my mind to me a kingdom 
 is,' yours seems to consider the whole universe itself nothing 
 but a great meeting for the purpose of abusing ministers and 
 demanding reform ! " 
 
 Not too well pleased by this answer, and at the same time 
 indisposed to delay of further reply, Wolfe contented himself 
 with an iron sneer of disdain, and, turning on his heel, strode 
 rapidly away in the direction his friend had indicated. 
 
 Meanwhile, Cole followed him with his eye, till he was out 
 of sight, and then muttered to himself " Never was there a fit- 
 ter addition to old Barclay's ' Ship of Fools ! ' I should not 
 Wonder if this man's patriotism leads him from despising the
 
 362 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 legislature into breaking the law ; and faith, the surest way to 
 the gallows is less through vice than discontent ; yet, I would 
 fain hope better things for him for, methinks, he is neither a 
 common declaimer nor an ordinary man." 
 
 With these words the honest Cole turned away, and, stroll- 
 ing towards the Golden Fleece, soon found himself in the hos- 
 pitable mansion of Mistress and Mister Merrylack. 
 
 While the ex-king was taking his ease at his inn, Wolfe pro- 
 ceeded to Mordaunt Court. The result of the meeting that 
 there ensued was a determination on the part of Algernon to 
 repair immediately to W . 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVL 
 "The commons here in Kent are up in arms." Second Part of Henry VI. 
 
 WHEN Mordaunt arrived at W , he found that the pro- 
 vincial deities (who were all assembled at dinner with the prin- 
 cipal inhabitants of the town), in whose hands the fate of the 
 meeting was placed, were in great doubt and grievous conster- 
 nation. He came in time, first to balance the votes, and 
 ultimately to decide them. His mind, prudent and acute, 
 when turned to worldly affairs, saw in a glance the harmless, 
 though noisy, nature of the meeting ; and he felt that the 
 worst course the government or the county could pursue would 
 be to raise into importance, by violence, what otherwise would 
 meet with ridicule from most, and indifference from the rest. 
 
 His large estates, his ancient name, his high reputation for 
 talent, joined to that manner, half eloquent and half command- 
 ing, which rarely fails of effect when deliberation only requires 
 a straw on either side to become decision all these rendered 
 his interference of immediate avail ; and it was settled that the 
 meeting should, as similar assemblies had done before, proceed 
 and conclude, undisturbed by the higher powers, so long as no 
 positive act of sedition to the government or danger to the 
 town was committed. 
 
 Scarcely was this arrangement agreed upon, before Lord 
 Ulswater, who had hitherto been absent, entered the room in 
 which the magisterial conclave was assembled. Mr. Glumford 
 (whom our readers will possibly remember as the suitor to 
 Isabel St. Leger, and who had at first opposed, and then re-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 363 
 
 luctantly subscribed to, Mordaunt's interference) bustled up to 
 him. 
 
 " So, so, my lord," said he, " since I had the honor of seeing 
 your lordship, quite a new sort of trump has been turned up." 
 
 " I do not comprehend your metaphorical elegancies of 
 speech, Mr. Glumford," said Lord Uiswater. 
 
 Mr. Glumford explained. Lord Ulswater's cheek grew 
 scarlet. " So Mr. Mordaunt has effected this wise alteration," 
 said he. 
 
 "Nobody else, my lord, nobody else; and I am sure, though 
 your lordship's estates are at the other end of the county, yet 
 they are much larger than his ; and since your lordship has a 
 troop at your command, and that sort of thing, I would not, if 
 I were your lordship, suffer any such opposition to your wishes." 
 
 Without making a reply to this harangue, Lord Uiswater 
 stalked haughtily up to Mordaunt, who was leaning against the 
 wainscot, and conversing with those around him. 
 
 "I cannot but conceive, Mr. Mordaunt," said he, with a for- 
 mal bow, " that I have been misinformed in the intelligence I 
 have just received." 
 
 " Lord Uiswater will perhaps inform me to what intelligence 
 he alludes." 
 
 " That Mr. Mordaunt, the representative of one of the no- 
 blest families in England, has given the encouragement and in- 
 fluence of his name and rank to the designs of a seditious and 
 turbulent mob." 
 
 Mordaunt smiled slightly, as he replied: "Your lordship 
 rightly believes that you are misinformed. It is precisely be- 
 cause I would not have the mob you speak of seditious or tur- 
 bulent, that I have made it my request that the meeting of to- 
 morrow should be suffered to pass off undisturbed." 
 
 "Then, sir," cried Lord Uiswater, striking the table with a 
 violence which caused three reverend potentates of the province 
 to start back in dismay, " I cannot but consider such interfer- 
 ence on your part to the last degree impolitic and uncalled for: 
 these, sir, are times of great danger to the state, and in which 
 it is indispensably requisite to support and strengthen the 
 authority of the law." 
 
 "I waive at present," answered Mordaunt, "all reply to lan- 
 guage neither courteous nor appropriate. I doubt not but that 
 the magistrates will decide as is most in accordance with the 
 spirit of that law which in this, and in all times, should be sup- 
 ported." 
 
 "Sir," said Lord Uiswater, losing his temper more and more,
 
 364 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 as he observed that the by-standers, whom he had been accus- 
 tomed to awe, all visibly inclined to the opinion of Mordaunt, 
 " sir, if your name has been instrumental in producing so un- 
 fortunate a determination on the part of the magistrates, I shall 
 hold you responsible to the government for those results which 
 ordinary prudence may calculate upon." 
 
 " When Lord Ulswater," said Mordaunt sternly, "has learned 
 what is due, not only to the courtesies of society, but to those 
 legitimate authorities of his country, who (he ventures to sup- 
 pose) are to be influenced contrary to their sense of duty, by 
 any individual, then he may, perhaps, find leisure to make him- 
 self better acquainted with the nature of those laws which he 
 now so vehemently upholds." 
 
 "Mr. Mordaunt, you will consider yourself answerable to me 
 for those words," said Lord Ulswater, with a tone of voice un- 
 naturally calm ; and the angry flush of his countenance gave 
 place to a livid paleness. Then, turning on his heel, he left 
 the room. 
 
 As he repaired homeward, he saw one of his soldiers engaged 
 in a loud and angry contest with a man, in the plain garb of a 
 peaceful citizen ; a third person, standing by, appeared inef- 
 fectually endeavoring to pacify the disputants. A rigid disci- 
 plinarian, Lord Ulswater allowed not even party feeling, roused 
 as it was, to conquer professional habits. He called off the sol- 
 dier, and the man with whom the latter had been engaged im- 
 mediately came up to Lord Ulswater, with a step as haughty 
 as his own. The third person, who had attempted the peace- 
 maker, followed him. 
 
 " I presume, sir," said he, " that you are an officer of this 
 man's regiment." 
 
 " I am the commanding .officer, sir," said Lord Ulswater, very 
 little relishing the air an-d tone of the person who addressed him. 
 
 "Then," answered the man (who was, indeed, no other than 
 Wolfe, who, having returned to W with Mordaunt, had al- 
 ready succeeded in embroiling himself in a dispute) "then, 
 sir, I look to you for his punishment, and my redress"; and 
 Wolfe proceeded, in his own exaggerated language, to detail a 
 very reasonable cause of complaint. The fact was, that Wolfe, 
 meeting one of his compatriots, and conversing with him some- 
 what loudly, had uttered some words which attracted the 
 spleen of the soldier, who was reeling home very comfortably 
 intoxicated ; and the soldier had most assuredly, indulged in a 
 copious abuse of the d d rebel, who could not walk the 
 
 streets without chattering sedition. 
 
 v
 
 THE DISOWNED. 365 
 
 Wolfe's friend confirmed the statement. 
 
 The trooper attempted to justify himself ; but Lord Ulswater 
 saw his intoxication in an instant, and, secretly vexed that the 
 complaint was not on the other side, ordered the soldier to his 
 quarters, with a brief but sure threat of punishment on the 
 morrow. Not willing, however, to part with the "d d rebel," 
 on terms so flattering to the latter, Lord Ulswater, turning to 
 Wolfe, with a severe and angry air, said : 
 
 "As for you, fellow, I believe the whole fault was on your 
 side ; and if you dare give vent again to your disaffected rav- 
 ings, I shall have you sent to prison, to tame your rank blood 
 upon bread and water. Begone, and think yourself fortunate to 
 escape now ! " 
 
 The fierce spirit of Wolfe was in arms on the instant and 
 his reply, in subjecting him to Lord Ulswater's threat, might at 
 least have prevented his enlightening the public on the morrow, 
 had not his friend, a peaceable, prudent man, seized him by 
 the arm, and whispered "What are you about? Consider for 
 what you are here another word may rob the assembly of 
 your presence. A man bent on a public cause mast not, on the 
 eve of its trial, enlist in a private quarrel." 
 
 " True, my friend, true," said Wolfe, swallowing his rage, and 
 eyeing Lord Ulswater's retreating figure with a menacing look; 
 "but the time may yet come when I shall have license to retali- 
 ate on the upstart." 
 
 "So be it," quoth the ether "he is our bitterest enemy. 
 
 You know, perhaps, that he is Lord Ulswater, of the 
 
 regiment ? it has been at his instigation that the magistrates pro- 
 posed to disturb the meeting. He has been known publicly to 
 say that all who attended the assembly ought to be given up to 
 the swords of his troopers." 
 
 " The butchering dastard ! to dream even of attacking un- 
 armed men ; but enough of him I must tarry yet in the street 
 to hear what success our intercessor has obtained." And as 
 Wolfe passed the house in which the magisterial conclave sat, 
 Mordaunt came out and accosted him. 
 
 " You have sworn to me that your purpose is peaceable," 
 said Mordaunt. 
 
 " Unquestionably," answered Wolfe. 
 
 "And you will pledge yourself that no disturbance, that can 
 either be effected, or counteracted, by yourself and friends, shall 
 take place ? " 
 
 " I will." 
 
 " Enough ! " answered Mordaunt. " Remember that if you
 
 366 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 commit the least act that can be thought dangerous, I may nol 
 be able to preserve you from the military. As it is, your meet- 
 ing will be unopposed." 
 
 Contrary to Lord Ulswater's prediction, the meeting went 
 off as quietly as an elderly maiden's tea-party. The speakers, 
 even Wolfe, not only took especial pains to recommend order 
 and peace, but avoided for the most part all inflammatory en- 
 largement upon the grievances of which they complained. And 
 the sage foreboders of evil, who had locked up their silver 
 spoons, and 'shaken their heads very wisely for the last week, 
 had the agreeable mortification of observing rather an appear- 
 ance of good-humor upon the countenances of the multitude 
 than that ferocious determination against the lives and limbs 
 of the well-affected which they had so sorrowfully anticipated. 
 
 As Mordaunt (who had been present during the whole time 
 of the meeting) mounted his horse and quitted the ground, 
 Lord Ulswater, having just left his quarters, where he had been 
 all day in expectation of some violent act of the orators or the 
 mob, demanding his military services, caught sight of him ; 
 with a sudden recollection of his own passionate threat. There 
 had been nothing in Mordaunt's words which would, in our 
 times, have justified a challenge ; but in that day duels were 
 fought upon the slightest provocation. Lord Ulswater there- 
 fore rode up at once to a gentleman with whom he 
 had some intimate acquaintance, and briefly saying that he had 
 been insulted, both as an officer and gentleman, by Mr. Mor- 
 daunt, requested his friend to call upon that gentleman and de- 
 mand satisfaction. 
 
 "To-morrow," said Lord Ulswater, "I have the misfortune 
 to be unavoidably engaged. The next day you can appoint 
 place and time of meeting." 
 
 "I must first see the gentleman to whom Mr. Mordaunt may 
 refer me," said the friend prudently ; "and perhaps your honor 
 may be satisfied without any hostile meeting at all." 
 
 "I think not," said Lord Ulswater carelessly, as he rode 
 away, "for Mr. Mordaunt is a gentleman, and gentlemen never 
 apologize." 
 
 Wolfe was standing unobserved near Lord Ulswater while 
 the latter thus instructed his proposed second. " Man of 
 blood," muttered the republican ; " with homicide thy code of 
 honor, and massacre thine interpretation of law, by violence 
 wouldst thou rule, and by violence mayst thou perish ! "
 
 TttE DISOWNED. 567 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVII. 
 
 " Jam te premet nox, fabulseque Manes 
 Et domus exilis Plutonia."* HOR. 
 
 THE morning was dull and heavy, as Lord Ulswater mounted 
 his horse, and, unattended, took his way towards Westborough 
 Park. His manner was unusually thoughtful and absent ; per- 
 haps two affairs upon his hands, either of which seemed likely 
 to end in bloodshed, were sufficient to bring reflection even 
 to the mind of a cavalry officer. 
 
 He had scarcely got out of the town before he was overtaken 
 by our worthy friend Mr. Glumford. As he had been a firm 
 ally of Lord Ulswater in the contest respecting the meeting, so, 
 when he joined and saluted that nobleman, Lord Ulswater, 
 mindful of past services, returned his greeting with an air 
 rather of condescension than hauteur. To say truth, his lord- 
 ship was never very fond of utter loneliness, and the respectful 
 bearing of Glumford, joined to that mutual congeniality which 
 sympathy in political views always occasions, made him more 
 pleased with the society than shocked with the intrusion of the 
 squire ; so that when Glumford said, " If your lordship's way 
 lies along this road for the next five or six miles, perhaps you 
 will allow me the honor of accompanying you," Lord Ulswater 
 graciously signified his consent to the proposal, and carelessly 
 mentioning that he was going to Westborough Park, slid into 
 that conversation with his new companion which the meeting 
 and its actors afforded. 
 
 Turn we for an instant to Clarence. At the appointed hour he 
 had arrived at Westborough Park, and, bidding his companion, 
 the trusty Wardour, remain within the chaise which had con- 
 veyed them, he was ushered, with a trembling heart, but a mien 
 erect and self-composed, into Lady Westborough's presence ; 
 the marchioness was alone. 
 
 " I am sensible, sir," said she, with a little embarrassment, 
 " that it is not exactly becoming to my station and circum- 
 stances to suffer a meeting of the present nature between Lord 
 Ulswater and yourself to be held within this house ; but I could 
 not resist the request of Lord Ulswater, conscious, from his 
 character, that it could contain nothing detrimental to the to 
 the consideration and delicacy due to Lady Flora Ardenne," 
 
 Clarence bowed. " So far as I am concerned," said he, "I 
 
 * This very hour Death shall overcome thee, and the fabled Manes, and the shadowy 
 Plutonian realms receive thee.
 
 j63 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 feel confident that Lady Westborough will not repent of her 
 condescension." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 " It is singular," said Lady Westborough, looking to the 
 clock upon an opposite table, "that Lord Ulswater is not yet 
 arrived." 
 
 " It is," said Clarence, scarcely conscious of his words, and 
 wondering whether Lady Flora would deign to appear. 
 
 Another pause. Lady Westborough felt the awkwardness of 
 her situation. 
 
 Clarence made an effort to recover himself. 
 
 " I do not see," said he, " the necessity of delaying the ex- 
 planation I have to offer to your ladyship till rny Lord Uls- 
 water deems it suitable to appear. " Allow me at once to enter 
 upon a history, told in a few words, and easily proved." 
 
 " Stay," said Lady Westborough, struggling with her curi- 
 osity ; "it is due to one who has stood in so peculiar a situa- 
 tion in our family to wait yet a little longer for his coming. 
 We will, therefore, till the hour is completed, postpone the 
 object of our meeting." 
 
 Clarence again bowed, and was silent. Another and a longer 
 pause ensued ; it was broken by the sound of the clock strik- 
 ing the hour was completed. 
 
 " Now," began Clarence when he was interrupted by a 
 sudden and violent commotion in the hall. Above all was 
 heard a loud and piercing cry, in which Clarence recognized 
 the voice of the old steward. He rose abruptly, and stood 
 motionless and aghast : his eyes met those of Lacly West- 
 borough, who, pale and agitated, lost for the moment all her 
 habitual self-command. The sound increased : Clarence 
 rushed from the room into the hall ; the open door of the 
 apartment revealed to Lady Westborough, as to him, a sight 
 which allowed her no further time for hesitation. She hurried 
 after Clarence into the hall, gave one look, uttered one shriek 
 of horror, and fainted.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXVIII. 
 
 Iden. But them wilt brave me in these saucy terms. 
 Cade. Brave thee ! ay , by the best blood that ever was broached, 
 and beard thee too. SHAKSPEARE. 
 
 " You see, my lord," said Mr. Glumford to Lord Ulswater, 
 as they rode slowly on, "that as long as those rebellious 
 scoundrels are indulged in their spoutings and meetings, 
 and that sort of thing, that that there will be no bearing 
 them." 
 
 "Very judiciously remarked, sir," replied Lord Ulswater. 
 " I wish all gentlemen of birth and consideration viewed the 
 question in the same calm, dispassionate, and profound light 
 that you do. Would to heaven it were left to me to clear the 
 country of these mutinous and dangerous rascals I would 
 make speedy and sure work of it." 
 
 " I am certain you would, my lord I am certain you would. 
 It is a thousand pities that pompous fellow, Mordaunt, inter- 
 fered yesterday, with his moderation, and policy, and all that 
 sort of thing so foolish, you know, my lord mere theory, 
 and romance, and that sort of thing : we should have had it 
 all our own way, if he had not." 
 
 Lord Ulswater played with his riding-whip, but did not 
 reply. Mr. Glumford continued : 
 
 " Pray, my lord, did your lordship see what an ugly, ill- 
 dressed set of dogs those meeti 'tigers were that Wolfe, above 
 all? Oh, he's a horrid-looking fellow. By-the-by, he left 
 the town this very morning ; I saw him take leave of his 
 freinds in the street just before I set out. He is going to some 
 other meeting on foot, too. Only think of the folly of talk- 
 ing about the policy, and prudence, and humanity, of sparing 
 such a pitiful poor fellow as that can't afford a chaise, or a 
 stage-coach even, my lord positively can't." 
 
 "You see the matter exactly in its true light, Mr. Glumford," 
 said his lordship, patting his fine horse, which was somewhat 
 impatient of the slow pace of its companion. 
 
 "A very beautiful animal of your lordship's," said Mr. 
 Glumford, spurring his own horse a heavy, dull quadruped, 
 with an obstinate ill-set tail, a low shoulder, and a Roman 
 nose. " I am very partial to horses myself, and love a fine 
 horse as well as anybody." 
 
 Lord Ulswater cast a glance at his companion's steed, and 
 seeing nothing in its qualities to justify this assertion of at-
 
 376 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 tachraent to fine horses, was silent ; Lord Ulswater never flat- 
 tered even his mistress, much less Mr. Glumford. 
 
 " I will tell you, my lord," continued Mr. Glumford, "what 
 a bargain this horse was"; and the squire proceeded, much 
 to Lord Ulswater's discontent, to detail the history of his craft 
 in making the said bargain. 
 
 The riders were now entering a part of the road, a little 
 more than two miles from Westborough Park, in which the 
 features of the neighboring country took a bolder and rnder 
 aspect than they had hitherto worn. On one side of the road, 
 the view opened upon a descent of considerable depth, and 
 the dull sun looked drearily over a valley in which large fallow 
 fields, a distant and solitary spire, and a few stinted and with- 
 ering trees, formed the chief characteristics. On the other 
 side of the road a narrow foot-path was separated from the 
 highway by occasional posts ; and on this path Lord Ulswater 
 (how the minute and daily occurrences of life show the 
 grand pervading principles of character) was, at the time we 
 refer to, riding, in preference to the established thoroughfare for 
 equestrian and aurigal travellers. The side of this path farth- 
 est from the road was bordered by a steep declivity of stony 
 and gravelly earth, which almost deserved the dignified appel- 
 lation of a precipice ; and it was with no small exertion of 
 dexterous horsemanship that Lord Ulswater kept his spirited 
 and susceptible steed upon the narrow and somewhat perilous 
 path, in spite of its frequent starts at the rugged descent be- 
 low. 
 
 " I think, my lord, if I may venture to say so," said Mr. 
 Glumford, having just finished the narration of his bargain, 
 " that it would be better for you to take the high road just at 
 present ; for the descent from the foot-path is steep and 
 abrupt, and deuced crumbling ; so that if your lordship's 
 horse shied or took a wrong step, it might be attended with 
 Unpleasant consequences a fall, or that sort of thing." 
 
 " You are very good, sir," said Lord Ulswater, who, like 
 most proud men, conceived advice an insult : " but I imagine 
 myself capable of guiding my horse, at least upon a road so 
 excellent as this." 
 
 " Certainly, my lord, certainly ; I beg your pardon : but 
 bless me, who is that tall fellow in black, talking to himself 
 yonder, my lord ? The turn of the road hides him from you 
 just at present ; but I see him well. Ha-ha ! what gestures he 
 uses ! I dare say he is one of the petitioners, and yes, my 
 lord, by Jupiter, it is Wolfe himself ! You had better (excuse
 
 THE DISOWNED. 371 
 
 me, my lord) come down from the foot-path it is not wide 
 enough for two people and Wolfe, I dare say, a d d rascal, 
 would not get out of the way for the devil himself ! He's a 
 nasty, black, fierce-looking fellow ; I would not for something 
 meet him in a dark night, or that sort of thing ! " 
 
 " I do not exactly understand, Mr. Glumford," returned 
 Lord Ulswater, with a supercilious glance at that gentleman, 
 "what peculiarities of temper you are pleased to impute to 
 me, or from what you deduce the supposition that I shall 
 move out of my way for a person like Mr. Woolt, or Wolfe, or 
 whatever be his name." 
 
 " I beg your pardon, my lord, I am sure," answered Glum- 
 ford ; " of course your lordship knows best, and if the rogue 
 is impertinent, why, I'm a magistrate, and will commit him ; 
 though, to be sure," continued our righteous Daniel, in a 
 lower key, " he has a right to walk upon the foot-path without 
 being ridden over, or that sort of thing." 
 
 The equestrians were now very near Wolfe, who turning 
 hastily round, perceived, and immediately recognized Lord 
 Ulswater. " Ah-ha," muttered he to himself, " here comes the 
 insolent thirster for blood, grudging us, seemingly, even the 
 meagre comfort of the path which his horse's hoofs are break- 
 ing up yet, thank Heaven," added the republican, looking 
 with a stern satisfaction at the narrowness of the footing, " he 
 cannot very well pass me, and the free lion does not move out 
 of his way for such pampered kine as those to which this 
 creature belongs." 
 
 Actuated by this thought, Wolfe almost insensibly moved en- 
 tirely into the middle of the path, so that what with the posts 
 on one side, and the abrupt and undefended precipice, if we 
 may so call it, on the other, it was quite impossible for any 
 horseman to pass the republican, unless over his body. 
 
 Lord Ulswater marked the motion, and did not want pene- 
 tration to perceive the cause. Glad of an opportunity to 
 wreak some portion of his irritation against a member of a 
 body so offensive to his mind, and which had the clay before 
 obtained a sort of triumph over his exertions against them ; 
 and rendered obstinate in his intention by the pique he had 
 felt at Glumford's caution, Lord Ulswater, tightening his rein, 
 and humming, with apparent indifference, a popular tune, con- 
 tinued his progress till he was within a foot of the republican. 
 Then, checking his horse for a moment, he called, in a tone of 
 quiet arrogance, to Wolfe to withdraw himself on one side till 
 he had passed.
 
 372 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 The fierce blood of the republican, which the least breath of 
 oppression sufficed to kindle, and which yet boiled with the 
 remembrance of Lord Ulswater's threat to him two nights be- 
 fore, was on fire at this command. He stopped short, and 
 turning half round, stood erect in the strength and power of 
 his singularly tall and not ungraceful form. " Poor and proud 
 fool," said he, with a voice of most biting scorn, and fixing an 
 eye eloquent of ire and menaced danger upon the calmly con- 
 temptuous countenance of the patrician " Poor and proud 
 fool, do you think that your privileges have already reached so 
 pleasant a pitch that you may ride over men like dust? Off, 
 fool the basest peasant in England, degraded as he is, would 
 resist, while he ridiculed your arrogance." 
 
 Without deigning any reply, Lord Ulswater spurred his 
 horse ; the spirited animal bounded forward, almost on the very 
 person of the obstructor of the path ; with uncommon agility 
 Wolfe drew aside from the danger, seized, with a powerful 
 grasp, the bridle, and abruptly arresting the horse, backed it 
 fearfully towards the descent. Enraged beyond all presence 
 of mind, the fated nobleman, raising his whip, struck violently 
 at the republican. The latter, as he felt the blow, uttered a 
 single shout of such ferocity that it curdled the timorous blood 
 of Glumford, and with a giant and iron hand he backed the 
 horse several paces down the precipice. The treacherous earth 
 crumbled beneath the weight, and Lord Ulswater, spurring his 
 steed violently at the same instant that Wolfe so sharply and 
 strongly curbed it, the affrighted animal reared violently, 
 forced the rein from Wolfe, stood erect for a moment of hor- 
 ror to the spectator, and then, as its footing and balance alike 
 failed it, fell backward and rolled over and over its unfortunate 
 and helpless rider. 
 
 "Good Heavens!" cried Glumford, who had sat quietly 
 upon his dozing horse, watching the result of the dispute 
 " what have you done ? you have killed his lordship posi- 
 tively killed him and his horse, too, I dare say. You shall 
 be hanged for this, sir, as sure as I am a magistrate and that 
 sort of thing." 
 
 Unheeding this denunciation, Wolfe had made to the spot 
 where rider and horse lay blent together at the foot of the de- 
 scent ; and assisting the latter to rise, bent down to examine 
 the real effect of his violence. "Methinks," said he, as he 
 looked upon the hueless, but still defying, features of the 
 horseman " methinks I have seen that face years before but 
 where ? perhaps my dreams have foretold me this,"
 
 THE DISOWNED. 373 
 
 Lord Ulswater was utterly senseless ; and as Wolfe raised 
 him, he saw that the right side of the head was covered with 
 olood, and that one arm seemed crushed and broken. Mean- 
 while a carriage had appeared was hailed by Glumford 
 stopped ; and, on being informed of the circumstance, and the 
 rank of the sufferer, the traveller, a single gentleman, de- 
 scended, assisted to raise the unhappy nobleman placed him 
 in the carriage, and, obeying Glumford's instructions, pro- 
 ceeded slowly to Westborough Park. 
 
 " But the ruffian the rebel the murderer ! " said Mr. 
 Glumford, both querulously and inquiringly, locking towards 
 Wolfe, who, without having attempted to assist his victim, 
 stood aloof with arms folded, and an expression of sated 
 ferocity upon his speaking features. 
 
 " Oh ! as to him," quoth the traveller, stepping into his car- 
 riage, in order to support the mangled man " You, sir, and 
 my valet can bring him along with you, or take him to the 
 next town, or do, in short, with him just as you please, only be 
 sure he does not escape drive on, postboy, very gently." 
 And poor Mr. Glumford found the muscular form of the stern 
 Wolfe consigned to the sole care of himself and a very diminu- 
 tive man in pea-green silk stockings, who, however excellently 
 well he might perform the office of valet, was certainly by no 
 means calculated in physical powers for the detention of a 
 criminal. 
 
 Wolfe saved the pair a world of trouble and anxiety. 
 
 "Sir," said he gravely, turning to Glumford, "you beheld 
 the affray, and whatever its consequences, will do me the 
 common justice of witnessing as to the fact of the first 
 aggressor ; it will, however, be satisfactory to both of us to 
 seize the earliest opportunity of putting the matter upon a 
 
 legal footing, and I shall, therefore, return to W , to which 
 
 town you will doubtless accompany mo." 
 
 "With all my heart ! " cried Mr. Glumford, feeling as if a 
 mountain of responsibility were taken from his breast. " And 
 1 wish to Heaven you may be transported instead of hanged."
 
 374 THE DISOWNED, 
 
 CHAPTER LXXIX. 
 
 " But gasping heaved the breath that Lara drew. 
 And dull the film along his dim eye grew." BYRON. 
 
 THE light broke partially through the half-closed shutters of 
 the room in which lay Lord Ulswater who, awakened to sense 
 and pain by the motion of the carriage, had now relapsed into 
 insensibility. By the side of the sofa pn which he was laid, 
 knelt Clarence, bathing one hand with tears violent and fast ; 
 on the opposite side leant over, with bald front, and an express- 
 ion of mingled fear and sorrow upon his intent countenance, the 
 old steward ; while, at a little distance, Lord Westborough, who 
 had been wheeled into the room, sat mute in his chair, aghast 
 with bewilderment and horror, and counting every moment to 
 the arrival of the surgeon, who had been sent for. The stranger 
 to whom the carriage belonged stood by the window, detailing, 
 in a low voice, to the chaplain of the house, what particulars of 
 the occurrence he was acquainted with, while the youngest 
 scion of the family, a boy of about ten years, and who, in the 
 general confusion, had thrust himself unnoticed into the room, 
 stood close to the pair, with open mouth and thirsting ears, and 
 a face on which childish interest at a fearful tale was strongly 
 blent with the more absorbed feeling of terror at the truth. 
 
 Slowly Lord Ulswater opened his eyes they rested upon 
 Clarence. 
 
 " My brother my brother ! " cried Clarence, in a voice of 
 powerful anguish "is it thus thus that you have come hither 
 to " He stopped in the gashing fulness of his heart. Ex- 
 tricating from Clarence the only hand he was able to use, Lord 
 Ulswater raised it to his brow, as if in the effort to clear remem- 
 brance ; and then, turning to Wardour, seemed to ask the truth 
 of Clarence's claim at least so the old man interpreted the 
 meaning of his eye, and the faint and scarce intelligible words 
 which broke from his lips. 
 
 '*It is it is, my honored lord," cried he, struggling with his 
 emotion "it is your brother your lost brother, Clinton L'Es- 
 trange. And as he said these words, Clarence felt the damp 
 chill hand of his brother press his own, and knew by that 
 pressure and the smile kind, though brief from exceeding pain 
 with which the ill-fated nobleman looked upon him, that 
 the claim long unknown was at last acknowledged, and the 
 ties long broken united, though in death. 
 
 The surgeon arrived the room was cleared of all but Clar-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 37$ 
 
 the first examination was sufficient. Unaware of Clar- 
 ence's close relationship to the sufferer, the surgeon took him 
 aside "A very painful operation," said he, " might be per- 
 formed, but it would only torture, in vain, the last moments of 
 the patient ; no human skill can save, or even protract his 
 life." 
 
 The doomed man who, though in great pain, was still sensi- 
 ble, stirred. His brother flew towards him. " Flora," he mur- 
 mured, " let me see her, I implore." 
 
 Curbing, as much as he was able, his emotion, and conquer- 
 ing his reluctance to leave the sufferer even for a moment, 
 Clarence flew in search of Lady Flora. He found her : in rapid 
 and hasty words, he signified the wish of the dying man, and 
 hurried her, confused, trembling, and scarce conscious of the 
 melancholy scene she was about to witness, to the side of her 
 affianced bridegroom. 
 
 I have been by the death-beds of many men, and I have 
 noted that shortly before death, as the frame grows weaker and 
 weaker, the fiercer passions yield to those feelings better har- 
 monizing with the awfulness of the hour. Thoughts soft and 
 tender, which seemed little to belong to the character in the 
 health and vigor of former years, obtain then an empire, brief, 
 indeed, but utter for the time they last and this is the more 
 impressive, because (as in the present instance I shall have 
 occasion to portray) in the moments which succeed and make 
 the very latest of life, the ruling passion, suppressed for an 
 interval by such gentler feelings, sometimes again returns to take 
 its final triumph over that frail clay which, through existence, 
 it has swayed, agitated, and moulded like wax unto its will. 
 
 When Lord Ulswater saw Flora approach and bend weep- 
 ingly over him, a momentary softness stole over his face. Tak- 
 ing her hand, he extended it towards Clarence ; and, turning 
 to the latter, faltered out " Let this my brother atone 
 for " apparently unable to finish the sentence, he then relaxed 
 his hold and sunk upon the pillow : and so still, so apparently 
 breathless, did he remain for several minutes, that they thought 
 the latest agony was over. 
 
 As yielding to this impression, Clarence was about to with- 
 draw the scarce conscious Flora from the chamber, words less 
 tremulous and indistinct than aught which he had yet uttered, 
 broke from Lord Ulswater's lips. Clarence hastened to him ; 
 and, bending over his countenance, saw that, even through the 
 rapid changes and shades of death, it darkened with the pecu- 
 liar characteristics of the unreleased soul within : the brow was
 
 37# THE DISOWNED. 
 
 knit into more than its wonted sternness and pride ; and in the 
 eye, which glared upon the opposite wall, the light of the waning 
 life broke into a momentary blaze that flash, so rapid and so 
 evanescent, before the air drinks in the last spark of the being 
 it has animated, and night the starless and eternal falls over 
 the extinguished lamp ! The hand of the right arm (which was 
 that unshattered by the fall) was clenched and raised ; but, 
 when the words which came upon Clarence's ear had ceased, it 
 fell heavily by his side, like a clod of that clay which it had 
 then become. In those words, it seemed as if, in the confused 
 delirium of passing existence, the brave soldier mingled some 
 dim and bewildered recollection of former battles, with that ol 
 his last most fatal, though most ignoble strife. 
 
 "Down, down with them," he muttered between his teeth, 
 though in a tone startlingly deep and audible ; "down with them. 
 No quarter to the infidels strike for England and Effingham. 
 Ha ! who strives for flight there ! kill him no mercy, I say 
 none ! there there I have despatched him ha ! ha ! 
 What, still alive ? off, slave, off ! Oh, slain slain in a ditch, 
 by a base-born hind oh bitter bitter bitter ! " And with 
 these words, of which the last, from their piercing anguish and 
 keen despair, made a dread contrast with the fire and defiance 
 of the first, the jaw fell the flashing and fierce eye glazed and 
 set and all of the haughty and bold patrician which the earth 
 retained was dust ! 
 
 CHAPTER LXXX. 
 
 "II n'est jamais permis de deteriorer une ame humaine pour 1'avantage 
 des autres, ni de faire tin scelerat pour le service des honnetes gens*. 
 ROUSSEAU. 
 
 As the reader approaches the termination of this narrative, 
 and looks back upon the many scenes he has passed, perhaps, 
 in the mimic representation of human life, he may find no un- 
 faithful resemblance to the true. 
 
 As, amongst the crowd of characters jostled against each 
 other in their course, some drop off at the first, the second, or 
 the third stage, and leave a few only continuing to the last, 
 while Fate chooses her agents and survivors among those whom 
 the by-stander, perchance, least noticed as the objects of her 
 selection and they who, haply, seemed to him at first among 
 the most conspicuous as characters, sink, some abruptly, some 
 
 * It is not permitted us t o degrade one single smil, for the sake of conferring advantage 
 (m othersj nor to make a rogue, for the good of the honest.
 
 THE DISOWNED. tf-j 
 
 gradually, into actors of the least importance in events ; as the 
 reader notes the same passion, in different strata, producing 
 the most opposite qualities, and gathers from that notice some 
 estimate of the vast perplexity in the code of morals, deemed 
 by the shallow so plain a science, when he finds that a similar 
 and single feeling will produce both the virtue we love and the 
 vice we detest, the magnanimity we admire and the meanness 
 we despise ; as the feeble hands of the author force into con- 
 trast ignorance and wisdom, the affectation of philosophy and 
 its true essence, coarseness, and refinement, the lowest vulgar- 
 ity of sentiment with an exaltation of feeling approaching to 
 morbidity, the reality of virtue with the counterfeit, the glory of 
 the Divinity with the hideousness of the Idol, sorrow and eager 
 joy, marriage and death, tears and their young successors, 
 smiles ; as all, blent together, these varieties of life form a 
 single yet many-colored web, leaving us to doubt whether in 
 fortune, the bright hue or the dark in character, the base ma- 
 terial or the rich, predominate the workman of the web could 
 almost reconcile himself to his glaring and great deficiency in 
 art, by the fond persuasion that he has, at least in his choice of 
 tint and texture, caught something of the likeness of Nature : 
 but he knows, to the abasement of his vanity, that these enu- 
 merated particulars of resemblance to life are common to all, 
 even to the most unskilful of his brethren ; and it is not the 
 mere act of copying a true original, but the rare circumstance 
 of force and accuracy in the copy, which can alone constitute 
 a just pretension to merit, or flatter the artist with the hope of 
 a moderate success. 
 
 The news of Lord Ulswater's untimely death soon spread 
 around the neighborhood, and was conveyed to Mordaunt by 
 the very gentleman whom that nobleman had charged with his 
 
 hostile message. Algernon repaired at once to W , to 
 
 gather from Wolfe some less exaggerated account of the affray 
 than that which the many tongues of Rumor had brought to 
 him. 
 
 It was no difficult matter to see the precise share of blame 
 to be attached to Wolfe ; and, notwithstanding the biased ac- 
 count of Glumford, and the strong spirit of party then existing 
 in the country, no rational man could, for a moment, term the 
 event of a sudden fray a premeditated murder, or the violence 
 of the aggrieved the black offenceof a wilful criminal. Wolfe, 
 therefore, soon obtained a release from the confinement to 
 which he had been at first committed ; and, with a temper still 
 more exasperated by the evident disposition of his auditors to
 
 378 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 have treated him, had it been possible, with the utmost rigor, 
 he returned to companions well calculated, by their converse 
 and bent of mind, to inflame the fester of his moral constitu- 
 tion. 
 
 It happens, generally, that men very vehement in any par- 
 ticular opinion choose their friends, not for a general similarity 
 of character, but in proportion to their mutual congeniality of 
 sentiment on that particular opinion ; it happens, also, that 
 those most audibly violent, if we may so speak, on any opinion, 
 moral or political, are rarely the wisest or the purest of their 
 party. Those, with whom Wolfe was intimate were men who 
 shared none of the nobler characteristics of the republican : 
 still less did they participate, or even comprehend, the enlight- 
 ened and benevolent views for which the wise and great men 
 of that sect a sect to which all philanthrophy is, perhaps too 
 fondly, inclined to lean have been so conspicuously eminent. 
 On the contrary, Wolfe's comrades, without education, and 
 consequently without principle, had been driven to disaffec- 
 tion by desperate fortunes and ruined reputations, acting upon 
 minds polluted by the ignorance and hardened among the 
 dross of the populace. But the worst can, by constant inter- 
 course, corrupt the best ; and the barriers of good and evil, 
 often confused in Wolfe's mind by the blindness of his pas- 
 sions, seemed, as his intercourse with these lawless and ruffian 
 associates thickened, to be at last utterly broken down and 
 swept away. 
 
 Unhappily too soon after Wolfe's return to London the 
 popular irritation showed itself in mobs, perhaps rather to be 
 termed disorderly than seditious ; the ministers, however, 
 thought otherwise ; the military were summoned, and much 
 injury, resulting, it is to be hoped, from accident, not design, 
 ensued to many of the persons assembled. Some were severe- 
 ly wounded by the swords of the soldiers others maimed and 
 trampled upon by the horses, which 'shared the agitation or 
 irritability of their riders ; and a few, among whom were two 
 women and three children, lost their lives. Wolfe had been 
 one of the crowd and the scene, melancholy as it really was, 
 and appearing to his temper unredeemed and inexcusable on 
 the part of the soldiers left on his mind a deep and burning 
 impression of revenge. Justice (as they termed it) was de- 
 manded by strong bodies of the people upon the soldiers ; but 
 the administration, deeming it politic rather to awe than to con- 
 ciliate, so far from censuring the military, approved their exer- 
 tions
 
 THE DISOWNED. 379 
 
 From that time, Wolfe appears to have resolved upon the 
 execution of a design, which he had long imperfectly and con- 
 fusedly meditated. 
 
 This was no less a crime (and to him did conscientiously 
 seem no less a virtue), than to seize a favorable opportunity 
 for assassinating the most prominent member of the adminis- 
 tration, and the one who, above all the rest, was the most odi- 
 ous to the disaffected. It must be urged, in extenuation of fhe 
 atrocity of this design, that a man perpetually brooding over 
 one scheme, which to him has become the very sustenance of 
 existence, and which scheme, perpetually frustrated, grows des- 
 perate by disappointment, acquires a heat of 'morbid and ob- 
 lique enthusiasm, which may not be unreasonably termed in- 
 sanity ; and that at the very time Wolfe reconciled it to his 
 conscience to commit the murder of his fellow-creature, he 
 would have moved out of his path for a worm. Assassination, 
 indeed, seemed to him justice; and a felon's execution the 
 glory of martyrdom. And yet, O Fanatic, thou didst anathe- 
 matize the Duellist as the Man of blood^what is the Assas- 
 sin? 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXI. 
 
 " And thou that, silent at my knee, 
 
 Dost lift to mine thy soft, dark, earnest eyes, 
 Fill'd with the love of childhood, which I see 
 
 Pure through its depths a tiling without disguise. 
 Thou that hast breathed in slumbtr on my breast, 
 When I have check 'd its throbs (o give thee rest, 
 
 Mirre own, whr.se young thoughts fresh before me rise, 
 Is it not much that I may guide thy prayer. 
 And circle thy young soul with free and healthful air." HEMANS. 
 
 THE events we have recorded, from the time of Clarence's 
 visit to Mordaunt to the death of Lord Ulswater, took place 
 within little more than a week. We have now to pass in silence 
 over several weeks ; and as it was the commencement of 
 autumn when we introduced Clarence and Mordaunt to our 
 reader, so it is the first opening of winter in which we will re- 
 sume the thread of our narrative. 
 
 Mordaunt had removed to London ; and, although he had 
 not yet taken any share in public business, he was only watch- 
 ing the opportunity to commence a career, the brilliancy of 
 which, those who knew aught of his mind began already to 
 foretell. But he mixed little, if at all, with the gayer occupants 
 of the world's prominent places. Absorbed alternately in hi?
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 studies and his labors of good, the halls of pleasure were sel- 
 dom visited by his presence; and they who, in the crowd, knew 
 nothing of him but his name and the lofty bearing of his mien, 
 recoiled from the coldness of his exterior, and, while they mar- 
 velled at his retirement and reserve, saw in both but the mo- 
 roseness of the student, and the gloom of the misanthropist. 
 
 But the nobleness of his person the antiquity of his birth 
 his wealth, his unblemished character, and the interest thrown 
 over his name by the reputation of talent, and theunpenetrated 
 mystery of his life, all powerfully spoke in his favor to those of 
 the gentler sex, who judge us not only from what we are to 
 others, but from what they imagine we can be to them. From 
 such allurements, however, as from all else, the mourner turned 
 only the more deeply to cherish the memory of the dead ; and 
 it was a touching and holy sight to mark the mingled excess of 
 melancholy and fondness with which he watched over that 
 treasure in whose young beauty and guileless heart his departed 
 Isabel had yet left the resemblance of her features and her love. 
 There seemed between them to exist even a dearer and closer 
 tie than that of daughter and sire ! for, in both, the objects 
 which usually divide the affections of the manor the child had 
 but a feeble charm ; Isabel's mind had expanded beyond her 
 years, and Algernon's had outgrown his time.; so that neither 
 the sports natural to her age, nor the ambition ordinary to his, 
 were sufficient to wean or to distract the unity of their love. 
 When, after absence, his well-known step trod lightly in the 
 hall, her ear, which had listened, and longed, and thirsted for 
 the sound, taught her fairy feet to be the first to welcome his 
 return ; and when the slightest breath of sickness menaced her 
 slender frame, it was his hand that smoothed her pillow, and 
 his smile that cheered away her pain ; and when she sunk 
 into sleep she knew that a father's heart watched over her 
 through the long but untiring night that a father's eye would 
 be the first which, on waking, she would meet. 
 
 "Oh ! beautiful, and rare as beautiful," was that affection ; 
 in the parent no earthlier or harder sternness in authority, nor 
 weakness in doating, nor caprice in love in the child no fear- 
 debasing reverence, yet no familiarity diminishing respect. But 
 Love, whose pride is in serving, seemed to make at once soft 
 and hallowed the offices mutually rendered and Nature, never 
 counteracted in her dictates, wrought, without a visible effort, 
 the proper channels into which those offices should flow ; and 
 that Charity, which not only covers sins, but lifts the veil from 
 Virtues whose beauty might otherwise have lain concealed,
 
 DISOWNED. 381 
 
 finked them closer and closer, and threw Over that link the 
 sanctity of itself. For it was Algernon's sweetest pleasure to 
 make her young hands the ministers of good to others, and to 
 drink, at such times, from the rich glow of her angel counte- 
 nance, the purified selfishness of his reward. And when aftei 
 the divine joy of blessing, which, perhaps, the youngest taste 
 yet more vividly than their sires, she threw her arms, around 
 his neck, and thanked him with glad tears for the luxury he 
 had bestowed upon her, how could they, in that gushing over- 
 flow of heart, help loving each other the more, or feeling that 
 in that love there was something which justified the excess? 
 
 Nor have we drawn with too exaggerating a pencil, nor, 
 though Isabel's mind was older than her years, extended that 
 premutureness to her heart. For, where we set the example of 
 benevolence, and see that the example is in nought corrupted, 
 the milk of human kindness will flow not the least readily from 
 the youngest breast, and out of the mouths of babes will come 
 the wisdom of charity and love ! 
 
 Ever since Mordaunt's arrival in town, he had sought out 
 Wolfe's abode, for the purpose of ministering to the poverty 
 under which he rightly conjectured that the republican labored. 
 But the habitation of one, needy, distressed, seldom living long 
 in one place, and far less notorious of late than he had formerly 
 been, was not easy to discover ; nor was it till after long and 
 vain search that he ascertained the retreat of his singular ac- 
 quaintance. The day in which he effected this object we shall 
 have hereafter occasion to specify. Meanwhile we return to 
 Mr. Crauford. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXII. 
 
 " Plot on thy little hour, and skein on skein 
 Weave the vain mesh, in which thy subtle soul 
 Broods on its venom ! Lo ! behind, before, 
 Around thee, like an armament of cloud, 
 The black Fate labors onward ! " ANON. 
 
 THE dusk of a winter's evening gathered over a room in 
 Crauford's house in town, only relieved from the closing 
 darkness by an expiring and sullen fire, beside which Mr. 
 Bradley sat with his feet upon the fender, apparently striving 
 to coax some warmth into the icy palms of his spread hands. 
 Crauford himself was walking up and down the room with a 
 changeful step, and ever and anon glancing his bright, shrewd
 
 382 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 eye at the partner of his fraud, who, seemingly unconscious of the 
 observation he underwent, appeared to occupy his attention sole- 
 ly with the difficulty of warming his meagre and withered frame. 
 
 " Ar'n't you very cold there, sir ? " said Bradley, after a long 
 pause, and pushing himself farther into the verge of the dying 
 embers, "may I not ring for some more coals ?" 
 
 "Helland the ; Ibeg your pardon, my good Bradley, 
 
 but you vex me beyond patience ; how can you think of such 
 trifles when our very lives are in so imminent a danger?" 
 
 " I beg your pardon, my honored benefactor, they are indeed 
 in danger ! " 
 
 " Bradley, we have but one hope fidelity to each other. If 
 we persist in the same story, not a tittle can be brought home 
 to us not a tittle, my good Bradley ; and^though our charac- 
 ters maybe a little touched, why, what is a character? Shall we 
 eat less, drink less, enjoy less, when we have lost it ? Not a whit. 
 No, my friend, we will go abroad ; leave it to me to save from 
 the wreck of our fortunes enough to live upon like princes." 
 
 " If not like peers, my honored benefactor." 
 
 " Sdeath ! yes, yes, very good he ! he ! he ! if not peers. 
 Well, all happiness is in the senses, and Richard Crauford has 
 as many senses as Viscount Innisdale ; but had we been able 
 to protract inquiry another week, Bradley, why, I should have 
 been my Lord, and you Sir John." 
 
 " You bear your losses like a hero, sir," said Mr. Bradley. 
 
 " To be sure ; there is no loss, man, but life none ; let us 
 preserve that, and it will be our own fault if we don't, and the 
 devil take all the rest. But bless me, it grows late, and, at all 
 events, we are safe for some hours ; the inquiry won't take 
 place till twelve to-morrow, why should not we feast till twelve 
 to-night. Ring, my good fellow, dinner must be nearly ready." 
 
 " Why, honored sir," said Bradley, "I want to go home to 
 see my wife, and arrange my house. Who knows but I may 
 sleep in Newgate to-morrow ? " 
 
 Crauford, who had been still walking, to and fro, stopped 
 abruptly at this speech, and his eye, even through the gloom, 
 shot out a livid and fierce light before which the timid and 
 humble glance of Mr. Bradley quailed in an instant. 
 
 "Go home! no, my friend, no, I can't part with you to- 
 night, no, not for an instant. I have many lessons to give you. 
 How are we to learn our parts for to-morrow, if we don't re- 
 hearse them beforehand ? Do you not know that a single 
 blunder may turn what I hope may be a farce, into a tragedy ? 
 Go home ! pooh, pooh why, man, I have not seen my wife,
 
 THE DISOWNED. 383 
 
 nor put my house to rights, and if you do but listen to me, I tell 
 you again and again that not a hair of our heads can be touched." 
 
 "You know best, honored sir; I bow to your decision." 
 
 " Bravo, honest Brad ! and now for dinner. I have the most 
 glorious champagne that ever danced in foam to your lip. No 
 counsellor like the bottle, believe me ! " 
 
 And the servant entering to announce dinner, Crauford took 
 Bradley's arm and, leaning affectionately upon it, passed 
 through an obsequious and liveried row of domestics to a room 
 blazing with light and plate. A noble fire was the first thing 
 which revived Bradley's spirit, and, as he spread his hands 
 over it before he sat down to the table, he surveyed, with a 
 gleam of gladness upon his thin cheeks, two vases of glittering 
 metal formerly the boast of a king, in which were immersed 
 the sparkling genii of the grape. 
 
 Crauford, always a. gourmand, ate with unusual appetite, and 
 pressed the wine upon Bradley with an eager hospitality, which 
 soon somewhat clouded the senses of the worthy man. The din- 
 ner was removed, the servants retired, and the friends were alone. 
 
 "A pleasant trip to France ! " cried Crauford, filling a bumper. 
 " That's the land for hearts like ours. I tell you what, little 
 Brad, we will leave our wives behind us, and take with a new 
 country, and new names, a new lease of life. What will it signify 
 to men making love at Paris what fools say of them in London ? 
 Another bumper, honest Brad a bumper to the girls ! What 
 say you to that, eh ? " 
 
 " Lord sir, you are so facetious so witty ! It roust be 
 owned that a black eye is a great temptation Lira-lira, la-la ! " 
 And Mr. Bradley's own eyes rolled joyously. 
 
 " Bravo, Brad ! a song, a song ! but treason to King Bur- 
 gundy ! Your glass is" 
 
 " Empty, honored sir, I know it ! Lira-lira la ! but it is 
 easily filled ! We who have all our lives been pouring from 
 one vessel into another, know how to keep it up to the last ! 
 
 " ' Courage then, cries the knight, we may yet be forgiven, 
 Or at worst buy the bishop's reversion in heaven ; 
 Our frequent escapes in this world show how true 'tis. 
 That gold is the only Elixir Salutis. 
 
 Derry down, derry down. 
 
 All you, who to swindling conveniently creep, 
 Ne'er piddle by thousands the treasury sweep, 
 Your safety depends on the weight of the sum. 
 For no rope was yet made that could tie up a plum. 
 Derry down, etc.' " 
 
 * From a ballad called " The Knight and the Prelate."
 
 384 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 " Bravissimo, little Brad ! you are quite a wit ! See what 
 it is to have one's faculties called out. Come, a toast to old 
 England, the land in which no man ever wants a farthing who 
 has wit to steal it ' Old England for ever ! ' your rogue is 
 your only true patriot ! " and Crauford poured the remainder 
 of the bottle, nearly three parts full, into a beaker, which he 
 pushed to Bradley. That convivial gentleman emptied it at a 
 draught, and, faltering out, " Honest Sir John room for my 
 Lady Bradley's carriage," dropped down on the floor insensible. 
 
 Crauford rose instantly, satisfied himself that the intoxication 
 was genuine, and, giving the lifeless body a kick of contemptuous 
 disgust, left the room, muttering "The dull ass, did he think 
 it was on his back that I was going to ride off ! He ! he ! 
 he ! But stay, let me feel my pulse. Too fast by twenty 
 strokes ! One's never sure of the mind if one does not regulate 
 the body to a hair ! Drank too much must take a powder be- 
 fore I start." 
 
 Mounting by a back staircase to his bed-room, Crauford un- 
 locked a chest, took out a bundle of clerical clothes, a large 
 shovel hat, and a large wig. Hastily, but not carelessly, induc- 
 ing himself in these articles of disguise, he then proceeded to 
 stain his fair cheeks with a preparation which soon gave them a 
 swarthy hue. Putting his own clothes in the chest, which he 
 carefully locked (placing the key in his pocket), he next took 
 from a desk on his dressing-table a purse ; opening this, he ex- 
 tracted a diamond of great size and immense value, which, years 
 before, in preparation of the event that had now taken place, he 
 had purchased. 
 
 His usual sneer curled his lip as he gazed at it. " Now," said 
 he, " is it not strange that this little stone should supply the 
 mighty wants of that grasping thing, man ! Who talks of 
 religion, country, wife, children ? This petty mineral can pur- 
 chase them all ! Oh, what a bright joy speaks out in your white 
 cheek, my beauty ? What are all human charms to yours? Why, 
 by your spell, most magical of talismans, my years may walk, 
 gloating and revelling, through a lane of beauties, till they fall 
 into the grave ! Pish ! that grave is an ugly thought a very, 
 very ugly thought ! But come, my sun of hope, I must eclipse 
 you for a while ! Type of myself while you hide, I hide also ; 
 and when I once more let you forth to the day, then shine out 
 Richard Crauford shine out!" So saying, he sewed the 
 diamond carefully in the folds of his shirt ; and re-arranging 
 his dress, took the cooling powder, which he weighed out to a 
 grain, with a scrupulous and untrembling hand descended the
 
 THE DISOWNED. 385 
 
 back stairs opened the door, and found himself in the open 
 street. 
 
 The clock struck ten as he entered a hackney-coach and 
 drove to another part of London. " What, so late ! " thought 
 he : "I must be at Dover in twelve hours the vessel sails 
 then. Humph ! some danger yet ! What a pity that I could 
 not trust that fool. He! he! he! what will he think to- 
 morrow, when he wakes and finds that, only one is destined to 
 swing." 
 
 The hackney-coach stopped, according to his direction, at an 
 inn in the city. Here Crauford asked if a note had been left 
 for Dr. Stapylton. One (written by himself) was given to him. 
 " Merciful Heaven ! " cried the false doctor, as he read it, "my 
 daughter is on a bed of death ! " 
 
 The landlord's look wore anxiety the doctor seemed for a 
 moment paralyzed by silent woe. .He recovered, shook his 
 head piteously, and ordered, a post-chaise and four on to Can- 
 terbury without delay. 
 
 " It is an ill wind that blows nobody good ! " thought the 
 landlord, as he issued the order into the yard. 
 
 The chaise was soon out the doctor entered off went the 
 post-boys and Richard Crauford, feeling his diamond, turned 
 his thoughts to safety and to France. 
 
 A little, unknown man, who had been sitting at the bar for 
 the last two hours, sipping brandy and water, and who, from his 
 extreme taciturnity and quiet, had been scarcely observed, now 
 rose. "Landlord," said he, "do you know who that gentle- 
 man is? " 
 
 " Why," quoth Boniface, " the letter to him was directed, 
 ' For the Rev. Dr. Stapylton will be called for.' " 
 
 "Ah!" said the little man, yawning " I shall have a long 
 night's work of it Have you another chaise and four in the 
 yard ? " 
 
 "To be sure, sir, to be sure ! " cried the landlord in astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 "Out with it then! Another glass of brandy and water a 
 little stronger no sugar ! " 
 
 The landlord stared the bar-maid stared even the head- 
 waiter, a very stately person, stared too. 
 
 " Harkye," said the little man, sipping his brandy and water, 
 "I am a deuced good-natured fellow, so I'll make you a great 
 man to-night ; for nothing makes a man so great as being let 
 into a great secret. Did you ever hear of the rich Mr. 
 Crauford ? "
 
 386 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 "Certainly who has not?" 
 
 " Did you ever see him ? " 
 
 " No ! I can't say I ever did." 
 
 "You lie, landlord you saw him to-night." 
 
 "Sir!" cried the landlord, bristling up. 
 
 The little man pulled out a brace of pistols, and very quietly 
 began priming them out of a small powder-flask. 
 
 The landlord started back the head- waiter cried "rape," 
 and the bar-maid "murder." 
 
 "Who the devil are you, sir? " cried the landlord. 
 
 " Mr. Tickletrout, the celebrated officer thief-taker, as they 
 call it. Have a care, Ma'am, the pistols are loaded. I see the 
 chaise is out there's the reckoning, landlord." 
 
 "O Lord ! I'm sure I don't want any reckoning too great an 
 honor for my poor house to be favored with your company ; 
 but (following the little man to the door) whom did you please 
 to say you were going to catch ! " 
 
 " Mr. Crauford, alias Dr. Stapylton." 
 
 " Lord ! Lord ! to think of it how shocking ! What has 
 he done?" 
 
 "Swindled, I believe." 
 
 "My eyes! And why, sir, did not you catch him when he 
 was in the bar?" 
 
 "Because then I should not have got paid for my journey to 
 Dover. Shut the door, boy ; first stage on to Canterbury." 
 
 And, drawing a woollen night-cap over his ears, Mr. Tickle- 
 trout resigned himself to his nocturnal excursion. 
 
 On the very day on which the patent for his peerage was to 
 have been made out on the very day on which he had after- 
 wards calculated on reaching Paris on that very day was Mr. 
 Richard Crauford lodged in Newgate, fully committed for a 
 trial of life and death. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXIII. 
 
 " There, if, O gentle love ! I read aright 
 The utterance that sealed thy sacred bond : 
 'Twas listening to those accents of delight 
 She hid upon his breast those eyes beyond 
 Expression's power to paint all languishingly fond." CAMPBELI*. 
 
 "AND you will positively leave us for London," said Lady 
 Flora tenderly "and to-morrow, too!" This was said to 
 one who, under the name of Clarence Linden, has played the
 
 DISOWNED. 387 
 
 principal part in cur drama, and who now, by the death of his 
 brother, succeeding to the honors of his house, we present to 
 our reader as Clinton L'Estrange, Earl of Ulswater. 
 
 They were alone in the memorable pavilion ; and though it 
 was winter, the sun shone cheerily into the apartment; and 
 through the door, which was left partly open, the evergreens, 
 contrasting with the leafless boughs of the oak and beech, could 
 be just descried, furnishing the lover with some meet simile of 
 love, and deceiving the eyes of those willing to be deceived 
 with a resemblance to the departed summer. The unusual 
 mildness of the day seemed to operate genially upon the birds 
 those children of light and song ; and they grouped blithely 
 beneath the window and round the door, where the hand of 
 the kind young spirit of the place had so often ministered to 
 their wants. Every now and then, too, you might hear the 
 shrill glad note of the blackbird keeping measure to his swift 
 and low flight, and sometimes a vagrant hare from the neigh- 
 boring preserves sauntered fearlessly by the half-shut door, 
 secure, from long experience, of an asylum in the vicinity of 
 one who had drawn from the breast of Nature a tenderness 
 and love for all its offspring. 
 
 Her lover sat at Flora's feet ; and, looking upward, seemed 
 to seek out the fond and melting eyes which, too conscious of 
 their secret, turned bashfully from his gaze. He had drawn 
 her arm over his shoulder ; and clasping that small and snowy 
 hand, which, long coveted with a miser's desire, was at length 
 won, he pressed upon it a thousand kisses sweeter beguilers 
 of time than even words. All had been long explained the 
 space between their hearts annihilated doubt, anxiety, mis- 
 construction, those clouds of love, had passed away, and left 
 not a wreck to obscure its heaven. 
 
 "And you will leave us to-morrow must it be to-mor- 
 row ? " 
 
 "Ah ! Flora, it^must; but see, I have your lock of hair 
 your beautiful, da'rk hair, to kiss, when I am away from you, 
 and I shall have your letters, dearest a letter every day ; and 
 oh ! more than all, I shall have the hope, the certainty, that 
 when we meet again, you will be mine forever." 
 
 "And I, too, must, by seeing it in your handwriting, learn to 
 reconcile myself to your new name. Ah ! I wish you had 
 been still Clarence only Clarence. Wealth, rank, power' 
 what are all these but rivals to poor Flora?" 
 
 Lady Flora sighed, and the next moment blushed ; and. 
 what with the sigh and the blush. Clarence's lip wandered frora
 
 388 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 the hand to the cheek, and thence to a mouth on which the 
 west wind seemed to have left the sweets of a thousand sum- 
 mers. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXIV. 
 
 " A Hounsditch man, one of the devil's near kinsmen a broker." 
 
 Every Man in his Humor. 
 
 " We have here discovered the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever 
 was known in the commonwealth." Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 IT was an evening of mingled rain and wind, the hour about 
 nine, when Mr. Morris Brown, under the shelter of ihatadmira- 
 J}le umbrella of sea-green silk, to which we have before had the 
 honor to summon the attention of our readers, was, after a day 
 of business, plodding homeward his weary way. The obscure 
 streets through which his course was bent were at no time very 
 thickly thronged, and at the present hour the inclemency of 
 the night rendered them utterly deserted. It is true that no\v 
 and then a solitary female, holding up with one hand garments 
 already piteously bedraggled, and with the other thrusting her 
 umbrella in the very teeth of the hostile winds, might be seen 
 crossing the intersected streets, and vanishing amid the subter- 
 ranean recesses of some kitchen area, or tramping onward 
 amidst the mazes of the metropolitan labyrinth, till, like the 
 cuckoo, "heard," but no longer "seen," the echo of her retreat- 
 ing pattens made a dying music to the reluctant ear ; or indeed, 
 at intervals of unfrequent occurrence, a hackney vehiclejolted, 
 rumbling, bumping over the uneven stones, as if groaning forth 
 its gratitude to the elements for which it was indebted for ils 
 fare. Sometimes also a chivalrous gallant of the feline species 
 ventured its delicate paws upon the streaming pavement, and 
 shook, with a small but dismal cry, the rain-drops from the 
 pyramidal roofs of its tender ears. 
 
 But, save these occasional infringements on its empire, soli- 
 tude, dark, comfortless, and unrelieved, fell around the creak- 
 ing footsteps of Mr. Morris Brown. "I wish," soliloquized the 
 worthy broker, "that I had been able advantageously to dispose 
 of this cursed umbrella of the late Lady Waddilove ; it is very 
 little calculated for any but a single lady of slender shape, and 
 though it certainly keeps the rain off my hat, it only sends it 
 wilh a double dripping upon my shoulders. Pish, deuce take 
 the umbrella, I shall catch my death of cold." 
 
 These complaints of an affliction that was assuredly sufficient
 
 THE DISOWNED. 389 
 
 to irritate the naturally sweet temper of Mr. Brown, only ceased, 
 as that industrious personage paused at the corner of the street, 
 for the purpose of selecting the dryest part through which to 
 effect the miserable act of crossing to the opposite side. Occu- 
 pied in stretching his neck over the kennel, in order to take the 
 fullest survey of its topography which the scanty and agitated 
 lamps would allow, the unhappy wanderer, lowering his 
 umbrella, suffered a cross and violent gust of wind to rush, as 
 if on purpose, against the interior. The rapidity with which 
 this was done, and the sudden impetus, which gave to the 
 inflated silk the force of a balloon, happening to occur exactly 
 at the moment Mr. Brown was stooping with such wistful anx- 
 iety over the pavement, that gentleman, to his inexpressible 
 dismay, was absolutely lifted, as it were, from his present foot- 
 ing, and immersed in a running rivulet of liquid mire, which 
 flowed immediately below the pavement. Nor was this all 
 for the wind, finding itself somewhat imprisoned in the narrow 
 receptacle it had thus abruptly entered, made so strenuous an 
 exertion to extricate itself, that it turned Lady Waddilove's 
 memorable relic utterly inside out ; so that when Mr. Brown, 
 aghast at the calamity of his immersion, lifted his eyes to 
 heaven, with a devotion that had in it more of expostulation 
 than submission, he beheld, by the melancholy lamps, the ap- 
 parition of his umbrella, the exact opposite to its legitimate 
 conformation, and seeming, with its lengthy stick and inverted 
 summit, the actual and absolute resemblance of a gigantic 
 wine-glass. 
 
 " Now," said Mr. Brown, with that ironical bitterness so 
 common to intense despair, "now, that's what I call pleasant." 
 
 As if the elements were guided and set on by all the de- 
 parted souls of those whom Mr. Brown had, at any time, over- 
 reached in his profession, scarcely had the afflicted broker 
 uttered this brief sentence, before a discharge of rain, tenfold 
 more heavy than any which had yet fallen, tumbled down in 
 literal torrents upon the defenceless head of the itinerant. 
 
 " This won't do," said Mr. Brown, plucking up courage, and 
 splashing out of the little rivulet, once more, into terra firnia, 
 " this won't do I must find a shelter somewhere. Dear, dear, 
 how the wet runs down me. I am for all the world like the 
 famous dripping well in Derbyshire. What a beast of an um- 
 brella ! I'll never buy one again of an old lady hang me if 
 I do." 
 
 As the miserable Morris uttered these sentences, which 
 gushed out, one by one. in a broken stream of complaint, he
 
 39<3 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 looked round and round before behind beside for some 
 temporary protection or retreat. In vain the uncertainty of 
 the light only allowed him to discover houses, in which no por- 
 tico extended its friendly shelter, and where even the doors 
 seemed divested of the narrow ledge wherewith they are, in 
 more civilized quarters, ordinarily crowned. 
 
 "I shall certainly have the rheumatism all this winter," said 
 Mr. Brown, hurrying on ward as fast as he was able. Just then, 
 glancing desperately down a narrow lane, which crossed his 
 path, he perceived the scaffolding of a house, in which repair 
 or alteration had been at work. A ray of hope flashed across 
 him ; he redoubled his speed, and, entering the welcome 
 haven, found himself entirely protected from the storm. The 
 extent of scaffolding was, indeed, rather considerable ; and, 
 though the extreme narrowness of the lane, and the increasing 
 gloom of the night, left Mr. Brown in almost total darkness, so 
 that he could not perceive the exact peculiarities of his situa- 
 tion, yet he was perfectly satisfied with the shelter he had 
 obtained ; and after shaking the rain from his hat squeezing 
 his coat sleeves and lappets, satisfying himself that it was only 
 about the shoulders that he was thoroughly wetted, and thrust- 
 ing two pocket-handkerchiefs between his shirt and his skin, as 
 preventives to the dreaded rheumatism, Mr. Brown leant 
 luxuriously back against the wall in the farthest corner of his 
 retreat, and busied himself with endeavoring to restore his 
 insulted umbrella to its original utility of shape. 
 
 Our wanderer had been about three minutes in this situation, 
 when he heard the voices of two men, who were hastening 
 along the lane. 
 
 " But do stop," said one ; and these were the first words dis- 
 tinctly audible to the ear of Mr.Brown " do stop, the rain 
 can't last much longer, and we have a long way yet to go." 
 
 " No, no," said the other, in a voice more imperious than the 
 first, which was evidently plebeian, and somewhat foreign in its 
 tone, "no, we have no time. What signify the inclemencies of 
 weather to men feeding upon an inward and burning thought, 
 and made, by the workings of the mind, almost callous to the 
 contingencies of the frame?" 
 
 " Nay, my very good friend," said the first speaker with 
 positive, though not disrespectful, earnestness, " that may be 
 all very fine for you, who have a constitution like a horse ; but 
 I am quite a what call you it an invalid eh ! and have a 
 devilish cough ever since I have been in this d d country 
 beg your pardon, no offence to it so I shall just step under
 
 THE DISOWNED. 39! 
 
 cover of this scaffolding for a few minutes, and if you like the 
 rain so much, my very good friend, why there is plenty of room 
 in the lane too (ugh ugh ugh) to enjoy it." 
 
 As the speaker ended, the dim light, just faintly glimmering 
 at the entrance of the friendly shelter, was obscured by his 
 shadow, and presently afterwards, his companion, joining him, 
 said : 
 
 " Well, if it must be so ; but how can you be fit to brave all 
 the perils of our scheme, when you shrink, like a palsied crone, 
 from the sprinkling of a few water-drops?" 
 
 " A few water-dfoT/Xj-, my very good, friend," answered the 
 other, " a few what call you them ay water-/i///jr rather 
 (ugh ugh) ; but let me tell you, my brother citizen, that a 
 man may not like to get his skin wet with water, and would yet 
 thrust his arm up to the very elbow in blood ! (ugh ugh)." 
 
 " The devil ! " mentally ejaculated Mr. Brown, who at the 
 word "scheme," had advanced one step from his retreat, but 
 who now, at the last words of the intruder, drew back as gently 
 as a snail into his shell ; and although his person was far too 
 much enveloped in shade to run the least chance of detection, 
 yet the honest broker began to feel a little tremor vibrate along 
 the chords of his thrilling frame, and a new anathema against 
 the fatal umbrella rise to his lips. 
 
 "Ah ! " quoth the second, " I trust that it may be so ; but to 
 return to our project are you quite sure that these two 
 identical ministers are in the regular habit of walking home- 
 ward from that parliament which their despotism has so de- 
 graded ? " 
 
 " Sure ay, that I am ; Davidson swears to it ! " 
 
 " And you are also sure of their persons, so that, even in the 
 dusk, you can recognize them ? for, you know, I have never 
 seen them." 
 
 " Sure as five-pence ! " returned the first speaker, to whose 
 mind the lives of the persons referred to were of considerable 
 less value than the sum elegantly specified in his metaphorical 
 reply. 
 
 " Then," said the other, with a deep, stern determination of 
 tone "then shall this hand, by which one of the proudest of 
 our oppressors has already fallen, be made a still worthier in- 
 strument of the wrath of Heaven ! " 
 
 "You are a d d pretty shot, I believe," quoth the first 
 speaker, as indifferently as if he were praising the address of a 
 Norfolk squire. 
 
 " Never yet did my eye misguide me, or my aim swerve a
 
 392 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 hair's-breadth from its target ! I thought once, when I learnt 
 the art as a boy, that in battle, rather than in the execution of 
 a single criminal, that skill would avail me." 
 
 "Well, we shall have a glorious opportunity to-morrow 
 night ? " answered the first speaker ; " that is, if it does not rain 
 so infernally as it does this night : but we shall have a watch 
 of many hours, I dare say." 
 
 "That matters but little," replied the other conspirator; 
 " nor even if, night after night, the same vigil is renewed and 
 baffled, so that it bring its reward at last." 
 
 " Right," quoth the first ; "I long to be at it ! ugh ! ugh ! 
 what a confounded cough I have : it will be my death soon, 
 I'm thinking." 
 
 "If so," said the other, with a solemnity which seemed 
 ludicrously horrible, from the strange contrast of the words 
 and object " die at least with the sanctity of a brave and 
 noble deed upon your conscience and your name ! " 
 
 " Ugh ! ugh ! I am but a man of color, but I am a patriot, 
 for all that, my good friend ! See, the violence of the rain has 
 ceased: we will proceed": and with these words the worthy 
 pair left the place to darkness and Mr. Brown. 
 
 " Oh, Lord ! "said the latter, stepping forth, and throwing, as 
 it were, a whole weight of suffocating emotion from his chest, 
 "what bloody miscreants ! Murder his Majesty's ministers! 
 ' shoot them like pigeons ! ' ' d d pretty shot ! ' indeed. 
 O Lord ! what would the late Lady Waddilove, who always 
 hated even the Whigs so cordially, say if she were alive ! But 
 how providential that I should have been here ; who knows 
 but 1 may save the lives of the whole administration, and get 
 a pension, or a little place in the post-office ! I'll go to the 
 prime minister directly this very minute ! Pish ! ain't you 
 right now, you cursed thing?" upbraiding the umbrella, which, 
 half-right and half-wrong, seemed endued with an instinctive 
 obstinacy for the sole purpose of tormenting its owner. 
 
 However, losing this petty affliction in the greatness of his 
 present determination, Mr. Brown issued out of his lair, and 
 hastened to .put his benevolent and loyal intentions into eifect
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXV. 
 
 " When laurelled ruffians die, the Heaven and Earth, 
 And the deep Air give warning. Shall the good 
 Perish and not a sign ! " ANON. 
 
 IT was the evening after the event recorded in our last 
 chapter : all was hushed and dark in the room where Mordaunt 
 sat alone, the low and falling embers burnt dull in the grate, 
 and through the unclosed windows the high stars rode pale and 
 wan in their career. The room, situated at the back of the 
 house, looked over a small garden, where the sickly and hoar 
 shrubs, overshadowed by a few wintry poplars and grim firs, 
 saddened in the dense atmosphere of fog and smoke, which 
 broods over our island city. An air of gloom hung comfort- 
 less and chilling over the whole scene externally and within. 
 The room itself was large and old, and its far extremities, 
 mantled as they were with dusk and shadow, impressed upon 
 the mind that involuntary and vague sensation, not altogether 
 unmixed with awe, which the eye, resting upon a view that it 
 can but dimly and confusedly define, so frequently com- 
 municates to the heart. There was a strange oppression at 
 Mordaunt's breast, with which he in vain endeavored to 
 contend. Ever and anon, an icy but passing chill, like the 
 shivers of a fever, shot through his veins, and a wild and 
 unearthly and objectless awe stirred through his hair, and his 
 eyes filled with a glassy and cold dew, and sought, as by a 
 self-impulse, the shadowy and unpenetrated places around, 
 which momently grew darker and darker. Little addicted by 
 his peculiar habits to an over-indulgence of the imagination, 
 and still less accustomed to those absolute conquests of the 
 physical frame over the mental, which seem the usual sources 
 of that feeling we call presentiment, Mordaunt rose, and, walk- 
 ing to and fro along the room, endeavored by the exercise to 
 restore to his veins their wonted and healthful circulation. It 
 was past the hour in which his daughter retired to rest ; but he 
 was often accustomed to steal up to her chamber, and watch 
 her in. her young slumbers ; and he felt this night a more than 
 usual desire to perform that office of love : so he left the room 
 and ascended the stairs, It was a large old house that he 
 tenanted. The staircase was broad, and lighted from above 
 by a glass dome ; and as he slowly ascended, and the stars 
 gleamed down still and ghastly upon his steps, he fancied but 
 he knew not why -that there was an omen in their gleam. He
 
 394 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 entered the young Isabel's chamber ; there was a light burning 
 within ; he stole to her bed, and putting aside the curtain, felt, 
 as he looked upon her peaceful and pure beauty, a cheering 
 warmth gather round his heart. How lovely is the sleep of 
 childhood ! What worlds of sweet, yet not utterly sweet, 
 associations does it not mingle with the envy of our gaze ! 
 What thoughts, and hopes, and cares, and forebodings does it 
 not excite ! There lie in that yet ungrieved and unsullied 
 heart what unnumbered sources of emotion ! what deep foun- 
 tains of passion and woe ! Alas ! whatever be its earlier 
 triumphs, the victim must fall at last ! As the hart which 
 the jackals pursue, the moment its race is begun, the human 
 prey is fore-doomed for destruction, not by the single 
 sorrow, but the thousand cares ; it may baffle one race 
 of pursuers, but a new succeeds ; as fast as some drop off 
 exhausted, others spring up to renew and to perpetuate the 
 chace ; and the fated, though flying victim, never escapes 
 but in death. There was a faint smile upon his daughter's lip, 
 as Mordaunt bent down to kiss it ; the dark lash rested on the 
 snowy lid ah, that tears had no well beneath its surface ! 
 and her breath stole from her rich lips with so regular and 
 calm a motion, that like the " forest leaves," it " seemed 
 stirred with prayer ! " * One arm lay over the coverlid, the 
 other pillowed her head, in the unrivalled grace of infancy. 
 
 Mordaunt stooped once more, for his heart filled as he 
 gazed upon his child, to kiss her cheek again, and to mingle a 
 blessing with the kiss. When he rose upon that fair smooth 
 face there was one bright and glistening drop ; and Isabel 
 stirred in sleep, and, as if suddenly vexed by some painful 
 dream, she sighed deeply as she stirred. It was the last time 
 that the cheek of the young and predestined orphan was ever 
 pressed by a father's kiss, or moistened by a father's tear ! He 
 left the room silently; no sooner had he left it, than, as if 
 without the precincts of some charmed and preserving circle, 
 the chill and presentiment at his heart returned. There is a 
 feeling which perhaps all have in a momentary hypochondria 
 felt at times ; it is a strong and shuddering impression which 
 Coleridge has embodied in his own dark and supernatural 
 verse, that something not of earth is behind us that if we turned 
 our gaze backward we should behold that which would make 
 the heart as a bolt of ice, and the eye shrivel and parch within 
 its socket. And so intense is the fancy that, when we turn, 
 and all is void, from that very void we could shape a spectre, 
 
 * " And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer." BYRON.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 395 
 
 as fearful as the image our terror had foredravvn ! Somewhat 
 such feeling had Mordaunt now, as his steps sounded hollow 
 and echoless on the stairs, and the stars filled the air around 
 him with their shadowy and solemn presence. Breaking by a 
 violent effort from a spell of which he felt that a frame some- 
 what overtasked of late was the real enchanter, he turned once 
 more into the room which he had left to visit Isabel. He had 
 pledged his personal attendance at an important motion in the 
 House of Commons for that night, and some political papers 
 were left upon his table, which he had promised to give to one 
 of the members of his party. He entered the room, purposing 
 to stay only a minute; an hour passed before he left it ; and 
 his servant afterwards observed that, on giving him some 
 orders as he passed through the hall to the carriage, his cheek 
 was as white as marble, and that his step, usually so haughty 
 and firm, reeled and trembled, like a fainting man's. Dark 
 and inexplicable Fate ! weaver of wild contrasts, demon of this 
 hoary and old world, that movest through it, as a spirit moveth 
 over the waters, filling the depths of things with a solemn 
 mystery and an everlasting change ! thou sweepest over our 
 graves, and Joy is born from the ashes ; thou sweepest over 
 Joy, and lo, it is a grave ! Engine and tool of the Almighty, 
 whose years cannot fade, thou changes! the earth as a gar- 
 ment, and as a vesture it is changed ; thou makest it one vast 
 sepulchre and womb united, swallowing and creating life ! and 
 reproducing, over and over, from age to age, from the birth of 
 creation to the creation's doom, the same dust and atoms 
 ivhich were our fathers, and which are the sole heirlooms that 
 through countless generations they bequeath and perpetuate 
 to their sons. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXVI. 
 
 " Methinks, before the issue of our fate, 
 A spirit moves within us, and impels 
 The passion of a prophet to our lips." ANON. 
 
 " O vitas philosophia dux, virtutis indagatrix ! Cic.* 
 
 UPOX leaving the House of Commons, Mordaunt was 
 accosted by Lord Ulswater, who had just taken his seat in the 
 Upper House. Whatever abstraction or whatever weakness 
 Mordaunt might have manifested before he had left his home, 
 he had now entirely conquered both ; and it was with his 
 
 * O Philosoph*. *>"JMctress of life searcher after virtue !
 
 3^6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 usual collected address that he replied to Lord Ulswater's 
 salutations, and congratulated him on his change of name, and 
 accession of honors. 
 
 It was a night of uncommon calm and beauty ; and, although 
 the moon was not visible, the frosty and clear sky, " clad in 
 the lustre of its thousand stars," f seemed scarcely to mourn 
 either the hallowing light, or the breathing poesy of her pres- 
 ence ; and, when Lord Ulswater proposed that Mordaunt 
 should dismiss his carriage, and that they should walk home, 
 Algernon consented not unwillingly to the proposal. He felt, 
 indeed, an unwonted relief in companionship ; and the still 
 air, and the deep heavens, seemed to woo him from more 
 unwelcome thoughts, as with a softening and a sister's 
 love. 
 
 " Let us, before we return home," said Lord Ulswater, 
 " stroll for a few moments, towards the bridge ; I love looking 
 at the river on a night like this." 
 
 Whoever inquires into human circumstances will be struck 
 to find how invariably a latent current of fatality appears to 
 pervade them. It is the turn of the atom in the scale which 
 makes our safety, or our peril ; our glory, or our shame ; raises 
 us to the throne or sinks us to the grave. A secret voice at 
 Mordaunt's heart prompted him to dissent from this proposal, 
 trifling as it seemed, and welcome as it was to his present and 
 peculiar mood : he resisted the voice the moment passed 
 away, and the last seal was set upon his doom they moved 
 onward towards the bridge. At first, both were silent, for 
 Lord Ulswater used the ordinary privilege of a lover, and was 
 absent and absorbed, and his companion was never the first to 
 break a taciturnity natural to his habits. At last Lord Uls- 
 water said, " I rejoice that you are now in the sphere of action 
 most likely to display your talents you have not spoken yet, 
 I think ; indeed, there has been no fitting opportunity, but you 
 will soon, I trust." 
 
 " I know not," said Mordaunt, with a melancholy smile, 
 " whether you judge rightly in thinking the sphere of political 
 exertion one the most calculated for me : but I feel at my 
 heart a foreboding that my planet is not fated to shine in any 
 earthly sphere. Sorrow and misfortune have dimmed it in its 
 birth, and now it is waning towards its decline." 
 
 "Its decline!" repeated his companion "no, rather its 
 meridian. You are in the vigor of your years, the noon of your 
 prosperity, the height of your intellect and knowledge : you re- 
 
 t Marlow.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 597 
 
 quire only an effort to add to these blessings the most lasting 
 of all Fame ! " 
 
 "Well," said Mordaunt, and a momentary light flashed over 
 his countenance, " the effort will be made. I do not pretend 
 not to have felt ambition. No man should make it his boast, 
 for it often gives to our frail and earth-bound virtue both its 
 weapon and its wings ; but when the soil is exhausted, its pro- 
 duce fails ; and when we have forced our hearts to too great an 
 abundance, whether it be of flowers that perish, or of grain that 
 endures, the seeds of after hope bring forth but a languid and 
 scanty harvest. My earliest idol was ambition ; but then came 
 others, love and knowledge, and afterwards the desire to bless. 
 That desire you may term ambition ; but we will suppose them 
 separate passions ; for by the latter I would signify the thirst 
 for glory, either in evil or in good ; and the former teaches us, 
 though by little and little, to gain its object, no less in secrecy 
 than for applause ; and Wisdom, which opens to us a world, 
 vast, but hidden from the crowd, establishes also over that 
 world an arbiter of its own, so that its disciples gr jvv proud, and 
 communing with their own hearts, care for no louder judgment 
 than the still voice within. It is thus that indifference, not to 
 the welfare, but to the report, of others grows over us ; and 
 often, while we are the most ardent in their cause, we are the 
 least anxious for their esteem." 
 
 " And yet," said Lord Ulswater, " I have thought the passion 
 for esteem is the best guarantee for deserving it." 
 
 "Nor without justice other passions may supply its place, 
 and produce the same effects ; but the love of true glory is the 
 most legitimate agent of extensive good, and you do right to 
 worship and enshrine it. For me it is dead : it survived ay, 
 the truth shall out ! poverty, want, disappointment, baffled 
 aspirations all, all, but the deadness, the lethargy of regret : 
 when no one was left upon this altered earth to animate its 
 efforts, to smile upon its success, then the last spark quivered 
 and died ; and and but forgive me on this subject I am 
 not often wont to wander. I would say that ambition is for me 
 no more not so are its effects ; but the hope of serving that 
 race whom I have loved as brothers, but who have never known 
 me who, by the exterior (and here something bitter mingled 
 with his voice), pass sentence on the heart in whose eyes I 
 am only the cold, the wayward, the haughty, the morose the 
 hope of serving them is to me, now, a far stronger passion than 
 ambition was heretofore ; and, whatever for that end the love
 
 398 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 of fame would have dictated, the love of mankind will teach 
 me still more ardently to perform." 
 
 They were now upon the bridge : Pausing, they leant over, 
 and looked along the scene before them. Dark and hushed, 
 the river flowed sullenly on, save where the reflected stars 
 made a tremulous and broken beam on the black surface of 
 the water, or the lights of the vast City which lay in shadow 
 on its banks, scattered, at capricious intervals, a pale but un- 
 piercing wanness, rather than lustre, along the tide ; or, save 
 where the stillness was occasionally broken by the faint oar of 
 the boatman, or the call of his rude voice, mellowed almost 
 into music by distance and the element. 
 
 But behind them as they leant, the feet of passengers, on the 
 great thoroughfare, passed not oft but quick ; and that sound, 
 the commonest of earth's, made rarer and rarer by the advanc- 
 ing night, contrasted, rather than destroyed, the quiet of the 
 heaven and the solemnity of the silent stars. 
 
 " It is an old, but a just comparison," said Mordaunt's com- 
 panion, ''which has likened life to a river such as we now sur- 
 vey, gliding alternately in light or in darkness, in sunshine or 
 in storm, to that great ocean in which all waters meet." 
 
 "If," said Algernon, with his usual thoughtful and pensive 
 smile, " we may be allowed to vary that simile, I would, separat- 
 ing the universal and eternal course of Destiny from the fleet- 
 ing generations of human life, compare the river before us to 
 that course, and not it, but the city scattered on its banks, to 
 the varieties and mutability of life. There (in the latter) 
 crowded together in the great chaos of social union, we herd 
 in the night of ages, flinging the little lustre of our dim lights 
 over the sullen tide which rolls beside us seeing the tremulous 
 ray glitter on the surface, only to show us how profound is the 
 gloom which it cannot break, and the depths which it is too faint 
 to pierce. There Crime stalks, and Woe hushes her moan, and 
 Poverty couches, and Wealth riots and Death, in all and each, 
 is at his silent work. But the stream of Fate unconscious of 
 our changes and decay, glides on to its engulfing bourne ; and, 
 while it mirrors the faintest smile or the lightest frown of 
 Heaven, beholds, without a change upon its surface, the genera- 
 tions of earth perish, and be renewed, along its banks ! " 
 
 There was a pause ; and by an involuntary and natural im- 
 pulse, they turned from the waves beneath, to the heaven, 
 which, in its breathing contrast, spread all eloquently, yet 
 hushed, above. They looked upon the living and intense stars, 
 and felt palpably at their hearts that spell wild, but mute
 
 THE DISOWNED. 399 
 
 which nothing on or of earth can inspire ; that pining of the 
 imprisoned soul, that longing after the immortality on high, 
 which is perhaps no imaginary type of the immortality ourselves 
 are heirs to. 
 
 "It is on such nights as these,' 1 said Mordaunt, who first 
 broke the silence, but with a low and soft voice, " that we are 
 tempted to believe that in Plato's divine fancy there is as divine 
 a trutli that 'our souls are indeed of the same essence as the 
 stars,' and that the mysterious yearning, the impatient wish 
 which swells and soars within us to mingle with their glory, is 
 but the instinctive and natural longing to re- unite the divided 
 portion of an immortal spirit, stored in these cells of clay, with 
 the original lustre of the heavenly and burning whole! " 
 
 " And hence then," said his companion, pursuing the idea, 
 "might we also believe in that wondrous and wild influence 
 which the stars have been fabled to exercise over our fate ; 
 hence might we shape a visionary clue to their imagined power 
 over our birth, our destinies, and our death." 
 
 " Perhaps," rejoined Mordaunt, and Lord Ulswater has since 
 said that his countenance, as he spoke, wore an awful and 
 strange aspect, which lived long and long afterwards in the 
 memory of his companion, "perhaps they are tokens and signs 
 between the soul and the things of Heaven which do not wholly 
 shame the doctrine of him* from whose bright wells Plato drew 
 (while he colored with his own gorgeous errors) the waters of 
 his sublime lore." As Mordaunt thus spoke, his voice changed : 
 he paused abruptly, and, pointing to a distant quarter of the 
 heavens, said : 
 
 " Look yonder ; do you see, in the far horizon, one large and 
 solitary star, that, at this very moment, seems to wax pale and 
 paler, as my hand points to it?" 
 
 " I see it it shrinks and soars, while we gaze into the far- 
 ther depths of heaven, as if it were seeking to rise to some 
 higher orbit." 
 
 " And do you see," rejoined Mordaunt, " yon fleecy, but 
 dusk cloud which sweeps slowly along the sky towards it ! 
 What shape does that cloud wear to your eyes ? " 
 
 " It seems to me," answered Lord Ulswater, " to assume the 
 exact semblance of a funeral procession the human shape ap- 
 pears to me as distinctly moulded in the thin vapors as in our- 
 selves ; nor would it perhaps ask too great indulgence from our 
 fancy to imagine among the darker forms in the centre of the 
 cloud one bearing the very appearance of a bier the plume, 
 
 * Socrates, who taught the belief in omens.
 
 400 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 and the caparison, and the steeds, and the mourners ! Still, as 
 I look, the likeness seems to me to increase ! " 
 
 " Strange," said Mordaunt musingly, " how strange is this 
 thing which we call the mind ! Strange that the dreams and 
 superstitions of childhood should cling to it with so inseparable 
 and fond a strength ! I remember, years since, that I was 
 affected even as I am now, to a degree which wiser men might 
 shrink to confess, upon gazing .on a cloud exactly similar to 
 that which at this instant we behold. But see that cloud has 
 passed over the star ; and, now, as it rolls away, look, the star 
 itself has vanished into the heavens." 
 
 " But I fear," answered Lord Ulswater, with a slight smile, 
 " that we can deduce no omen, either from the cloud or the 
 star : would, indeed, that Nature were more visibly knit with 
 our individual existence ! Would that in the heavens there 
 were a book, and in the waves a voice, and on the earth a token 
 of the mysteries and enigmas of our fate ! " 
 
 "And yet," said Mordaunt slowly, as his mind gradually 
 rose from its dreamlike oppression to its wonted and healthful 
 tone, " yet, in truth, we want neither sign nor omen from other 
 worlds to teach us all that it is the end of existence to fulfil 
 in this ; and that seems to me a far less exalted wisdom which en- 
 ables us to solve the riddles, than that which elevates us above 
 the chances, of the future." 
 
 " But can we be placed above those chances can we become 
 independent of that fate to which the ancients taught that even 
 their deities were submitted ?" 
 
 " Let us not so wrong the ancients," answered Mordaunt ; 
 " their poets taught it, not their philosophers. Would not vir- 
 tue be a dream, a mockery indeed, if it were, like the herb of 
 the field, a thing of blight and change, of withering and re- 
 newal, a minion of the sunbeam and the cloud? Shall calamity 
 deject it ? Shall prosperity pollute ? then let it not be the 
 object of our aspiration, but the by-word of our contempt. No: 
 let us rather believe, with the great of old, that when it is based 
 on wisdom, it is throned above change and chance ! throned 
 above the things of a petty and sordid world ! throned above 
 the Olympus of the heathen ! throned above the Stars which 
 fade, and the Moon which waneth in her course ! Shall we 
 believe less of the divinity of Virtue than an Athenian Sage? 
 Shall we, to whose eyes have been revealed, without a cloud, 
 the blaze and the glory of Heaven, make Virtue a slave to those 
 chains of earth which the Pagan subjected to her feet? But if 
 by her we can trample on the ills of life, are we not, a hundred-
 
 THE DISOWNED. 4OI 
 
 fold more, by her, the vanquishers of death ? All creation lies 
 before as ; shall we cling to a grain of dust? All immortality 
 is our heritage : shall we gasp and sicken for a moment's 
 breath? What if we perish within an hour ? what if already 
 the black cloud lowers over us what if from our hopes and 
 projects, and the fresh woven ties which we have knit around 
 our life, we are abruptly torn, shall we be the creatures or the 
 conquerors of fate ? Shall we be the exiled from a home, or the 
 escaped from a dungeon ? Are we not as birds which look 
 into the Great Air only through a barred cage? Shall we shrink 
 and mourn when the cage is shattered and all space spreads 
 around us our element and our empire? No ; it was not for 
 this that in an elder day, Virtue and Valor received but a com- 
 mon name ! The soul into which that spirit has breathed its 
 glory is not only above Fate it profits by her assaults ! At- 
 tempt to weaken it and you nerve it with a new strength to 
 wound it, and you render it more invulnerable to destroy it 
 and you make it immortal. This indeed is the Sovereign whose 
 realm every calamity increases the Hero whose triumph every 
 invasion augments ! standing on the last sands of life, and 
 encircled by the advancing waters of Darkness and Eternity, it 
 becomes in its expiring effort doubly the Victor and the King ! " 
 Impressed, by the fervor of his companion, with a sympathy 
 almost approaching to awe, Lord Ulswater pressed Mordaunt's 
 hand, but offered no reply ; and both, excited by the high 
 theme of their conversation, and the thoughts which it pro- 
 duced, moved in silence from their post, and walked slowly 
 homeward. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXVII. 
 
 " Is it possible ? 
 
 Is't so ? I can no longer what I would ; 
 No longer draw back at my liking ! I 
 
 Must do the deed because I thought of it. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 What is thy enterprise thy aim, thy object ? 
 Hast honestly confessed it to thyself? 
 ***** 
 
 O bloody, frightful deed ! 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 Was that my purpose when we parted ? 
 
 O God of Justice ! "' COLERIDGE'S Wallenstein. 
 
 WE need scarcely say that one of the persons overheard by 
 Mr. Brown was Wolfe, and the peculiar tone of oratorical ex-
 
 402 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 aggeration, characteristic of the man, has already informed 
 the reader with which of the two he is identified. 
 
 On the evening after the conversation the evening fixed for 
 the desperate design on which he had set the last hazard of 
 his life the republican, parting from the companions with 
 whom he had passed the day, returned home to compose the 
 fever of his excited thoughts, and have a brief hour of solitary 
 meditation, previous to the committal of that act which he 
 knew must be his immediate passport to the gaol and the 
 gibbet. On entering his squalid and miserable home, the 
 woman of the house, a blear-eyed and filthy hag, who was 
 holding to her withered breast an infant, which, even in suck- 
 ing the stream that nourished its tainted existence, betrayed 
 upon its haggard countenance the polluted nature of the 
 mother's milk, from which it drew at once the support of life 
 and the seeds of death this woman, meeting him in the 
 narrow passage, arrested his steps, to acquaint him that a gen- 
 tleman had that day called upon him, and left a letter in his 
 room, with strict charge of care and speed in its delivery. 
 The visitor had not, however, communicated his name, though 
 the curiosity excited by his mien and dress had prompted the 
 crone particularly to demand it. 
 
 Little affected by this incident, which to the hostess seemed 
 no unimportant event, Wolfe pushed the woman aside, with an 
 impatient gesture, and, scarcely conscious of the abuse which 
 followed this motion, hastened up the sordid stairs to his 
 apartment. He sate himself down upon the foot of his bed, 
 and, covering his face with his hands, surrendered his mind to 
 the tide of contending emotions which rushed upon it. 
 
 What was he about to commit? Murder! murder in its 
 coldest and most premeditated guise ! <% No ! " cried he aloud, 
 starting from the bed, and dashing his clenched hand violently 
 against his brow " no no no ! it is not murder, it is justice ! 
 Did not they, the hirelings of Oppression, ride over their crushed 
 and shrieking countrymen, with drawn blades and murtherous 
 hands? Was I not among them at the hour? Did I not with 
 these eyes see the sword uplifted, and the smiter strike ? Were 
 not my ears filled with the groans of their victims and the 
 savage yells of the trampling dastards ! yells which rung in 
 triumph over women and babes and weaponless men ? And shall 
 there be no vengeance ? Yes, it shall fall, not upon the tools, 
 but the master not upon the slaves, but the despot ! Yet," 
 said he, suddenly pausing, as his voice sank into a whisper, 
 "assassination ! in another hour, perhaps ; a deed irrevocable
 
 THE DISOWNED. 403 
 
 a, seal set upon two souls the victim's and the judge's ! Fet- 
 ters and the felon's cord before me ! the shouting mob 
 the stigma ! no, no, it will not be the stigma ; the gratitude, 
 rather, of future times, when motives will be appreciated and 
 party hushed ! Have I not wrestled with wrong from my 
 birth? have I not rejected all offers from the men of an 
 impious power? have I made a moment's truce with the poor 
 man's foes? have I not thrice purchased free principles with 
 an imprisoned frame ! have I not bartered my substance, and 
 my hopes, and the pleasures of this world for my unmoving, 
 unswerving faith in the Great Cause? am I not about to 
 crown all by one blow one lightning blow, destroying at once 
 myself and a criminal too mighty for the law? and shall not 
 history do justice to this devotedness this absence from all 
 self, hereafter and admire, even if it condemn?" 
 
 Buoying himself with these reflections, and exciting the 
 jaded current of his designs once more into an unnatural 
 impetus, the unhappy man ceased, and paced with rapid steps 
 the narrow limits of his chamber; his eye fell upon something 
 bright, which glittered amidst the darkening shadows of the 
 evening. At that sight his heart stood still for a moment ; it 
 was the weapon of intended death : he took it up, and as he 
 surveyed the shining barrel, and felt the lock, a more settled 
 sternness gathered at once over his fierce features and stub- 
 born heart. The pistol had been bought and prepared for the 
 purpose with the utmost nicety, not only for use but show ; 
 nor is it unfrequent to find, in such instances of premeditated 
 ferocity in design, a fearful kind of coxcombry lavished upon 
 the means. 
 
 Striking a light, Wolfe re-seated himself deliberately, and 
 began, with the utmost care, to load the pistol ; that scene 
 would not have been an unworthy sketch for those painters 
 who possess the power of giving to the low a force almost 
 approaching to grandeur, and of augmenting the terrible by a 
 mixture of the ludicrous ; the sordid chamber, the damp walls, 
 the high window, in which a handful of discolored paper sup- 
 plied the absence of many a pane ; the single table of rough 
 oak, the rush-bottomed and broken chair, the hearth uncon- 
 scious of a fire, over which a mean bust of Milton held its 
 tutelary sway while the dull rushlight streamed dimly upon 
 the swarthy and strong countenance of Wolfe, intent upon his 
 work a countenance in which the deliberate calmness that 
 had succeeded the late struggle of feeling had in it a mingled 
 power of energy and haggardness of languor, the one of the
 
 464 THE DISO\VNEB. 
 
 desperate design, the other of the exhausted body, while in 
 the knit brow, and the iron lines, and even in the settled 
 ferocity of expression, there was yet something above the stamp 
 of the vulgar ruffian something eloquent of the motive no 
 less than the deed, and significant of that not ignoble perver- 
 sity of mind which diminished the guilt, yet increased the 
 dreadness of the meditated crime, by mocking it with the 
 name of virtue. 
 
 As he had finished his task, and, hiding the pistol in his 
 person, waited for the hour in which his accomplice was to 
 summon him to the fatal deed he perceived, close by him on 
 the table, the letter which the woman had spoken of, and which, 
 till then, he had, in the excitement of his mind, utterly for- 
 gotten. He opened it mechanically an inclosure fell to the 
 ground. He picked it up it was a bank-note of considerable 
 amount. The lines in the letter were few, anonymous, and 
 written in a hand evidently disguised. They were calculated 
 peculiarly to touch the republican, and reconcile him to the 
 gift. In them the writer professed to be actuated by no other 
 feeling than admiration for the unbending integrity which had 
 characterized Wolfe's life, and the desire that sincerity in any 
 principles, however they might differ from his own, should not 
 be rewarded only with indigence and ruin. 
 
 It is impossible to tell how far, in Wolfe's mind, his own 
 desperate fortunes might, insensibly, have mingled with the 
 motives which led him to his present design : certain is it that, 
 wherever the future is hopeless, the mind is easily converted 
 from the rugged to the criminal ; and equally certain it is that 
 we are apt to justify to ourselves many offences in a cause 
 where we have made great sacrifices : and, perhaps, if this un- 
 expected assistance had come to Wolfe a short time before, it 
 might, by softening his heart, and reconciling him in some 
 measure to fortune, have rendered him less susceptible to the 
 fierce voice of political hatred and the instigation of his as- 
 sociates. Nor can we, who are removed from the temptations 
 of the poor temptations to which ours are as breezes which 
 woo, to storms which " tumble towers " nor can we tell how 
 far the acerbity of want, and the absence of wholesome sleep, 
 and the contempt of the rich, and the rankling memory of 
 better fortunes, or even the mere fierceness which absolute 
 hunger produces in the humors and veins of all that hold 
 nature's life nor can we tell how far these madden the 
 temper, which is but a minion of the body, and plead in 
 irresistible excuse for the crimes which our wondering vir
 
 THE DISOWNED. 40$ 
 
 tufc haughty because unsolicited stamps with its loftiest 
 reprobation ! 
 
 The cloud fell from Wolfe's brow, and his eye gazed, musingly 
 and rapt, upon vacancy. Steps were heard ascending the 
 voice of a distant clock tolled with a distinctness which seemed 
 like strokes palpable as well as audible to the senses ; and as 
 the door opened, and his accomplice entered, Wolfe muttered, 
 "Too late too late!" and first crushing the note in his 
 hands, then tore it into atoms, with a vehemence which 
 astonished his companion, who, however, knew not its value. 
 
 "Come," said he, stamping his foot violently upon the floor, 
 as if to conquer by passion all internal relenting " come, my 
 friend, not another moment is to be lost ; let us hasten to our 
 holy deed ! " 
 
 " I trust," said Wolfe's companion, when they were in the 
 open street, " that we shall not have our trouble in vain ; it is 
 a brave night for it ! Davidson wanted us to throw grenades 
 into the ministers' carriages, as the best plan ; and, faith, we 
 can try that if all else fails ! " 
 
 Wolfe remained silent indeed he scarcely heard his com- 
 panion ; for a sullen indifference to all things around him had 
 wrapt his spirit that singular feeling, or rather absence from 
 feeling, common to all men, when bound on some exciting ac- 
 tion, upon which their minds are already and wholly bent ; 
 which renders them utterly without thought, when the superficial 
 would imagine they were the most full of it, and leads them to 
 the threshold of that event which had before engrossed all 
 their most waking and fervid contemplation with a blind and 
 mechanical unconsciousness, resembling the influence of a 
 dream 
 
 They arrived at the place they had selected for their station, 
 sometimes walking to and fro, in order to escape observation, 
 sometimes hiding behind the pillars of a neighboring house, 
 they awaited the coming of their victims. The time passed 
 on the streets grew more and more empty ; and, at last, only 
 the visitation of the watchman or the occasional steps of some 
 homeward wanderer, disturbed the solitude of their station. 
 
 At last, just after midnight, two. men were seen approaching 
 towards them, linked arm in arm, and walking very slowly. 
 
 " Hist hist," whispered Wolfe's comrade " there they are 
 at last is your pistol cocked ? " 
 
 " Ay," answered Wolfe, " and yours : man collect yourself 
 your hand shakes." 
 
 " It is with the cold, then," said the ruffian, vising, uncon-
 
 406 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 sciously, a celebrated reply "Let us withdraw behind the 
 pillar." 
 
 They did so the figures approached them ; the night, 
 though star-lit, was not sufficiently clear to give the assassins 
 more than the outline of their shapes, and the characters of 
 their height and air. 
 
 " Which," said Wolfe, in a whisper for as he had said, he 
 had never seen either of his intended victims "which is my 
 prey ?" 
 
 " Oh, the nearest to you," said the other, with trembling ac- 
 cents ; " you know his d d proud walk, and erect head 
 that is the way he answers the people's petitions, I'll be sworn. 
 The taller and farther one, who stoops more in his gait, is mine. " 
 
 The strangers were now at hand. 
 
 " You know you are to fire first, Wolfe," whispered the nearer 
 ruffian, whose heart had long failed him, and who was already 
 meditating escape. 
 
 " But you are sure quite sure of the identity of our prey ?" 
 said Wolfe, grasping his pistol. 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the other ; and, indeed, the air of the nearest 
 person approaching them bore, in the distance, a strong re- 
 semblance to that of the minister it was supposed to designate. 
 His companion, who appeared much younger, and of a mien 
 equally patrician, but far less proud, seemed listening to the 
 supposed minister with the most earnest attention. Apparently 
 occupied with their conversation, when about twenty yards 
 from the assassins, they stood still for a few moments. 
 
 " Stop, Wolfe, stop," said the republican's accomplice, whose 
 Indian complexion, by fear, and the wan light of the lamps and 
 skies, faded into a jaundiced and yellow hue, while the bony 
 whiteness of his teeth made a grim contrast with the glare of 
 his small, black, sparkling eyes. "Stop, Wolfe hold your 
 hand. I see, now, that I was mistaken ; the farther one is a 
 stranger to me, and the nearer one is much thinner than the 
 minister: pocket your pistol quick quick and let us with- 
 draw." 
 
 Wolfe drop ed his hand, as if dissuaded from his design ; 
 but, as he looked upon the trembling frame and chattering 
 teeth of his terrified accomplice, a sudden, and not unnatural, 
 idea darted Across his mind that he was wilfully deceived by 
 the fears of his companion ; and that the strangers, who had 
 now resumed their way, were indeed what his accomplice had 
 first reported them to be. Filled with this impression, and 
 acting upon the momentary spur which it gave, the infatuated
 
 DISOWNED. 407 
 
 and fated man pushed aside his comrade, with a muttered oath 
 at his cowardice and treachery, and taking a sure and steady, 
 though quick, aim at the person, who was now just within the 
 certain destruction of his hand, he fired the pistol. The 
 stranger reeled, and fell into the arms of his companion. 
 
 " Hurra ! " cried the murderer, leaping from his hiding- 
 place, and walking with rapid strides towards his victim 
 " hurra ! for liberty and England !" 
 
 Scarce had he uttered those prostituted names, before the 
 triumph of misguided zeal faded suddenlyand forever from his 
 brow and soul. 
 
 The wounded man leaned back in the supporting arms of his 
 chilled and horror-stricken friend ; who, kneeling on one knee 
 to support him, fixed his eager eyes upon thfe pale and chang- 
 ing countenance of his burthen, unconscious of the presence 
 of the assassin. 
 
 " Speak, Mordaunt, speak ! how is it with you ?" he said. 
 
 Recalled from his torpor by the voice, Mordaunt opened his 
 eyes, and muttering " My child, my child," sunk back again ; 
 and Lord Ulswater (for it was he) felt, by his increased weight, 
 that death was hastening rapidly on its victim. 
 
 "Oh! "said he, bitterly, and recalling their last conversa- 
 tion ; "Oh! where where when this man the wise, the 
 kind, the innocent, almost the perfect, falls thus in the very 
 prime of existence, by a sudden blow from an obscure hand 
 unblest in life, inglorious in death oh ! where where is this 
 boasted triumph of Virtue, or where is its reward ? " 
 
 True to his idol at the last, as these words fell upon his 
 dizzy and receding senses, Mordaunt raised himself by a sud- 
 den, though momentary, exertion ; and fixing his eyes full 
 upon Lord Ulswater, his moving lips (for his voice was already 
 gone) seemed to shape out the answer, "// is here ! " 
 
 With this last effort, and with an expression upon his aspect 
 which, seemed at once to soften and to hallow the haughty and 
 calm character which in life it was wont to bear, Algernon 
 Mordaunt fell once more back into the arms of his companion, 
 and immediately expired.
 
 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 CHAPTER LXXXVIII. 
 
 " Come, Death, these are thy victims, and the axe 
 Waits those who claimed the chariot Thus we count 
 Our treasures in the dark, and when the light 
 Breaks on the cheated eye, we find the coin 
 Was skulls. 
 
 * * # * * 
 
 Yet the while 
 
 Fate links strange contrasts, and the scaffold's gloom 
 Is neighbored by the altar." ANON." 
 
 WHEN Crauford's guilt and imprisonment became known ; 
 when Inquiry developed, day after day, some new maze in the 
 mighty and intricate machinery of his sublime dishonesty; 
 when houses of the most reputed wealth and profuse splendor, 
 whose affairs Crauford had transacted, were discovered to have 
 been for years utterly undermined and beggared, and only sup- 
 ported by the extraordinary genius of the individual by whose 
 extraordinary guilt, now no longer concealed, they were sud- 
 denly and irretrievably destroyed ; when it was ascertained 
 that, for nearly the fifth part of a century, a system of villainy 
 had been carried on throughout Europe, in a thousand different 
 relations, without a single breath of suspicion, and yet which a 
 single breath of suspicion could at once have arrested and ex- 
 posed ; when it was proved that a man whose luxury had ex- 
 ceeded the pomp of princes, and whose wealth was supposed 
 more inexhaustible than the enchanted purse of Fortunatus, 
 had for eighteen years been a penniless pensioner upon the 
 prosperity of others ; when the long scroll of this almost in- 
 credible fraud was slowly, piece by piece, unrolled before the 
 terrified curiosity of the public, an invading army at the Temple 
 gates could scarcely have excited such universal consternation 
 and dismay. 
 
 The mob, always the first to execute justice, in their own 
 inimitable way, took vengeance upon Crauford, by burning the 
 house no longer his, and the houses of the partners, who were 
 the worst and most innocent sufferers for his crime. No epithet 
 of horror and hatred was too severe for the offender ; and 
 serious apprehension for the safety of Newgate, his present 
 habitation, was generally expressed. The more saintly mem- 
 bers of that sect to which the hypocrite had ostensibly be- 
 longed held up their hands, and declared that the fall of the 
 Pharisee was a judgment of Providence. Nor did they think 
 it worth while to make, for a moment, the trifling inquiry, how
 
 THE DISOWNED. 409 
 
 far the judgment of Providence was also implicated in the 
 destruction of the numerous and innocent families he had 
 ruined ! 
 
 But, whether from that admiration for genius, common to the 
 vulgar, which forgets all crime in the cleverness of committing 
 it, or from that sagacious disposition peculiar to the English, 
 which makes a hero of any person eminently wicked, no sooner 
 did Crauford's trial come on than the tide of popular feeling 
 experienced a sudden revulsion. It became, in an instant, the 
 fashion to admire and to pity a gentleman -so talented and so 
 unfortiinate. Likenesses of Mr. Crauford appeared in every 
 print-shop in town the papers discovered that he was the very 
 fao-simile of the great King of Prussia. The laureate made an 
 ode upon him, which was set to music ; and the public learnt, 
 with tears of compassionate regret at so romantic a circum- 
 stance, that pigeon-pies were sent daily to his prison made by 
 the delicate hands of one of his former mistresses. Some sen- 
 sation, also, was excited by the circumstance of his poor wife 
 (who soon afterwards died of a broken heart) coming to him in 
 prison, and being with difficulty torn away ; but then, conjugal 
 affection is so very commonplace, and there was something so 
 engrossingly pathetic in the anecdote of the pigeon-pies ! 
 
 It must be confessed that Crauford displayed singular address 
 and ability upon his trial ; and righting every inch of ground, 
 even to the last, when so strong a phalanx of circumstances 
 appeared against him, that no hope of a favorable verdict could 
 for a moment have supported him he concluded the trial with 
 a speech delivered by himself so impressive, so powerful, so 
 dignified, yet so impassioned, that the whole audience, hot as 
 they were, dissolved into tears. 
 
 Sentence was passed Death ! But such was the infatuation 
 of the people, that every one expected that a pardon, for crime 
 more complicated and extensive than half the Newgate Calendar 
 could equal, would of course be obtained. Persons of the 
 highest rank interested themselves in his behalf : and up to the 
 night before his execution, expectations, almost amounting to 
 certainty, were entertained by the criminal, his friends, and 
 the public. On that night was conveyed to Crauford the posi- 
 tive and peremptory assurance that there was no hope. Let 
 us now enter his cell, and be the sole witnesses of his solitude. 
 
 Crauford was, as we have seen, a man in some respects of 
 great moral courage, of extraordinary daring in the formation 
 of schemes, of unwavering resolution in supporting them, and 
 of a temper which rather rejoiced in, than shunned, the brav-
 
 416 tttE DISOWNED. 
 
 ing of a distant danger for the sake of an adequate reward. 
 But this courage was supported and fed solely by the self- 
 persuasion of consummate genius, and his profound confidence 
 both in his good fortune, and the inexhaustibility of his 
 resources. Physically he was a coward ! immediate peril to be 
 confronted by the person, not the mind, had ever appalled him 
 like a child. He had never dared to back a spirited horse. 
 He had been known to remain for days in an obscure alehouse 
 in the country, to which a shower had accidentally driven him, 
 because it had been idly reported that a wild beast had escaped 
 from a caravan, and been seen in the vicinity of the inn. No 
 dog had ever been allowed in his household, lest it might go 
 mad. In a word, Crauford was one to whom life and sensual 
 enjoyments were everything the supreme blessings the only 
 blessings. 
 
 As long as he had the hope, and it was a sanguine hope, of 
 saving life, nothing had disturbed his mind from its serenity. 
 His gaiety had never forsaken him ; and his cheerfulness and 
 fortitude had been the theme of every one admitted to his 
 presence. But when this hope was abruptly and finally closed 
 when Death, immediate and unavoidable Death the extinc- 
 tion of existence the cessation of sense, stood bare and hideous 
 before him, his genius seemed at once to abandon him to his 
 fate, and the inherent weakness of his nature to gush over every 
 prop and barrier of his art. 
 
 " No hope ! " muttered he, in a voice of the keenest anguish 
 " no hope merciful God none none ! What, I / who 
 have shamed kings in luxury I to die on the gibbet, among 
 the reeking, gaping, swinish crowd with whom Oh God, 
 that I were one of them even ! that I were the most loathsome 
 beggar that ever crept forth to taint the air with sores ! that 
 I were a toad immured in a stone, sweltering in the atmosphere 
 of its own venom ! a snail crawling on these very walls, and 
 tracking his painful path in slime ! anything anything, but 
 death ! And such death the gallows the scaffold the 
 halter the fingers of the hangman paddling round the neck 
 where the softest caresses have clung and sated. To die die 
 die ! What, /whose pulse now beats so strongly whose blood 
 keeps so warm and vigorous a motion ! in the very prime of 
 enjoyment and manhood all life's million paths of pleasure 
 before me to die to swing to the winds to hang ay ay 
 to hang ! to be cut down, distorted and hideous to be thrust 
 into the earth with worms to rot, or or or hell ! is there a 
 hell ? better that even, than annihilation/
 
 THE DISOWNED. 4H 
 
 *' Fool fool ! damnable fool that I was (and in his sudden 
 rage he clenched his own flesh till the nails met in it) ; had I 
 but got to France one day sooner ! Why don't you save me 
 save me you whom I have banquetted, and feasted, and lent 
 money to ! one word from you might have saved me I will 
 not die ! I don't deserve it! I am innocent ! I tell you Not 
 guilty, my lord not guilty ! Have you no heart, no con- 
 sciences ? murder murder murder ! " and the wretched man 
 sunk upon the ground, and tried with his hands to grasp the 
 stone floor, as if to cling to it from some imaginary violence. 
 
 Turn we from him to the cell in which another criminal 
 awaits also the awful coming of his latest morrow. 
 
 Pale, motionless, silent with his face bending over his bosom, 
 and hands clasped tightly upon his knees, Wolfe sat in his 
 dungeon, and collected his spirit against the approaching con- 
 summation of his turbulent and stormy fate his bitterest pun- 
 ishment had been already past ; mysterious Chance, or rather 
 the Power above chance, had denied to him the haughty triumph 
 of self-applause. No sophistry, now, could compare his doom 
 to that of Sidney, or his deed to the act of the avenging Brutus. 
 
 Murder causeless objectless universally execrated rest- 
 ed, and would rest (till oblivion wrapt it) upon his name. It 
 had appeared, too, upon his trial, that he had, in the informa- 
 tion lie had received, been the mere tool of a spy, in the 
 ministers' pay ; and that, for weeks before his intended deed, 
 his design had been known, and his conspiracy only not bared 
 to the public eye, because political craft awaited a riper oppor- 
 tunity for the disclosure. He had not then merely been the 
 blind dupe of his own passions, but, more humbling still, an 
 instrument in the hands. of the very men whom his hatred was 
 sworn to destroy. Not a wreck not a straw, of the vainglory, 
 for which he had forfeited life, and risked his soul, could he 
 hug to a sinking heart, and say "This is my support." 
 
 The remorse of gratitude embittered his cup still farther. 
 On Mordaunt's person had been discovered a memorandum of 
 the money anonymously enclosed to Wolfe on the day of the 
 murder ; and it was couched in words of esteem which melted 
 the fierce heart of the republican into the only tears he had 
 shed since childhood. From that time, a sullen, silent spirit 
 fell upon him. He spoke to none heeded none : he made no 
 defence in trial no complaint of severity no appeal from 
 judgment. The iron had entered into his soul but it sup- 
 ported, while it tortured. Even now, as we gaze upon his 
 inflexible and dark countenance, no transitory emotion no
 
 412 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 natural spasm of sudden fear for the catastrophe of the mor- 
 row no intense and working passions, struggling into calm 
 no sign of internal hurricanes, rising, as it were, from the hidden 
 depths, agitate the surface, or betray the secrets of the unfathom- 
 able world within. The mute lip the rigid brow the down- 
 cast eye a heavy and dread stillness, brooding over every 
 feature these are all we behold ! 
 
 Is it that thought sleeps, locked in the torpor of a senseless 
 and rayless dream ; or that an evil incubus weighs upon it, 
 crushing its risings, but deadening not its pangs? Does Mem- 
 ory fly to the green fields and happy home of his childhood, or 
 the lonely studies of his daring and restless youth, or his earli- 
 est homage to that Spirit of Freedom which shone bright, and 
 still, and pure, upon the solitary chamber of him who sung of 
 heaven ;* or (dwelling on its last and most fearful object) rolls 
 it only through one tumultuous and convulsive channel De- 
 spair ? Whatever be within the silent and deep heart pride, 
 or courage, or callousness, or that stubborn firmness which, 
 once principle has grown habit, covers all as with a pall ; and 
 the stung nerves and the hard endurance of the human flesh, 
 sustain what the immortal mind perhaps quails beneath, in its 
 dark retreat, but once dreamt that it would exult to bear. 
 
 The fatal hour had come ! and, through the long, dim pas- 
 sages of the prison, four criminals were led forth to execution. 
 The first was Crauford's associate, Bradley. This man prayed 
 fervently ; and, though he was trembling and pale, his mien 
 and aspect bore something of the calmness of resignation. 
 
 It has been said that there is no friendship among the 
 wicked. I have examined this maxim closely, and believe it, 
 like most popular proverbs, false. .In wickedness there is 
 peril and mutual terror is the strongest of ties. At all events, 
 the wicked can, not unoften, excite an attachment in their fol- 
 lowers denied to virtue. Habitually courteous, caressing, and 
 familiar, Crauford had, despite his own suspicions of Bradley, 
 really touched the heart of one, whom weakness and want, not 
 nature, had gained to vice ; and it was not till Crauford's guilt 
 was by other witnesses undeniably proved that Bradley could 
 be tempted to make any confession tending to implicate him. 
 
 He now crept close to his former partner, and frequently 
 clasped his hand, and besought him to take courage, and to 
 pray. But Crauford's eye was glassy and dim, and his veins 
 seemed filled with water so numbed and cold and white was 
 his cheek. Fear, in him, had passed its paroxysms, and was 
 
 * Milton,
 
 THE DISOWNEl*. 413 
 
 now insensibility ; it was only when they urged him to pray 
 that a sort of benighted consciousness strayed over his coun- 
 tenance and his ashen lips muttered something which none 
 heard. 
 
 After him came the Creole, who had been Wolfe's accom- 
 plice. On the night of the murder he had taken advantage of 
 the general loneliness, and the confusion of the few present, 
 and fled. He was found, however, fast asleep, in a garret, be- 
 fore morning, by the officers of justice ; and, on trial, he had 
 confessed all. This man was in a rapid consumption. The 
 delay of another week would have given to nature the termin- 
 ation of his life. He, like Bradley, seemed earnest and ab- 
 sorbed in prayer. 
 
 Last came Wolfe, his tall, gaunt frame worn, by confinement 
 and internal conflict, into a gigantic skeleton ; his countenance, 
 too, had undergone a withering change ; his grizzled hair 
 seemed now to have acquired only the one hoary hue of age ; 
 and, though you might trace in his air and eye the sternness, 
 you could no longer detect the fire, of former days. Calm, as 
 on the preceding night, no emotion broke over, his dark, but 
 not defying features. He rejected, though not irreverently, all 
 aid from the benevolent priest, and seemed to seek, in the 
 pride of his own heart, a substitute for the resignation of Re- 
 ligion. 
 
 " Miserable man ! " at last said the good clergyman, in whom 
 zeal overcame kindness, " have you at this awful hour no pray- 
 er upon your lips?" 
 
 A living light shot then for a moment over Wolfe's eye and 
 brow. " I have ! " said he ; and raising his clasped hands to 
 fieaven, he continued in the memorable words of Sidney 
 ' ' Lord, defend thy own cause, and defend those who defend 
 it ! Stir up such as are faint ; direct those that are willing ; con- 
 firm those that waver ; give wisdom and integrity to all ; order 
 all things so as may most redound to thine own glory ! " 
 
 " I had once hoped," added Wolfe, sinking in his tone " I 
 had once hoped that I might with justice have continued that 
 holy prayer ; * but " he ceased abruptly ; the glow passed 
 from his countenance, his lip quivered, and the tears stood in 
 his eyes ; and that was the only weakness he betrayed, and 
 those were his last words. 
 
 Crauford continued, even while the rope was put round him, 
 
 * " Grant that I may die glorifying thee for all thy mercies, and that at the last thou 
 hast permitted me to be singled out as a witness of thy. truth, and even by the confession 
 of my opposers for that OLD CAUSE in which I was -from my youth engaged, and for 
 which thou hast often and wonderfully declared thyself." ALGERNON SIDNEY,
 
 414 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 mute and unconscious of everything. It was said that his 
 pulse (that of an uncommonly strong and healthy man on the 
 previous day), had become so low and faint that, an hour be- 
 fore his execution, it could not be felt. He and the Creole 
 were the only ones who struggled ; Wolfe died, seemingly, 
 without a pang. 
 
 From these feverish and fearful scenes, the mind turns, with 
 a feeling of grateful relief, to contemplate the happiness of one 
 whose candid and high nature, and warm affections, Fortune, 
 long befriending, had at length blest. 
 
 It was on an evening in the earliest flush of returning spring, 
 that Lord Ulsvvater, with his beautiful bride, entered his mag- 
 nificent domains. It had been his wish and order, in conse- 
 quence of his brother's untimely death, that no public rejoic- 
 ings should be made on his marriage ; but the good old stew- 
 ard could not persuade himself entirely to enforce obedience 
 to the first order of his new master ; and as the carriage 
 drove into the park-gates, crowds on crowds were assembled, 
 to welcome and to gaze. 
 
 No sooner had they caught a glimpse of their young lord, 
 whose affability and handsome person had endeared him to all 
 who remembered his early days, and of the half-blushing, half- 
 smiling, countenance beside him, than their enthusiasm could 
 be no longer restrained. The whole scene rang with shouts of 
 joy and through an air filled with blessings, and amidst an 
 avenue of happy faces, the bridal pair arrived at their home. 
 
 "Ah! Clarence (for so I must still call you)," said Flora, 
 her beautiful eyes streaming with delicious tears, " let us never 
 leave these kind hearts ; let us live amongst them, and strive 
 to repay and deserve the blessings which they shower upon us ! 
 Is not Benevolence, dearest, better than Ambition?" 
 
 "Can it not rather, my own Flora, be Ambition itself?" 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 " So rest you, merry gentlemen." Monsieur Thomas. 
 
 THE Author has now only to take his leave of the less im- 
 portant characters whom he has assembled together ; and then, 
 all due courtesy to his numerous guests being performed, to 
 retire himself to repose. 
 
 First, then, for Mr, Morris Brown ; In the second year of
 
 THE DISOWNED. 415 
 
 Lord Ulswater's marriage, the worthy broker paid Mrs. Min- 
 den's nephew a visit, in which he persuaded that gentleman to 
 accept, " as presents," two admirable fire screens, the property 
 of the late Lady Waddilove : the same may be now seen in the 
 housekeeper's room, at Borodaile Park, by any person willing 
 to satisfy his curiosity and the housekeeper. Of all farther 
 particulars respecting Mr. Morris Brown history is silent. 
 
 In the obituary for 1792, we find the following paragraph : 
 Died at his house in Putney, aged seventy-three, Sir Nicholas 
 Copperas, Knt., a gentleman well known on the Exchange for 
 his facetious humor. Several of his fans-mots are still recorded 
 in the Common Council. When residing, many years ago, in 
 the suburbs of London, this worthy gentleman was accustomed 
 to go from his own house to the Exchange in a coach called 
 'the Swallow,' that passed his door just at breakfast-time; 
 upon which occasion he was wont wittily to observe to his ac- 
 complished spouse 'And now, Mrs. Copperas, having swal- 
 lowed in the roll, I will e'en roll in the Swallow ! ' His whole 
 property is left to Adolphus Copperas, Esq., Banker." 
 
 And in the next year we discover : 
 
 "Died, on Wednesday last, at her jointure house, Putney, in 
 her sixty-eighth year, the amiable and elegant Lady Copperas, 
 relict of the late Sir Nicholas, Knt." 
 
 Mr. Trollolop, having exhausted the whole world of meta- 
 physics, died, like Descartes, "in believing he had left nothing 
 unexplained." 
 
 Mr. Callythorpe entered the House of Commons at the time 
 of the French Revolution. He distinguished himself by many 
 votes in favor of Mr. Pitt, and one speech which ran thus : 
 " Sir, I believe my right honorable friend who spoke last (Mr. 
 Pitt), designs to ruin the 'country ; but [I will support him 
 through all ; honorable gentlemen may laugh but I'm a true 
 Briton, and will not serve my friend the less because I scorn to 
 flatter him." 
 
 Sir Christopher Findlater lost his life by an accident arising 
 from the upset of his carriage ; his good heart not having suf- 
 fered him to part with a drunken coachman. 
 
 Mr. Glumford turned miser in his old age ; and died of want, 
 and an extravagant son. 
 
 Our honest Cole and his wife were always among the most 
 welcome visitors at Lord Ulswater's. In his extreme old age 
 the ex-King took a journey to Scotland, to see the Author of 
 "The Lay of the Last Minstrel." Nor should we do justice to 
 the chief's critical discernment if we neglected to record that,
 
 41 6 THE DISOWNED. 
 
 from the earliest dawn of that great luminary of our age, he 
 predicted its meridian splendor. The eldest son of the gypsy 
 monarch inherited his father's spirit, and is yet alive, a general, 
 and G.C.B. 
 
 Mr. Harrison married Miss Elizabeth, and succeeded to the 
 Golden Fleece. 
 
 The Duke of Haverfield and Lord Ulswater continued their | 
 friendship through life ; and the letters of our dear Flora to 
 her correspondent, Eleanor, did not cease even with that criti- 
 cal and perilous period to all maiden correspondence mar- 
 riage. If we may judge from the subsequent letters which we 
 have been permitted to see, Eleanor never repented her bril- 
 liant nuptials, nor discovered (as the Duchess of once 
 
 said from experience), "that dukes are as intolerable for hus- 
 bands as they are delightful for matches." 
 
 And Isabel Mordaunt? Ah! not in these pages shall her 
 history be told even in epitome. Perhaps for some future nar- 
 rative her romantic and eventful fate may be reserved. Suffice 
 it for the present, that the childhood of the young heiress 
 passed in the house of Lord Ulswater, whose proudest boast, 
 through a triumphant and prosperous life, was to have been 
 her father's friend ; and that as she grew up, she inherited her 
 mother's beauty and gentle heart, and seemed to bear in her 
 deep eyes and melancholy smile some remembrance of the 
 scenes in which her infancy had been passed. 
 
 But for him, the husband and the father, whose trials through 
 this wrong world I have portrayed for him let there be neither 
 murmurs at the blindness of Fate, nor sorrow at the darkness 
 of his doom. Better that the lofty and bright spirit should 
 pass away before the petty business of life had bowed it, or the 
 sordid mists of this low earth breathed a shadow on its lustre ! 
 Who would have asked that spirit to have struggled on for 
 years in the intrigues the hopes the objects of meaner souls? 
 Who would have desired that the heavenward and impatient 
 heart should have grown inured to the chains and toil of this 
 enslaved state, or hardened into the callousness of age? Nor 
 would we claim the vulgar pittance of compassion for a lot 
 which is exalted above regret ? Pity is for our weaknesses to 
 our weaknesses only be it given. It is the aliment of love it 
 is the wages of ambition it is the rightful heritage of error ! 
 But why should pity be entertained for the soul which never fell? 
 for the courage which never quailed ? for the majesty never 
 humbled ? for the wisdom which, from the rough things of the 
 common world, raised an empire above earth and destiny?
 
 THE DISOWNED. 417 
 
 for the stormy life ? it was a triumph ! for the early death ? 
 it was immortality ! 
 
 I have stood beside Mordaunt's tomb : his will had directed 
 that he should sleep not in the vaults of his haughty line and 
 his last dwelling is surrounded by a green and pleasant spot. 
 The trees shadow it like a temple ; and a silver, though fitful 
 brook wails with a constant, yet not ungrateful dirge, at the 
 foot of the hill on which the tomb is placed. I have stood 
 there in those ardent years when our wishes know no boundary, 
 and our ambition no curb ; yet, even then, I would have 
 changed my wildest vision of romance for that quiet grave, 
 and the dreams of the distant spirit whose relics reposed be- 
 neath it. 
 
 THE END,
 
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